The official
Kattomic Energy gift guide will be published in the next few weeks but since
today, Black Friday, is the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season,
here is a preview.
GETTING MUGGED
The truth
is, if you're over 21, you probably have all the mugs you need. You've got the
one emblazoned with your college logo and the one you got from your bank when
you opened a savings account. You have the mug you received as a premium when
you donated money to your local NPR station. And if you work in a large company,
you have a mug with your company's brand
and corporate slogan plastered all over it.
In the
unlikely event you know someone who could use a few more mugs, there are a lot
of cool mugs out there.
For people
who love words, there are scrabble letter mugs. These are nice and simple, graphically pleasing mugs that cost $13 each. You can find them in a lot of catalogues or here. For a dollar less, you can get the officially sanctioned by Scrabble "Scrabble Tile Mug." Find it here.
For the activist/reader, there's the Banned Books Mugs ($12.95). Inscribed with the names of banned books (from To Kill a Mockingbird to Ulysses, they're perfect for serving coffee after a book club meeting. Buy them here at the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild where the motto is, "The unexamined gift is not worth giving."
Unemployed Philosopher's Guild also carries a 12-ounce mug featuring the opening lines of some of the great works of English/American literature. Buy it here.
Zazzle shops feature a variety of Shakespeare-themed mugs from simple black quotes on white mug to more decorate designs. My brother, a criminal lawyer, has a whole set of "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" mugs in his office. You can buy one of your own for $16 each here. To look at Zazzle's full range of Shakespeare quote mugs, start here.
Cafe Press has a large selection of mugs featuring images of writers and famous quotes. check them out here. They also have silly mugs like the one that says, "Are you crying? There's no crying. There's no crying in English class." Which I think is funny but I'm not sure I'd want a mug with that on it.
And that's the thing about mugs with funny sayings or quotes with profanity (even of teh S*it Happens variety). What seems funny as you click on the "go to shopping cart" or hand over actual money to an actual perso in a card store, may not be hilarious on Christmas morning.
So beware of impulse buys based on whimsy. Don't be the one to give your dad the Duct Tape mug ($14.95), which comes twith a duct tape tie. (Yes, although the mug just looks like it's made of duct tape, the tie reallly is made of actual duct tape.)
