Year End Clearance Sale!!!

This year I found way too many amazingly stupid products, many more than I could find space for in my Holiday Gift Guide. THIS WEK THEY’RE ALL ON SALE!!! We’re talking deep, deep discounts, 20%- 35% 67% even 82% off on some items, not that they’re worth having at any price, but this week, you can buy them for less.

Whether or not you want to buy them, marvel at these wonders of our material culture, and think about what they say about the society that spawned them. While you survey this collection, remember that in 2014, roughly 150,000 species of plant and animal, went extinct in order to make space for warehouses full of these marvelous products.

Christmas may be over, but it’s still wintertime.  Here’s some great prices on cold weather accessories:

Smoking Mittens Just because you have to stand outside to smoke, that doesn’t mean you have to get frostbite.  Save money and save your fingers while you commit slow suicide in exile.

Handerpants  Get a few pairs of these.  You may wear your smoking mittens all winter, but you’ll want to change your Handerpants every day.

Bread Gloves  Because… fuck, I don’t know, but we have some AMAZING knitted crap to keep you warm this Winter and EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!!

Brain Hat  At least it will make you look smart.

Beard Hat  Wear this hat and you’ll look like me, which will help me avoid arrest.  I don’t see an upside to that for you.

Penis Underwear  which combines with:

Boob Pillow to complete the costume.  Once you look like me, you’ll want to get really drunk, so tuck your boob pillow into this:

Wine Flask Bra  You’ll need a really stupid looking sweater to cover it all up.  Try these:

or this:

Crappy Christmas Sweaters  Now that’s what I call fashion.  Here’s an idea for couples who both want to look like me:

Peanut Butter and Jelly Couples Beard  It keeps your neck warm, and keeps you from getting separated in a large crowd, but maybe looking like me isn’t the look you’re looking for.

Knitted Snuggie  This will keep you warm, and no one will know who is inside.  or perhaps…

Tail-light Pants  Not only do they light-up after dark, they go “beep…beep…beep” whenever you step backwards.

…but maybe you’ve seen enough clothing.  Smart phone remain popular with stupid people, here are some stupid phones for SMART SHOPPERS!!!!

Denture Phone  With this phone, you can chew your own ear off, while you do the same to your friends

French Fry Phone  Maybe this is for your Denture Phone to eat while you talk.

Burger Phone  Because you’re too busy to take time off for lunch.  With this, you can eat your phone while you close the deal.

Cassette Phone  This phone automatically adds hiss, attenuates high frequencies, and after 45 minutes of call time, you have to wait five minutes for it to rewind.  Speaking of rewinding…

DVD Rewinder  With this, you’ll never have to pay a rewind fee again!  …and we’ve got low low prices on other high high-tech items as well.  like these…

Face Massager  Wear this when you go down on her, and she’ll think she’s getting cunnilingus from C3po.  It don’t get any more high-tech than that, except maybe this…

i-Toungue  French kiss/oral sex app for i-phone.

Chicken Foot USB Drive  Why didn’t the chicken cross the road?  Because its foot was stuck in your computer.

Bongzilla Hi-Tech Beer Bong  How many time have you thought to yourself: “I sure do love drinking beer from a funnel. I wish I could funnel this beer RIGHT NOW, but that other guy is using the funnel, and it’ll be another 6 seconds before he’s finished. I wish there was a way we could pour all of our beer into the funnel, and all six of us could drink from it at the same time?” Not many, I’ll bet.

Future Bassoon  This great new high-tech musical instrument plays like a bassoon, but it has a fretboard instead of keys, which means that nobody knows how to play it.  Sure looks cool though.  Speaking of looking good…  SAVE BIG on these health and beauty products:

Nose Straightener  Whatever is wrong with your appearance, you can be sure that no one will notice as long as you wear this.

Runny Nose Soap Dispenser  Makes cleaning up as fun as rubbing snot all over your body.

Go Golfing or Go Girl Personal Pee Products  If you live around here, you know why you need this.  No public restrooms in town means I’ll empty my golf club on your fucking lawn.  …and we’ve got GREAT DEALS on sports equipment too!!!

