Moved On

Wordpress does not, contrary to popular belief, have a smoother user interface than blogger. It also has just as many bugs and more spam. But, Alas, I already migrated.
www.smartypantalons.com

Last Minute Gift Ideas for Young People

For Parents: to be or newbies

Exploiting my Baby: A Memoir of Pregnancy and Childbirth, by Teresa Strasser. Self-deprecating and poignant, this is the tale of under-mothered child to terrified adult on the brink of parenthood. Smart women (and men) will love the humor and heart.

Made to Play!: Handmade Toys and Crafts for Growing Imaginations, by Joel Henriques of Made by Joel. Handmade projects and toys crafted from natural and re-purposed stuffs. Great ideas and adorable photos.

For the Children

A Pirate Spyglass in a wooden box

Orb Factory Magnetic Color Cubes

Mosaic Puzzle from the Land of Nod

A cheaper set can be found here.

Wall Mosaics are all the rage

I like the Muppets

A younger child might enjoy castles

A Ball that changes shape and color when you toss it.

Knock Knock Goodnight NotePads

A Subscription to Abe’s Peanut—the new-mystery-each-month series

Kids love mail, and love to read. This project engages various artists to draw and write stories on postcards that get sent out regularly. Here is an explanation of their project.

For the Tweeners and Teeners

Rub-on Tattoos in the shape of Air Quotes

 

A You’re Late Watch

American Girl’s Guide to Money

Great book with ideas to get your girls smart about money.

Subscription to Spotify

Or, how can you go wrong with an itunes gift card?

There are many fun alternatives to keeping a journal these days.

Lithography allows you to journal by lists.

Stormtrooper DJ Tee

Stay Tuned for the Gift Guide for Adults

I moved to smartypantalons.com

I moved. Find me at www.smartypantalons.com


Bye-Bye Blogger. (Although, why did you update the editor the second I migrate? To spite me?)

Good...Good...Good, Good Migration

I'm migrating to WordPress. Long story short, I don't blog much b/c it takes a lot of fighting with blogger to post something relatively simple and I'm tired of the hassle. I haven't successfully transferred the links yet, but all the old posts are there.


www.smartypantalons.com

Gifts for the Y Chromosomes

If your house is within 40 miles of a Khol’s, you’ve likely been bombed by their leaflet propaganda and may believe the fathers in your life need, at an amazing 15% or more savings, a large stack of pastel polo shirts. But my Y is not a summer, as you can see. Much more of an autumn. The boy, however, can wear any palette, which the is the only way in which he is flexible.

If the men around you are big carnivores and not so big on the business casual, they may need a Mangrate (via Adam Carolla for the best deal), to be the crowning glory of all the other cook-out items you’ve gifted over the years. I hear grilling out is big. (My Y is a V, for vegetarian, and we don’t own a grill, so I wouldn’t know about that.)
But, if you need some suggestions for the dad who is less Mike Brady and more Mike Birbiglia, I’ve got you covered.


Atomic Clock

We recently bought one of these atomic clocks and my Y is tickled. It has a sleek modern look and it keeps the correct time—what more do you want in a clock? We just verified the time yesterday to see if it was accurate and it was right-on. Right on! 

 Parting Scoop

Don’t even try to pick out yard tools for your Y, unless he’s already told you exactly what he wants, in which case you don’t need this list. My Y likes kitchen gadgets much better than yard tools, though, and he’s been asking for one of these for a while. Me, I’ll just use a flat spoon. I’m old school like that. But he likes a unitasker and he’s already broken the cookie dough scoop thinking it was for ice cream. This is a much better choice. The kids can get involved by picking out their (and his) favorite flavor of ice cream and making sundaes!


Poketo’s Desk It

I love simple organization solutions. Even in the digital age with gadgets to our ears and in our hands, many of us still find the need to write things down, and these sleek calendar post ups are just the thing. They have one set with the week days (just my speed) and one set with graph squares on them (for the engineer brains). These note pads are the perfect size to use as a wrist pad in front of your key board as well, should you need that kind of thing.

Brass Number Bookmarks
Say bye-bye to those colored sticky flags. These brass clips are elegant and reusable and would make for a nice grad gift too, assuming those grads have jobs for which organizing paper would be necessary.


