Discussion Topic

Okay, I want the most offensive terms you people can come up with for the male and female genitalia. Be creative, I would like to hear things I haven't heard before.

A number of friends of mine have received gift cards for christmas. I don't like gift cards for a number of reasons. The first is that most of them force one to shop at a given place. The really insulting cards are the loathsome Starbucks or (bleah) Wal-Mart cards. What's worse is that the money's already been spent, so you can't vote with your dollar, you can't even choose not to vote. This brings me to my other gripe about gift cards, which is that they are (to steal a phrase from Neal Stephenson) the corpse of value. The money, the economic value of cash, is in the hands of the card issuer, rather than the recipient (or the giver) of the card. That money is gaining interest or doing other interesting tricks in the hands of the card issuer until you use it. Far better would be to set up a community-deposit savings account that would then accrue interest until such time as the recipient felt they should use it. Or, at the very least, check out the wish list on Amazon and go buy the item for them. Then there is no ethical issue about where it was purchased, just the joy of knowing someone cared enough to buy something the recipient wanted. Which brings me to the last problem: gift cards are like a nice way of saying "I like you, but I don't know you that well, but I feel like just giving you a small amount of cash would be insulting." Or worse, "I feel obligated to buy you something but I am unwilling to spend any time or energy thinking about what to get you, and I don't trust you with cash."

So fuck the gift cards. If you can't think of what to get someone, just give them a call.