Potty Putter  Drop a load off of your handicap, while you drop a load.

Baseball-Mitt Chair  You’ll always be “Safe”  when you let this chair field your balls.  …and we’ve got unbelievable kitchen gadgets at UNBELIEVABLE PRICES!!!

Muffin Top Muffin Makers

Runny Nose Egg Separator

Karate-Chop Plastic Knife Finally, a knife you can give to that special someone, that you know won’t be used to stab you to death in your sleep.  Speaking of people who want to kill you… your kids need stuff too.  Like these great toys, at GREAT PRICES:

Dora the Expora Self-Lubricating Dildo  Kids can explore their own budding sexuality with this educational toy.

Eye Little Pony  That’s exactly the expression your kid will make while trying out the Dora the Explora Dildo.

Teddy Has a Woody  Kids love teddy bears.  Here’s some more:

Bad Taste Bears  What do you want, bears with bad taste, or bears that taste bad?

Plush STDs  It’s never too early to teach your kids about STDs, These toys will make them seem cuddly and fun.

Hello Kitty Machine Gun  This is no toy!  Get your kid a REAL Hello Kitty Kalashnikov.   Maybe you don’t trust your kids with real firearms.  Instead, try this:

Batman Squirt-Gun  I’ll bet your kids can figure out how to make Batman squirt.

Wolverine Inflatable  Your kids will love blowing-up this inflatable bath toy.

Sponge-Bob Needs a Fix Plush Toy  Who doesn’t these days?  If you’re smart, long ago you decided that you’d rather spoil a pet than raise a child.  We’ve got GREAT PRICES on EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO SPOIL YOUR PET!!!:

Doggie Umbrella  Umbrella for human not included.

Cat Shaped Litter Box Scoop  Like your cat gives a fuck.  Finally, how about gifts for the writer in your life?

Butt Pen Holder  The chain is completely unnecessary.  Believe me, no one is ever going to steal that pen.

Cat Pencil Sharpener  Is this for cat lovers, or cat haters?  I don’t know, but if you are really looking for a gift for me…

Badger Theremin  This is an electronic musical instrument built into a taxidermied Badger.  I WANT ONE!!!

…and with that, we’ll stick a fork in in, and call it done for 2014.

See you next year.

Rat Poison for Christmas

That’s right, you’re all getting rat poison for Christmas. Amy and I are just finishing up our latest episode of Wildlife Matters. Wildlife Matters #4 will focus on the very real threat that rat poison poses to the wildlife around us. Wildlife Matters #4 will debut on KMUD Redwood Community Radio, on Christmas Day, Thursday December 25 at 5pm. We’ll hear from Maggie Rufo of the Hungry Owl Project, and from Mourad Gabriel at the Integral Ecology Research Center. Rat poison is a real bummer folks.

Second generation anticoagulant rodenticides have been describes as “the new DDT,” comparing the effect they have on wildlife to the devastation at the height of the chemical age that inspired Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Today, most wild animals tested, test positive for these deadly poisons, and the effects range from death, and failure to reproduce, to mange, lethargy and a vulnerability to disease and predation.

Please tune in to find out how you can help save wild animals from a slow painful death, and prevent rats and mice from getting into your home, tune in to Wildlife Matters on Christmas Day at 5pm on KMUD.  Heres a link to the audio promo.  Here’s a link to the show’s monthly podcast.

Unexpected Gifts

The week of Christmas seems like the ideal time to acknowledge a couple of gifts I have received this year which seem somehow related to my work here at lygsbtd. I don’t know whether these gifts came in appreciation of my writing, or just to show me how it’s done.

The first of these gifts mysteriously appeared in my mailbox at KMUD. It was a little book titled Yet Another Beautiful Day in Paradise by Fred Inthehills. I’ve heard Fred’s voice on KMUD, but I’ve not yet met him. I’m not at all sure I would recognize him if I saw him in town. I assume he put the book in my box, but I don’t know for sure.

The book I received had a much nicer cover than this.

