It's that magical time of year again...

...when winter is just around the corner(strictly in the calender sense, living on a peninsula of a peninsula in a subtropical region means true "winter" never occurs), when people put away their Edward Cullen costumes and begin to decorate for Thanksgiving and Christmas, when people like me start freaking out over presents for the latter occasion.



Since I'm a Christian and I come from a Christian family, I celebrate Christmas and that's it. No (C)Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Winter Solstice or Festivus or Ritual of the Prancing Lamb, just Christmas.

 Festivus for the rest of us!

That's it.  And my family celebrates it pretty religiously. (See what I did there? Religiously? Christmas? Sometimes I crack myself up...*) We have the usual fare; tree, lights, presents, stories of Santa Claus descending out nonexistent chimney and eating the cookies we never leave out out for him, but also have various nativity scenes and we try to celebrate the real reason for the season**, the Birth of Jesus. All of this stuff is well and good and great, but there's one bad thing about Christmas:

Presents.

I am probably the crappiest gift-giver alive. The combined facts that I am a poor college student and that I am only creative when it comes to the Big Five (Fiction, Poetry, Songwriting, Playwriting, and Lying) usually means that I usually spend the better part of my time second-guessing myself when I try to buy gifts for my friends(my family has learned that I need a list of gift options, otherwise they're all gonna get weird presents.) which results in me purchasing the most generic of all gifts: Giftcards. *insert dramatic music*

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with the giftcard. It's just that it can seem to be so friggin' impersonal. 

So last year, I wrote down a list of solutions to this gif-giving conundrum, which i have now enclosed for your viewing pleasure.

Option 1-Just flat out ask recipient what they want.
Pros: Simple, to-the-point, guaranteed good gift. *Works well with guys*
Cons: No surprise involved, can be seen as overly forward.

Option 2- Ask the recipient's family and closest friends what they want.
Pros: Can be very effective.
Cons: Can be very weird if talking to people you don't know.

Option 3- Stalk the person, then create a chart on what they buy and deduce what you should buy for them.
Pros: Can be quite thrilling.
Cons: Creepy, odd, and illegal. And did I mention creepy?

Option 4- Create something as a gift.
Pros: Uber-personal and heartfelt.
Cons: Writing poetry, songs and young-adult dystopian fiction can seem cheap, and I don't think girls like it when you write songs and poetry to them, something about "sending the wrong message." Also, if all you're good at is vacuum repair, you're screwed.

Option 5- Pay attention to what people don't have, then guess on if they would want it.
Pros: Shows you pay attention to your friends (if you guess well)
Cons: Results in a confusing, lame, or useless gift (if you don't guess well)

Option 6- Giftcards/money!!!
Pros-Practical.
Cons- Impersonal, can be seen as reducing a friendship to the money it's worth.(Definitely not a good thing.)

So you can see why I'm so torn on what to do. Normally, I'd be an Option 5 person, but I'm constantly second-guessing if what I'm buying is somebody a person wants, as opposed to what they need.

I'm gonna do some work over the coming weeks in gift-plotting, and if you have any ideas, please let me know!

—Z

PS: If you are a friend of mine, you could also send me a list of what you want. That way, you are moderately surprised at what I get you and you at the same time don't receive an INCREDIBLY crappy gift. :)



*-This is not one of those times.
**-Which is terribly cliche, but it's so dang catchy at the same time!

A Day in the Life...

Being a college student, I usually spend most of my time on campus in a classroom.  But last week, I had a rare treat; my English Lit class was going to the USF Library Special Collections Department of Really Friggin' Old Books to check out some of the rare Victorian-era books the Library housed. Everyone was really excited, for 3 reasons:

Reason Numbah 1: We were tired of our classroom. The desks are uncomfortable, the room is alternately too hot or too cold(sometimes it flip-flops between to the two mid-class), and some of the lights flicker ominously.*

Reason B) We were tired of our teacher. She's normally okay, but for the last few days, she's been painfully boring to listen to. Naturally, a change of speaker seemed a welcome concept.

III- We're English Majors. You say "Look! Books!" and we immediately go into a literary frenzy. "Books?! Where are they? I want to read them!!!!" (In all reality, a couple of English Majors** would inform you not that "Look!" and "Books!" were not full sentences or statements, and that you should be ashamed of yourself.)

So we made the arduous trek through the Florida heat to the library.

This was the sand trap we encountered on the way to the library.  Several of my fellow English nerds didn't make it.


Anywhom, when we got to the Special Collections Department (of Really Friggin' Old Books), we were informed that the librarian had accidentally double-booked us with an Africana Studies workshop, so we had to sneak past the workshop, which had been discussing "Aryan supremacist propaganda in the 20th century," to get into the conference room booked for us. (A note: perhaps this is only true at the University of South Florida, but from what I've seen, English majors tend to be Caucasian.[and exceptionally pale to boot]) This made for a more-than-slightly-awkward moment, because the leader of the workshop did not just ignore the score of students passing through the back of the room, he stopped his lecture. To stare at us. This caused the rest of the workshop attendees to stop what they were doing and stare at us as well.

Fun stuff.

After we finally got into our conference room, we saw what made our road of trials worth trekking:

a mountain of books.

We then were seated at a long table that made me feel like we were in the midst of a very formal business meeting, so naturally, I leaned forward and, with my most professional tone, said,  "Well, I'm sure you're wondering why I called this meeting..."  And to my relief, some people actually laughed! And no even those laughs you hear when someone tells a very painfully lame joke either!

We got to check out some of Charles Dickens' novel in their original form, in serial sections that are something like comic books, except without awesome superheroes...or pictures... but they did have something that no one excepted: ads.  To finance the printing of the serials, the publishers inserted ads of every sort, from gowns and dresses for the ladies to sticks designed to wipe crap off of shoes(I kid ye not) which helped bring down the price of the booklet-thingies immensely.

Some of these serials were 150+ years old, and on more than one occasion little tiny book-bits tumbled down into my lap when I opened the book, which was both cool and slightly off-putting.


Seriously, Zack?  Old book crumblies weirded you out?
Yes, ItalicsMan, but just because the bits in my lap were over a century and a half old, and also because each little serial was worth it's weight in gold. and let me let you, those serials added up to a lot!


So that was a short look into my life, I hoped you enjoyed it.

—Z


*ominously= annoyingly.
**-A couple of English Majors=All of the English Majors