Knowledge is power » holidays

Returning Christmas gifts

Alpha — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:00:07 +0000

I think that returning Christmas gifts is as much a tradition as buying them in the first place. Holiday gifts are no longer just a gesture of good will. People have very specific (and often very expensive) demands for what they expect to receive in their stocking on December 25th.

Many people go out of their way to find the perfect gift. In my experience, it is next to impossible to find the perfect gift for anyone. Even asking people doesn’t work. Most people don’t really know what they want. Everyone changes their mind every five minutes; we have television to thank for our generation’s short attention span.

I am getting really tired of buying Christmas gifts for people. Here is the case that broke the camel’s back for me. A friend of mine travels several times every year for business and personal reasons. So, what better gift for her than some nice Rimowa luggage? Well, she seemed to like it at first. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. She returned the luggage earlier today; apparently, she is already fully equipped for traveling so she had no use for it. What she will do with the money, I did not ask. At any rate, next year, I am giving everyone Amazon gift certificates so they can buy whatever the heck they want. I’m done with holiday gift buying.

A rifle scope for Christmas

Alpha — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 02:49:20 +0000

Is there any better way to celebrate the holidays other than a gift that helps one take a life with so much more ease? You bet there is; it is just about any other way. But try telling that to a friend of mine who is a serious gun nut. Back in November, we casually talked about what kind of gift would be ideal for us this year. I said that I would love a good book to read. He said he wanted some state-of-the-art rifle scope for his hunting expeditions.

He went on to talk for more than an hour about Nightforce rifle scopes. Apparently, his ability to take the lives of animals would be so much more improved with on of these on his rifle. He is crazy as far as I am concerned but just in case I went to check out the cost for one of these. A good rifle scope will set you back more than $1000! In this tough economic times? Dream on! I just bought him a book on hunting. I don’t think he liked it.

Take it easy on your holiday lighting decorations

Alpha — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:10:02 +0000

The holidays are practically here and since Black Friday everyone has entered the race for buying gifts for those they know. Sad that the holidays are nothing more than an excuse to spend money but that is a story for another post. What I want to talk about briefly is the holiday home decorations and how wasteful they are.

If you take a drive around any suburban neighborhood in the US these days, you see all these houses decorated with outdoor lighting specifically for the holidays. The lights remain on all night and are essentially seen by almost none, especially in the late hours of the night and early hours of the morning. What is the point of these decorations? What do people hope to achieve wasting electricity in such a retarded way? These holiday home decorations do nothing but waste our planet’s resources over a tradition that is based on some fairytale. I beg you, home owners. Think of our planet before you decorate the outside of your house with a massive number of lights.