What I liked best about Fred’s book was Fred. I like the way he thinks. I enjoyed his story and I encourage you to read it. It’s short. It won’t take you long. Yet Another Beautiful Day in Paradise has all of the elements of a classic Humboldt “back to the land” fairy tale. Every good Humboldt “back to the land” fairy tale has to have these elements:

The Cheap Land Story Every good “back to the land” fable has to have a story about how the person got their land, and how easily it came into their possession. For example, they came up here to attend a party, got shitfaced drunk, and woke up to find half of their money gone, and the deed to a 40 acre parcel in their hand.

The Marijuana Story Every “back to the land” fable recounts the protagonists long relationship with that misunderstood friend, Mary Jane. Every “back to the land” fable portrays marijuana as a positive influence, and as a helpful ally. Marijuana is a beautiful thing. What makes these old “back to the land” fables great is that when the describe all of the great things that marijuana does for them, money has nothing to do with it.

Instead, they talk about how marijuana saved them from alcohol, or fighting, or hard drugs, and that they were able to substitute marijuana for any of these things, and no matter how hard they tried to abuse marijuana, they could not hurt themselves. That’s some special magic there, and that’s a true story if ever I heard one. Marijuana saves lives, especially when you’ve got plenty of it, and finally, we get to the last element that every “back to the land” fairy tale must include…

The Sex Story. Eventually, all “back to the land” stories include a tale of a memorable night of amazing sex, that invariably leads to real offspring. If you live around here, and you read a lot of these stories, there’s a good chance that you know more than you need to know about the origins of some of your friends.

These “back to the land” fables all end there, with the happy, poor, family living in a tiny, hand-built, unpermitted, cabin in the woods, with more marijuana than they could possibly smoke.

I call these stories “fables,” not because they never happened, but because they never happen anymore. If it isn’t true now, then it was never true. Today, it is nearly impossible to find a place to live in Humboldt County, and the prices are ridiculous. The hills are full of dope yuppies, and nobody around here talks about marijuana except as a product, and as a business.

In contrast, the other gift I received this year revealed a more enduring truth about this community. According to the barista at the cafe I frequent, “This weird guy” asked her to give this pamphlet to my partner Amy, who in turn, gave it to me. This pamphlet turned out to be an issue of the Gulch Mulch, an underground zine out of the Whale Gulch area. The issue I received, dated Spring of 2002 includes a lot of historic artifacts that seem timeless for this area. The Anti-Hippie Petition of 1969 could have easily been written last week, in regard to “the homeless.” The names and the faces have changed, but the bigotry and intolerance remain.

The Gulch Mulch dutifully reported the endless petty bickering and behind the scenes drama that engulf every local institution in a murky shroud as thick and impenetrable as the fog in Redway. That sure hasn’t changed, but I wish we had a little gossip zine like the Gulch Mulch today so that we could get all the dirt, without actually getting dirty.

The Gulch Mulch included some funny bits and some autobiographical pieces as well.

I really enjoyed The Gulch Mulch and Yet Another Beautiful Day In Paradise. So, to whoever among you sent them my way, Thank you very much.

A Report from the Global Climate Summit in Lima, Peru

I just heard David Simpson and Jane Lapiner…

calling from Peru to report on the global climate summit taking place there.  This is not the first global climate summit David and Jane have reported from. I recall that they walked-out of the last global climate summit they attended.

After flying 10,000 miles or so to Copenhagen, they “walked-out” in protest of the fact that governments around the world were not serious about addressing Global Climate Change, and that the delegates were just spinning their wheels while they enjoyed deluxe accommodations, succulent cuisine, and free-flowing refreshments. It became obvious to them, as well as to the majority of climate activists in attendance, that the governments of the world were not serious about stopping global climate change.

No shit, Sherlock. I could have told you that, and I didn’t have to fly half-way around the world to know it. Most people do not understand what government is, or how it operates, and they expect all kinds of crazy things from government, that government can never, and will never, do. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, people still go to their government to demand change.

Too many people think about governments in the same way that people think about God. They anthropomorphize government. They imagine that government has the presidents face and voice, and that congress is its heart, the CIA and FBI are its brain, and the Supreme Court, its conscience. They think about government as a functioning, conscious, and sentient being with a capacity for intelligence, compassion and intent.

