Shopping Tips and Advice
- Via USA.gov, some advice on keeping your credit or debit card safe when you go shopping online. Personally, I am one of those folks who, for the little online shopping I do, I use a prepaid gift card with a low balance. That way, if it got hacked, it would be annoying but it would not be a disaster.
- Wallet Hacks has some posts that may be of interest:
- Maybe you feel moved to give to charity, but you are a little short on cash. I get it. The economy is bad and all. However, maybe one of the "6 Ways to Give to Charity Without Donating Money" can work for you.
- You are shopping online. You may shopping online a lot. So shipping may be a concern. Or you perhaps you are sending things to relatives and friends. Again, the cost of shipping may be a concern. Here is a comparison between the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, and FedEx to help you decide what may work best for you.
- And with all that online ordering come the packages. Keeping them from getting stolen is a concern, so here are tips to prevent your package from being stolen over the holidays by some low life thieving asshole. Seriously, as far as I am concerned, porch pirates are among the lowest of the low scum.
- Still want to shop online, but it bothers you that you use Amazon to do it? Via Yes! Magazine, here are some gift buying alternatives to Amazon that even support communities of color.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a list of gifts that you should seriously NOT buy.
Some General Gift Lists
- Budget tight? Wallet Hacks has a list of 50 items under $25.The list is mixed. There are some nice things, and a few things that I think are questionable. Your mileage may vary.
- GPO (Government Printing Office) has some gift guides for different folks:
- For that special soldier.
- For the great outdoorsman.
- For the environmental enthusiast.
- Harper's Bazaar has a list (slideshow, so apologies) of 43 things to give to friends. This is one of the usual expensive and somewhat obscure things that I honestly question how many people give any of these as gifts. Among the items I wonder about:
- A Morse code cuff. It is a bracelet where you can engrave your friend's initials in Morse code. Does anyone even know what the fuck is Morse code anymore, aside from former Boy Scouts and maybe old school military people?
- A $299 instant camera. I am guessing this is for that one hipster friend.
- A $300 or so industrial logo belt. I have no idea what the appeal of this is.
- $125 color-block leather-twill belt bag, a.k.a. a fanny pack. Really? A fancy fanny pack, or as we used to call them in Spanish, "una huevera." (Find one of your friends fluent in Spanish to translate that for you if need be).
- $297 sweater. Seriously?
- $95 wool beret. I shit you not. Now you can look like some pretentious French mime.
- Apparently, some people feel a need to buy gifts for their coworkers. I can't imagine why, but hey, you do you. If you are one of those people, and you need an idea or two, Inc. has you covered with their 20 best office Christmas gifts for coworkers. "Surprise" and "delight" are not concepts that come to mind from this list for me. Also some of these seem way too fancy for coworkers.
Bookish, Stationery, and Related
- For folks who like stationery and writing things, Well Appointed Desk has their holiday gift guide.
- The Millions has some gift ideas for readers and writers.
- Book Riot has some gift ideas:
- Here is their holiday gift guide for 2018.
- And here are their 10 bookish stocking stuffers.
- You are looking into one of those box subscription services, here is their list of the 30 best book subscription services. Personally I am not sure how I feel about those box subscription services; they remind me a bit too much of things like Book of the Month Club, and not in a good way. Having said that, our daughter gets one for "geeky" items (I think she has it so she gets mainly Harry Potter things), and she seems to like it. So, if they are your thing, go for it.
- On the other hand, here is a suggestion not to buy books for people. I can certainly see this point. If you do not know someone well enough, don't try guessing what books to get them. For me, just get me a good gift card for Half Price Books, or maybe Amazon (which while I am not a fan, I do use once in a while to get new Tarot and oracle decks. It is a bit of a necessity when you live in Bumfuck, USA), and I will pick out a good book for myself.
- American Libraries has a gift guide for librarians and other book lovers.
- Live to Read. Read to Live also has a small and nice bookish gift guide.
Specific niches and categories
These are some specific lists for some very specific folks.
- For pop culture fans, Washington Blade has a gift guide.
- For women:
- Harper's Bazaar has a list of 13 best subscription boxes for her.
- Ms. Magazine has their feminist holiday gift guide. While I do not think feminist items are just for women, this list is pretty much mainly geared to women.
