christmas gifts i don't want

1. dark chocolate

i hate dark chocolate.  i have always hated dark chocolate.  never once have i presented myself to the world as someone who likes dark chocolate (and in my experience, those people just love presenting themselves to the world).  yet for some reason, every year someone gets it for me.  my mom is going to be pissed that i am even writing this because someone got me a big hunk of $22 dark chocolate from some expensive catalog purveyor of disgusting, nasty ass dark chocolate this year and it is probably super bitchy of me to be writing about this.  however, this person staunchly refuses to even think about going within 50 feet of the internet so i doubt she will ever read this.

dark chocolate is like cigars or clothing from kohl's or porn and should only be purchased for someone if you are 100% certain that the person likes it.  milk chocolate is a fine gift for anyone, way more people like milk chocolate than dark (this is america, i don't care about you "cacao" lovers from rural peru) and plenty of people who like dark chocolate also like milk chocolate.  but nobody who prefers milk chocolate also likes dark chocolate.

please save your bitching about how great dark chocolate is and how you have lost all respect for me as a food blogger. i don't care, that shit is disgusting and tastes like dirt, and if you haven't lost respect for me by now then you may have a learning disability which you need to get checked out because i have been way more culinarily offensive than this before and you might not be very good at reading.

2. self help books

do not buy me self help books.  it's not that i don't like them.  i own and have read a shit ton of self help books, all of which i have purchased myself.  but nobody wants to receive self help books from other people, especially for christmas or any other holiday for god's sake.  if i have to explain why to you, then you should probably go get some self help books for yourself.  i would start with the social cognitive disorders section.  the one caveat to this is if you:

1. are really really close with the person for whom you are buying the book; AND
2. are certain (not through intuition or feeling but through actual, concrete sentences spoken or actions taken by the potential book recipient) that they are open to your help; AND
3. have actually read the book yourself and feel strongly that this particular book could be helpful to this particular person, and not just "hey you're single, here is that neil patrick warren or whatever book about how to find your soul mate through his expensive and time consuming online personality test."

i had one situation in my life where a friend sent me a book that i got pissed about and threw away but then he called me and asked me if i got it and i said yes and he asked me if i threw it away and i said yes and he made me take it out of the trash can and gave me a long (hour+) explanation about how he had read the book, and it helped him, and he really thought i should give it a shot even though i had total PTSD just looking at the book.  so i did and it was a good suggestion which i appreciated in the end.

but still, this is not a gift to give to celebrate jesus's birth or boss's day or yom kippur or any other holiday.  i can redeem myself with the person mentioned above here because her son apparently sent her like a book about her newly diagnosed heart condition for her birthday and she was like what the hell because come on, who gives people books about their medical conditions for their birthday?  lame.  now my mom is probably going to be even more pissed though because i am writing about this on the internet but i am pretty sure the son does not read this blog either and if he does then at least now he will know that it was a crappy birthday gift.

3. underwear

do not buy other people underwear, unless they are your spouse or your small child and regardless, it's not a holiday gift.  i know some people are going to argue that lingerie could be the exception here but if i have to sit through one more bridal shower where my head is crammed with disturbing mental images of someone i barely know wearing crotchless panties and whipped cream and fuzzy handcuffs and shoving anal beads up their partner's anus while beating them with a pleather riding crop, i'm going to puke.  i mean really, nobody wants this and if they do they can purchase it themselves from the privacy of their own computer.

4. gift cards

just give me cash.  i always lose gift cards or forget to use them and odds are, you are buying it to some hell hole den of mindless consumerism that i don't even want to set foot in anyway, especially now that i am super slow and gimpy and scared of crowded public places.  i barely shop unless i have to and mostly spend my money on food, and generally food that i just decide at the spur of the moment i want to eat, not because i have some dumb piece of plastic that i have to fish out of some drawer somewhere that they are going to tell me is expired and/or does not apply to alcohol or tip.  gift cards are a huge consumer scam.  if you can't stand giving cash, give a generic visa or master card gift card i guess, which is better, but seriously, let's just get over our cash thing, or you know what, give me a kiva gift card and if i don't use it, the money gets donated anyway and you might have a chance of going to heaven after all, killing two birds with one stone.

5. nuts/fruit

why do people give nuts and fruit?  it is not 1840, i do not live in a little house on the prairie, and i can readily get these things at my local supermarket at a low price and without having to pay for the stupid ugly ass basket and green saran wrap that i am just going to throw away and which is going to contribute even further to our already desperate landfill situation.  i do not understand this gift.  i do however enjoy tasty specialty food items, so if you are going to get me some like amazing hand picked macadamia nuts or juicy bursting with sunny goodness turkish apricots, then i will be very happy, but what i am talking about is when you get some fucking unshelled walnuts (who actually owns a nut cracker?) and red (not) delicious apples.  this is a dumb, waste of time gift that says, "i had no idea what to get you and didn't care to find out what you might like, but now you have to either eat shitty food that you don't like or else feel guilty about throwing away perfectly good food while there are starving children in africa, AND you have to thank me for it, sucka!"