You see how ridiculous this sounds when you put it in so many words. Here’s the problem: As humans, evolution has equipped us very well to think about people, as people, and to understand and empathize with them. We are also well equipped to think about, and talk about, things as objects, and to manipulate them very effectively. A government is neither a person, nor an object, and that makes it difficult for us to think about government, and to think about government effectively, we need a lot more information about it than we are likely stumble across in the course of our daily lives.

That means that if we want to understand government, it’s going to take work. Most of us already work too much, so most of us just tend to think of government as Big Brother, one single individual, immensely powerful, unbelievably stupid, and dangerously volatile, but as one person, nonetheless, and as a person who has the capacity to act intentionally, or at least in response to stimuli.

In reality, we should think of government as an enormous wriggling pile of maggots, feasting on putrefied waste. The maggots have a voracious appetite, and their waste putrefies everything it contaminates, which only makes more putrid goo for government to feast on. Government is made of thousands of people, all driven by their own personal interests, and everything they want must be sucked out of the waste and debris of exploited resources. Hence the maggot metaphor.

Government is a disease. The symptoms include war, environmental devastation, inequality, poverty, crime, etc. None of these are possible without government, and all of them flow directly from government. Whenever the people stand up to corporate exploitation, it’s always the government that shows up, in the form of cops, SWAT teams, or the National Guard, to make sure the road goes through, or the pipeline gets built, or that the Board of Directors can meet.

Global Warming is the fever from the disease called government, so don’t expect government to solve it. Government enables it, causes it, necessitates it. Government makes it all possible. So, when governments get together to try to address global climate change, it;s just another mass of feasting maggots. It’s disgusting. I can understand why they walked out, but once you walk out, you don’t go crawling back.

But David and Jane went crawling back, to follow the maggots to Lima, Peru, clocking another bundle of miles on their frequent-flyer cards, no doubt. David and Jane called KMUDs Monday Morning Magazine to let us know that the pile of maggots has not done anything substantial except wriggle hungrily and shit prolifically. Big surprise there.

They told us we shouldn’t count on governments to do anything, and that we should work here at home to fight global warming, and and that we should stop driving our F250 trucks so much.

We know. I’ll bet Lima’s lovely this time of year, I hope you saw the sights, but you know better now, right? I mean that little civics lesson has a big carbon footprint, so I hope you’ve really got it straight now.

Just in case, you’re still not sure. If you decide to attend the next global climate summit, in Paris, please spare us the call.

The LYGSBTD Holiday Gift Guide pt 2

As you could probably tell from last week’s post, I’m just so full of Christmas Spirit this year, that I’m about to hurl eggnog and candy canes into the next manger I see. Yes, it’s the holiday gift giving season, and Christmas is right around the corner. That’s right, you worked right through the Spring, Summer and Fall of 2014. Now it’s Winter again. The weather sucks. You hate your job. You hardly recognize your own family, and you’ve accomplished none of the things you hoped to do this year. Merry Christmas! You have no money, but your credit is still good, so you’re going Christmas shopping!

You can’t buy your life back, but you can buy people off, and an extra special Christmas gift will easily make up for all of those months of neglect. But what do you get for the people who mean enough to you to spend money on them at Christmas, but not enough to really care about them the rest of the year? How can you know their likes and dislikes, their interests and proclivities, their long-term dreams, or any of the other things that make them a unique individual, without actually paying attention to them the rest of the year? If you don’t know anything about them, how can you pick out a gift that will mean something to them? The challenge can be overwhelming.

I understand, and I’m here to help. Your loved ones don’t understand how much stress you are under. Being around them is work, and they expect so much from you, but you love them, at least you did before you went completely numb. You don’t want to let them down at Christmas time. You’re willing to spend the money. I won’t let you blow it.

When buying a gift for someone who means a lot to you, but that you don’t really know very well, keep this in mind. Get them something that will impress their friends. Even if the person you give it to, doesn’t like it, their friends will see this gift, and remind that person of just how lucky they are to receive such a nice gift, and that whoever gave it to them must really love them. Even if they know better themselves, hearing that sentiment expressed again and again, from their friends, will keep their feelings towards you in a state of perpetual conflicted ambivalence. Call it “love.”