Key Fobs from the Kiddos
If Y is a nerd or the kids need gifts they can buy with their own funds, these key chains are just the thing. Not only are they nerdtastic and practical, but they serve the purpose of keeping kids entertained during long lines and unexpected waits.
For the younger bunch, lego brick led lights in multiple colors.

Then, for the child of the eighties there is the Rubik’s Cube light and chain—very geek chic. And finally, for the anglophile, the entire collection of Dr. Who themed key fobs. The tardis even opens up to secretly store money or candy or other important stuffs.



The Old Standard
What Y, or X for that matter, does not love duct tape? Even better, this is the brand of tape used by Adam and Jamie and friends on that really cool show about myths (or so the non endorsement goes) and a box set of that show would be another cool gift for Y and family to share. Supposedly, Nashua 357 is the best stuff out there. I haven’t had to lift a car or shoot a cannon yet with my duct tape, but it’s good to know I’d have that option with this stuff.

Or, just go to Marshall’s and after an hour of not finding the exact right thing, buy whatever is in your cart.

Not Even B-Sides

Source

It's uprising sometimes how long I will go without listening to our music. Sure I hear random crap on the radio and piped into stores, but it's not often I choose to listen to our culled collection. With Benjamin in the car or at home it's nearly impossible to listen to anything as he fills all space and time with noise and need, but even when I'm alone I rarely put on music anymore. In the car I tend to listen to talk--podcasts and interviews and books and productions. 

I commute and my brain is a messy place and having a focus makes the hours in the car each week bearable. Much of what I listen to is humorous, and the comedy is an antidote of sorts, to the stupidity I imbibe daily. And then I can't take the talk anymore and I flip it to shuffle and I relearn and re-remember. 


Some of the songs on this 'random' playlist--the hits of the shuffle tonight, in that order--are not my favorites by these artists, nor would they even have made the B-sides. Some of these artists don't see big replay numbers anymore in my stats. And yet they are all good songs from various styles and eras. Don't believe me?

1. Get Older / Matthew Sweet (audio)
2. Bigmouth Strikes Again / The Smiths (audio)
3. Electric Blue / The Cranberries (audio)
4. Tell Me What Else I Can Do Wrong Tonight / Whiskeytown (I could not find a version of this online, so instead I went with recent Ryan and the Cardinals performing Magick! (audio)
5. Traces Of The Western Slopes / Rickie Lee Jones (There is a commercial b4 this one, but it's worth the wait.)
6. Sylvia Plath / Ryan Adams
7. Doing The Twist / Bone People, poetry by Debra Marquart
8. China / Tori Amos
9. Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before / The Smiths (video: 80s hair, glasses, jean jackets and British lads on bikes alert!)
10. Gravel / Ani DiFranco (audio)

Ani DiFranco is so worth seeing live!

Totally F*cked Out: Calm My Ass

 

TFO #1 There are few things that get my heart rate going faster than the army of uglier-than-catshit Keep Calm and Carry On items reproducing like wet gremlins; close your eyes and more will appear.

A quick search of Pinterest+keep+calm makes me want to vomit; a google images search brings more of the same. As I learned from Susan Blackmore, meme's have a life of their own and want to reproduce whether we want them to or not. This is truly unfortunate. Keeping calm is the last thing this platitude helps me do; I feel freaking irate every time I see shit emblazoned with with this trite motto. Maybe the fools who resurrected this old-timey idea thought they had a winner, but just look at the crap-beget-by-crap.

 

 

Now you can buy embroidered items on etsy.

Bumper stickers (for your car!) on cafepress.

Some fool even got a tattoo.

Come on!

Once an idea like this makes its way to the shelves of Wal-marts, which is about the same time people start to get clever with it, the idea is officially f*cked out. And by clever I don't mean clever. I find none of the above variations of this idea funny, interesting or worth my time--yet, I can't avoid them. My eyes bleed from how often I see this crap in my normal internet browsing and on shopping trips around town. When it shows up in the thrift stores, we've reached market saturation. Oy vey, I can't wait.

...............................................................................................................

This is a new feature I hope to do regularly on the blog. The premise of TFO is that certain elements I see in the world--the blogosphere, the comedy world, anywhere there is life--are totally f*cked-out/hackneyed/overused/annoying/lame/etc., and I'm here to tell you about it.