I was thinking today about how much I used to hate gift wrapping prior to the advent of the gift bag. When I was in my teens or early 20s, before the gift bag became ubiquitous, Christmas Eve day would usually find me behind closed doors, surrounded by every single gift I'd bought, struggling to wrap my way through the pile at the very last possible moment. And the chances of your getting a rectangular-shaped gift from me were probably pretty high, because if I looked at something and thought, "Man, that'd be a bitch to wrap," chances were I wasn't going to buy it.
Part of my problem with this, as with so very many things, was that my mom (i.e. the down-market Martha Stewart, before the real Martha Stewart ever became who she was) made present wrapping into some kind of origami-based art form, with perfect color coordination, homemade bows, the whole works. Any sad gift wrapping attempt of mine only served to show you can't compete with perfection, eh?
Gift bags made the whole question moot, because any idiot with no hand-eye coordination at all, can smother something in pretty colored tissue paper and plop it in a bag. C'mon now. It's just one more example of how, nostalgia be damned, it's so much better to live in 2007. In 1977, people smoked everywhere, no one picked up their dog's poop off the street, you couldn't defrost frozen chicken in 15 minutes, and wrapping something oval was a nightmare. I'm sure the progress we've made technologically and societally far outweighs blights like SUVs, one mailbox for the whole street, and Tila Tequila. Right? Right?!?
xoxo
9 comments:
Charity gift-wrappers at the mall, woman!!!
Perfect little rectangles tied up with perfect little bows, and a perfect little solution to your charity guilt to boot. They're even happy to take on the oddly shaped stuff, or the stuff you bought somewhere else, or even the stuff you made yourself. (In case you're still trying to compete with Mom for a little nostalgia's sake).
My personal favorites are the Hadassah women. So much irony, and they don't mind you waiting until the last minute on Christmas Eve, 'cuz what is that anyway, Monday night? Mah Jong is still down at the club after noon on Tuesday, just like always.
Le Chaim!
I never ever saw the Hadassah women until this year, at Borders! I was, like, how...ecumenical.
However, I can beat that in the ecumenical department. We have this adorable sweet little old Jewish lady who volunteers in my department on Tuesdays. (She's like everybody's favorite nana, but to the 10th power.) This year her husband (also a sweetheart) volunteered to play Santa at some charity party or other at the Y. We thought the fact that Santa was Jewish was both subversive and-- being as it was Davy--just too cute.
But, to your point, I realized upon thinking about it, that in those weird money things we all have, I haven't and wouldn't pay someone else to do mine, no matter how much aggrevation it would sabe me
"Le Chaim!"
Actually, that would be l'chaim. Or L'Chaim.
In Hebrew "to" is an inseparable preposition that's prefixed to the word that follows it. And the vowel is a barely pronounced schwa sound.
And Wikipedia just informed me that--rather appropriately in this case,--the word "schwa" actually comes from the Hebrew word for nought, being used to refer to both schwa-ish vowels and "epenthatic vowels". The latter missing vowel sound is, I think, what the apostrophe indicates in this case.
You learn something new every day. :)
If you keep quoting wikipedia in my blog, I'm gonna have to hurt you :-) Only I get to do that. Um, quote wiki, that is, not hurt you. Nevermind. Forget I spoke. Is this thing on? :-)
But don't you have your own ::ahem:: very sadly neglected blog to write educational shit in? *My* blog readers only want to hear about my bras and snow shoveling. And possibly zombie movies. I think.
Now then, that sorta-kinda urban legendy 1967-predictions-of-2007 video around YouTube did NOT predict gift bags. Speaking as someone who grows nine extra thumbs when wrapping anything, this shows that *real* progress is unpredictable.
And it's excellent that D made the shopping trip. That has to be one helluva Christmas present, Mom!
That'd actually be an awesome blog topic, which I may or may not get to some day: what no one predicted about the future and what they did and got wrong.
We were talking about this in relation to the new release of Blade Runner: how the giant clunky computer monitors just play havoc with your suspension of disbelief, because no one foresaw the flat screen. Or the laptop.
Also, I maintain no one predicted the cell phone, which has become such a ubiquitous and essential part of life over the past ten years. Except for Get Smart and the shoe phone :-)
I'm not taking any more of this abuse. Four blog entries today, including one on the Blade Runner topic you stole from me (or vice versa, whatever).
Furthermore, I'll link to Wikipedia any damn time I please... even if two days ago I was sitting around the common room listening to grad students talk about how they liked to get drunk and randomly incorrectly edit Wikipedia pages. Which should give me even less trust for Wikipedia than the numerous errors I note already has. In fact, while I was there one guy changed the numeric values of doing a Kelvin conversion, and they cited as a reference an incorrect page he'd found at the National Institute of Standards.
Anyway, since I reserve the right to link all day long, I'll point you towards this entry on Zombies in popular culture and this general entry on Zombies. Read'em before they change! :p
hahaha
Oh, sure, like you were going to write those four blog entries if I didn't heap abuse upon you for never writing. I'll believe that one.
Anyway, I still maintain my blog readers don't want facts. They want poorly substantiated opinion and statistics I pull out of my ass. That's the charm of the marvelous adventures, dude.
Plus! I forgot to mention...don't tell me you'll link to wiki "any damn time you please" because I have a comment delete button at my disposal should you not behave yourself. So there.
Plus, as I used to threaten my kid, there's still time to return your Christmas present, you know. :-PPPP
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