Here’s a few suggestions:

Jet Pack. This will instantly make anyone popular and change their life, if they survive. With this, you can pack a whole lifetime’s worth of “love” into a single, explosively powerful, spectacularly impressive gift. Gift’s like this obliterate the individuality of the recipient, while they celebrate the generosity of the giver, so choose the gift based on your own personality, rather than that of the recipient. Here’s another idea:

Quad/Jetski I’ll bet that a lot of people around here will find one of these under their Christmas Tree this year, but maybe making noise and going fast doesn’t float your boat. Try this:

Barbecue Boat Everyone eats. Why not do it in the middle of a lake? Big ticket gifts like this really steal the show at family get-togethers, making other people’s gifts seem puny and insignificant by comparison. That’s how you solve your little gift-giving problem. If you can afford it, crush it!

This kind of generosity drives our economy and makes our world the miracle of modern technology that it has become. It isn’t what we wanted, but everyone keeps telling us how lucky we are to have it. Thanks… I guess.

Speaking of technology. Here’s a gift for that special woman in your life, the one you haven’t had time for lately, but hasn’t filed for divorce yet. It’s a very personal gift, made uniquely impersonal:

OhMiBod vibrator app for smart phones. OhMiBod consists of two parts, the hardware: a small, blue-tooth enabled, battery powered vibrator, designed to fit in a woman’s underwear, and the software: an app that you download to your smart-phone. The app allows you to control the vibrator from up to 26 ft away, perhaps even from another room, by blue-tooth, or from anywhere in the world, with a wifi connection.

Imagine. You could be watching the game with your buddies.

They’d just think you were sending a text to your bookie or something. Fiddle with your phone for ten or fifteen minutes while you drink beer and joke with your friends. Then call her up and say “I love you babe” and hang up. She’s satisfied, and you didn’t have to miss a single play.

What about gifts for men? Well what do men like? Men like boobs. Men don’t care what it is, as long as it has boobs, so give men something that has boobs.

Boob Radio. Yes, this radio has boobs, but when it comes down to it, all knobs and buttons are surrogate nipples and boobs, so most guys like almost any gadget. The more knobs and buttons it has, the better.

That just leaves pets. Pets don’t really care about gifts, unless they can eat them, and then they are always welcome. Still, some people insist on buying inedible gifts for their pets, so why not take their money.

Who cares if the pet enjoys the gift. That’s not the point. Usually, the pets do not like the gifts at all. In fact, animals generally have to be sedated before they will tolerate most of these products long enough to snap a promotional photo.

Here’s a selection:

Beaks for Dogs. Is this the “Crocks” of dog muzzles? These dogs hate this. They have better taste than that.

Knitted Hats for Dogs Do you think those dogs like those hats? No! Those dogs are wasted! If you want to make your dog happy, give them drugs, and then don’t dress them up in silly costumes. But what about cats?

DJ ScratchCat Turntable Scratching Post. Your cat would rather have a cardboard box to tear-up, but whatever. You’ve got $35 bucks to blow.

There you have it folks:

Gift ideas for everyone on your Christmas gift list. Wake me when it’s over.

The LYGSBTD 2014 Holiday Gift Guide

That time of year has arrived again. It’s the time when Americans go to the stores to buy a bunch of useless crap for people they don’t care about. It’s our way of saying “Sorry I haven’t looked up from my screen once in the past year, please accept this tangible object as evidence supporting the allegation that I still care.”

It’s a touching sentiment, but poorly placed. Sure, you can’t help the fact that you have real people around you. There’s 7-fucking-billion people on this planet. There’s bound to be at least one or two in your immediate vicinity. You probably have to share a bed with one, because things are so tight these days, but does that mean you have to care about them? Hell no! At least not now that we have the internet.

Today, the people we care about appear on a glowing screen in front of our face, and because of the internet, we can all care about the same two-dozen or so people, the Kardashians for example, and nobody has to give a rats ass about the other 6,999,999,952 of us. That clearly constitutes a step forward in speed and efficiency, and we should maximize these gains by avoiding even the pretense of an emotional connection with anything squishy.