- And guys, if value your life, you may want to NOT give these bad gifts to your lady. Via New Statesman. Now, your mileage may vary on this. For example, their number four item is any unicorn-related. That may not work for the woman in your life, but I can tell you it would definitely work for the Better Half. She can never have enough unicorns and unicorn related items in her life. For example, for 2017 Christmas, I got her The Oracle of the Unicorns, and she was happy. Again, small secret to a good marriage is knowing what your mate likes. She likes unicorns? Well, unicorn calendar, unicorn oracle cards, unicorn figurines, etc. Not all at once. You space that stuff out.
- For men via GQ:
- The best stuff of 2018. I always find lists for guys like this amusing because I honestly wonder what gene am I missing as a guy that I just do not care for most items on manly lists like this one. I do not need $160 sneakers, a $445 mood lighting lamp, nor a $700 shag blanket. But if you have a manly guy in your life, hey, this may work for you.
- List of ten classic colognes. "Classic" here can be relative. Some of the colognes on GQ's lists are a bit too fancy for me. Once a cologne hits $100 or more, that is out of my range. Personally I am a bit more of old school drugstore cologne kind of guy such as these listed at Maxim or these listed at Art of Manliness. Part of the reason I have fond memories of drug store colognes is that my grandmother often got one or another of those for me as holidays gift when I was a teenager.
- For LGBT folks. Via Washington Blade, a holiday gift list from LGBT manufacturers.
- A Buddhist gift guide via Tricyle.
- Gifts for the 80s kid in your life, via BuzzFeed.
- Via Quartz, some gift ideas for the traveler.
- Above the Law has you covered with gift ideas for lawyers.
- Gift ideas that are ethical and eco-friendly via Good.Is.
- For that someone who is just obsessed over the British Royals, via Harper's Bazaar.
- For your pothead friends, or you know, cannabis user, via Rolling Stone.
- For classic movie posters fans, via Dangerous Minds.
Alcohol and Spirits
- Drinkhacker's 2018 Holiday Gift Guide.
- Flaviar offers their best five.
Calendars
I am always looking for some quirky or curious calendar to put in my office and in my workstation at home. If you like calendars, here are some ideas of possible gifts.
- Boing Boing looks at some strange and quirky calendars such as Animal Butts, Pooping Pooches, and bearded men in fishtails.
- The Japanese are all rushing to get the very popular Putin calendar. Story via Japan Today.
- Book Riot has a list of literary calendars.
Tarot, Divination, and Other Magical Things
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| The Fool-0, from the Legacy of the Divine Tarot Deck by Ciro Marchetti |
Some of my close friends know that I recently began to study Tarot and oracle cards. I also have a few pagan friends in my life, so this may be of interest for them too. Thus this year I decided to include some of that in my holiday posts. If you want to give a deck as a gift or some other divination and magic-related gift, here are some ideas.
- The Tarot Lady has "The Hit List: the 2018 Tarot, Astrology, and Mystical Holiday Shopping Guide." As she writes, this is for when you "find yourself scrolling through the online shops and wondering: what the heck do I get for that tarot-loving, crystal-adoring, mystical, witchy, astrology fanatic?" There is a bit of everything here including some deck suggestions, book ideas, and even jewelry.
- Brigit Esselmont of Biddy Tarot has a Tarot gift guide too.
- Lisa Frideborg of Angelorum offers her Top Six Tarot Decks of 2018.
Some adult and sexy gift ideas
This is the NSFW part of the post. If this is not your cup of tea, feel free to move along. If you happen to enjoy sex, toys, and erotica, check these out.
- Are you shopping for sex toys? Dr.Dick's Sex Advice has some do's and don't's on buying a sex toy for the holidays.
- Kinkly has a sex positive gift guide.
- The Redhead Bedhead offers her favorite things for 2018.
- Reading some erotica together could be nice, or you can just get it as a gift to yourself. Cleis Press has all kinds of erotica books, as well as books on sexuality and other related topics, that may be of interest. I've read and reviewed a few of their books, and they've never steered me wrong. To see those reviews, you can check out my Cleis Press tag on this blog's side column.
Miscellaneous
Finally I have one or two things that fall a bit under the "WTF" category
- Need wrapping paper for those gifts? Don't want to use the same old wrapping paper? Well, Jimmy Dean offers sausage-scented wrapping paper. Via Boing Boing.
- Remember that singing bass fish from a few years back? Well, it has gotten "better." You can now get Billy Bass compatible with Amazon's Alexa. Holy shit! Via Fast Company.
- Via Twenty Words, from the "I do not even want to know" department, some company makes chocolate molds of human anuses. That's right. Get a mold made of your asshole to send to that special someone. The company name? Why, it's Edible Anus, of course.
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