Day 129--- To: Gift Card Gifter...

Another day closer to Christmas and I still have not finished my Christmas shopping... In my defense though I was flying back to Arizona for Christmas and didn't feel like paying $940.00 for an extra bag... That is what they are charging these days right?... So like I've mentioned a few times over the couple days I am trying to keep with a holiday Christmassy theme... I think you guys will all admit that although they may not all be as hilarious as normal, at least I am being a lot nicer, trust me this is temporary :)... Today I have decided to go with the group of people who feel that the gift card is a proper replacement for gifts.

Seriously this is the ultimate show of laziness, I am not saying I am surprised, I am simply stating a fact... Now, I have to admit that I would rather get a gift card than an empty card, but I think that's just a given. The point is that the whole concept of gift cards just screams lack of thought and care... I understand giving them away as prizes for an office raffle, because you have to give out stuff that pleases a large crowd. But buying your entire family gift cards to Target really just says "shit, I forgot Christmas is in 2 days, well, I'm here in line at Target, I'll just buy 13 gift cards and finish all my shopping in 2 minutes"... If you are going to go the lazy route you may as well just give out cash, because then at least you are not narrowing my shopping options to Target. I think that these people may be under the false impression that giving away cash is less thoughtful than giving gift cards. I'll explain why this is not true. If you give me cash at least I know that you thought enough to not narrow my options to one store. Even with all of the acting lessons I have had over the course of my life it is still hard for me to act excited about a gift card to a store that I'd never go to. This ends up being the gift that sits in my wallet almost until next Christmas, I remember having a $15 Sam Goody (OVER-priced music store) gift card in my possession for nearly a year. First of all, and not to sound like a dick, but $15 will barely buy you a movie poster at this place, the Cd's are like $22.99, a DVD is like $40.00 clearly when you bought me this gift card you thought that this would be a perfect place for me to buy some of the candy and soda's that they sell at the front of the store. Honestly, I think I saved that gift card until I had a friends birthday to shop for and I just put it toward their gift at that store... That is how resourceful I am... Then I probably spent the $15 in cash that the use of this gift card freed up on myself.

Gifting gift cards is almost as close to the un-originality of giving away candles. I have to admit though, growing up being friends with mostly girls I did buy a candle or two in my day, but to be fair most girls love candles right. It was either candles or oven mitts and dish gloves. Kidding... Another downside about giving gift cards is the fact that you cannot really disguise how cheap you actually are, or how little you want to spend... This is a huge reason I have refrained from giving these away... I am much more able to make something I got for dirt cheap seem like it was pretty expensive than I am able to make a $10 gift card look like a $20 gift card. Remember gift cards don't go on sale, but the rest of the stuff I may be looking at to give away does, either that or the Internet is a great way to trick people into thinking you've spent more than you really have... But don't take my word for it... *cough* Amazon *cough*...

So let this be a lesson to all of you who have made gift cards your lazy gift of choice over the past few years... Put a little more thought into the gift, and just to be safe get a gift receipt, if we don't like it we can always fake it at first and go take the gift back when you are not around. If you really are just the lazy type, then go with cash, sure it may appear less thoughtful, but in the case of cash I can do all of the thinking that you didn't want to do... Have fun shopping!