Instead, this is a great time of year to direct those warm feelings of gratitude, kindness and generosity that characterize our innate human nature, towards those deserving individuals behind the screens. Please Support the people who make you laugh, the people who make you think, the people who bring you an interesting perspective, and the people who dig up funny pictures for you every week, all year, year after year, and by “the people,” I, of course, mean “me”. This is a great time to support this blog. Please support lygsbtd, the irreverent, independent, outspoken voice of “the people” in Humboldt County.

Still, you may want to give a gift to someone other than me this holiday season, if for no other reason, than because you know that they are going to give you a gift, and you don’t want to be caught empty handed. So, you go shopping, but what should you get for people you hardly know and have barely spoken to? Never fear, lygsbtd is here, to guide you through the madness.

It helps to know the age of the person you are shopping for, especially if that person is a child. Children can be the hardest to shop for, because fad toys change every year, and unless you are a kid, you really don’t give a fuck. It’s never a good idea to talk to children, and the worst question you could ever ask a child is “What do you want for Christmas?” Don’t do it. Take my advice and stick with a classic, tried and true, age appropriate toy for young children.

For newborn infants, forget it. I can’t think of one good reason to give a gift of any kind to a newborn infant. The Three Wise Men of the Bible were the Three Stooges as far as I’m concerned. Think about it. Do we ever hear about those Three Wise Men again, at all, in the rest of the Bible? Fuck no! Jesus didn’t hang with those guys. They were, like, friends of his parents or something. He didn’t remember that gift. He was just a baby.

That’s my point. Baby’s don’t know anything. They aren’t expecting a gift, they didn’t get you one, and no matter what you get them, if it isn’t Mommy’s boob, they’re not interested. So, don’t bother giving a gift of any kind to an infant. If you absolutely must give a gift to an infant, the perfect gift for an infant is: a bottle of Scotch.

Bottle of Scotch  If you give a baby a bottle of Scotch, whoever is taking care of the baby will, of course, immediately take the bottle away from the baby. After that, one of two things will happen. Most likely, the person taking care of the baby will eventually find themselves so ragged and bedraggled from the responsibility that they will take to drink. If so, that bottle of Scotch will taste like nectar to them, and they will appreciate you for understanding.

On the other hand. It is possible, though unlikely, that the person taking care of the baby will save the Scotch, in a secure location. Years later, when the baby has grown up and reached the appropriate age of, say 18 or 21, This dutiful guardian might then present this thoughtful gift, now aged an additional 18-21 years, to the young man or woman to whom it was originally gifted, along with the story of how you gave a bottle of Scotch to a baby for Christmas. If so, that young man or woman will think that you are the coolest old fart on the planet.

See, you can’t go wrong when you give a bottle of Scotch to a baby. But maybe you’re not right in the head, and if you have an infant, that’s a pretty good bet. If you like it wrong, it don’t get much wronger than this:

Thongies Because diaper lines look so unflattering under a onesie.

These days, we try to be “gender-neutral” with kids toys. We don’t have toys for boys and toys for girls, we have toys, and we let the kids decide which ones they want to play with. Dolls always work with kids. All kids play with dolls of some kind at some time in their childhood. Here are a few of my favorites, starting with some baby dolls:

Shave the Baby Here’s a real hairy baby doll, that comes with a real razor. Every little kid should learn how to properly shave a baby before they have to do it for real.

Baby’s First Baby You may laugh, but these plastic toys contain all kinds of endocrine disrupting, hormone mimicking chemicals that wreck havoc on our reproductive systems. Hairy, pregnant infants may not seem so odd in the future. I suspect that these toys are more popular in industrial cities in China, where they’re made, because hairy, pregnant infants have already become normal. Then again, maybe if you hadn’t shaved the baby, and then tarted her up in those Thongies diapers, the baby wouldn’t BE pregnant, now would she?

The teenage girl doll remains popular, whether they’re plastic miniatures, or life-size inflatables, who doesn’t love a teenage girl doll? Barbie remains the Grande Dame of teenage girl dolls. This new Barbie has a feature I can scarcely imagine:

Barbie Squirts Squirts what? From where? And then there’s this:

C Section Barbie Again with the pregnancy thing. Barbie has to have a C-Section, because Barbie never had a vagina. We don’t mind that her stomach opens like a toilet seat to reveal a tiny plastic fetus, but we’re offended by the idea of a teenage girl doll with a vagina. I suppose it can’t hurt to teach kids about basic human physiology with toys, and maybe it’s a good idea. I guess that’s the idea behind these:

Period Doll  I thought “period doll” refereed to a doll dressed in a costume reminiscent of a particular historical period. I guess getting your period can be an empowering thing, if you are a young woman. Why not make it into a superpower? Every superhero needs a supervillain to battle:

Blood-Bath Betty  Here’s another period related gift idea:

The Maxi-Pad Writing Pad Give this to your teenage daughter for Christmas. She won’t like it, but she’s not going to like anything else you do for the next ten years, so don’t waste your time trying to please her.

Then we have role-playing adventure dolls, or “action figures” as they’re commonly called. A popular TV show can often spin-off some popular action figure dolls. Such is the case with these:

Breaking Bad action figures

Your “little tweakers” will love playing with these toys. The figures are each sold separately, and they each come with tiny bags of “meth” and a recipe for cooking up more, using an Easy-Bake light-bulb oven.

Easy-Bake Meth Lab  Perhaps those characters don’t seem like the kind of role-models you want your kid to emulate. Instead, you might want to encourage your kids to aim a little higher in life. Why not let them take inspiration from the the most influential man of the 20th Century:

Der Fuhrer is a tremendously popular toy that has taken the world by blitzkrieg. You can buy literally millions of accessories for him. This is my favorite:

The Der Fuhrer ipod docking station This toy comes pre-loaded with five of Der Fuhrer’s most stirring speeches, and it has an input for your music player or computer, so you can “rock out” with Adolf, but there’s much more:

Waffen SS

Panzer Tank Brigades

The Luftwaffe

The Brothel at Berchtesgaden, and no fascist putsch would be complete without:

Concentration Camp  Collect the whole Third Reich! But these toys might be too intense for some more sensitive children. Sometimes you want to give a kid something soft and cuddly, especially if they are going through a rough patch, like a death in the family, or maybe a parents divorce. In that case, get the kid a plush toy. Here’s a pair that come together. I guarantee that these two will cheer-up even the most severely traumatized child.

Plush Pee and Poo Plush Pee and Poo teaches kids that it’s OK to play with their excrement, and that it’s soft, and squishy and feels nice, an important lesson for any deeply traumatized child.

There we have a few ideas for gifts for kids, but what about the adults on your shopping list? Why are there adults on you Christmas gift list? Do they still believe in Santa Claus? I mean really. Grow-up for Christ’s sake. If you’re are sick of buying gifts for people, here’s a gift for someone you really hope you won’t have to buy a gift for, next year:

The Gun Comb Give someone the Gun Comb, and if they use it, a cop will probably shoot them dead before next December. Does that sound a little paranoid? Here’s a gift for paranoid people:

The Eyeball Clock  There’s a camera mounted in the center, so you can keep an eye on them. Paranoid people prefer to stay at home, and they should be encouraged to drink soothing herb tea, rather than coffee. Here’s another great gift for just that kind of homebody.

The Charles Manson Teapot That’s some CRAZY good tea! The problem is that lately, fewer of us have homes, which means fewer of us have anyplace to put the crap that people give us for Christmas, but we all need clothes, and here’s an article of clothing that I think has the potential to change the way we live.

Personal Theater Hat This one product could replace the multiplex, the living room and the apartment for million of people in coming years. A smart phone hangs from the elongated bill of the hat, beneath the curtain. In the future, this is all the privacy that many of us will ever know.

Picnic Pants. Another technological innovation in clothing. Behold the dining room of the future. Imagine this future. Billions of people in picnic pants and personal theater hats, shoveling prefabricated snack-food from their stretchy lap tables, into the dark abyss beneath their personal theater hats. Where do all of these people sleep?

Ostrich Desk Pillow. Welcome to the future. Maybe you’re ready for this gift:

Toy Noose. I’ll be back with part two, next week. Don’t forget to put me in your will. Happy Holidays!