That's, That's, What I Want

Perennial Gift List

Now, here's a genuinely useful application of the internet to everyday life--my little contribution to a paperless society. Rather than continue my semiannual reinvention of the wheel, I hereby set down my birthday and Christmas (and whatever else, I suppose) gift list for the edification of all people everywhere. From now on I need only update it from time to time. if it doesn't seem current:
last updated 12/12/2005

Bike Stuff

I may be overdoing it by making this a category, but I'm suddenly spending a lot of time on a bike, and almost as much tinkering with it, seeing as how I got me an old cheapie. Thinking back to my life before Manhattan, I see little reason to imagine that this will ever cease to be the case.

A helmet. I'm not sure how critical it is that I try this on in advance, like shoes; it may be an issue. But I do need to see about getting one I suppose.
Mirrors. Mirrors to go on handlebars, a mirror to go on a helmet, mirrors to go on the knuckles of my gloves, whatever. I'm trying to get used to making left turns like a proper vehicle, and that's a little harrowing without mirrors.
Gloves: to put mirrors on. Not really, but I could use some lightweight gloves that keep the wind out but don't make me clumsy. Particularly true these days, since I've been attempting to push ridership into the winter--other people do it, so I figure I should be able to.
Also for winter biking:
- Goggles
- Balaclava
- Warm little skullcap-style hat
- Convertible version: one of those fleecy ear-bands. My ears are the first things to get frostbitten when riding, even if the rest of me is keeping warm from exertion. At the beginning of cold weather, I'll start wanting something like this.
- Thermals in general. I have woefully few. Warm, lightweight layers of whatever sort.
- Helmet cover: for the helmet I need to be getting.
I have a wire basket on the left side and I rather fancy having another on the right--they make them special to hang off of a rack that I already have over the rear tire. (One of these days I could be keen to weld a better platform onto the rear--the current one wobbles a good bit--but that's in the future.)
Speaking of the rack, though, it is kind of bent, so a new one of those will eventually be desirable as well.
A front basket, as well. Vive le cargo.
I could even be interested in a trailer, one of these days; there are various sorts out there and I haven't researched them. It hasn't really come to that yet but I'm quite curious.
Little red blinkers. It's hard to have too many.
Reflective stuff, maybe particularly reflective tape. Same reason.
Maybe a nicer headlight; my current one isn't so much to see by as to be seen.
Nice roomy toe clips. Now that I've learned to use the clips, I like them, but mine are pretty decrepit, and never really intended for my feet.
A good stout cable: I have a U-lock, which is the critical thing, but it's a lot more versatile coupled with a heavyish cable, long enough to wrap around trees and such.
Maybe one of thosse little bells that go schkttktgting.

Games

Chess: I like attractive and interesting chess sets for their own beauty, all apart from my love for the game. Right now I have two moderately smallish wooden travel sets, one of which I can't currently find. What I'd really love to have is a good-looking larger set that doesn't fold up, ideally with weighted pieces. Not too particular about sets--I enjoy the variety of them--though I do like to be able to tell in no uncertain terms which piece is which. I like their stylistic variety, the flavors of different nationalities, what have you. I suppose I should note here, though, that I am distinctly not amused by themed chess sets--those in which all the pieces are historical figures from some fetishized war or characters from a book or movie or whatever. In the end, chess is still chess, and few such stories actually lend themselves to the peculiar array of units with which chess is played.
String: someday I'll put up a page about how my sister taught me to do cool things with string. In the meantime you can read about other people who do it (far more seriously). Any string will work, I suppose, but the standard seems to be a satin cord sort of thing. Cheap if you can find it, which I think is done at bead shops or hippyish jewelry shops. Needs to be comfortably more than twice the length of the user's arm. (That's my arm, mind you, a long one as arms go.) You can never have too much--my last one wore out in less than a year.
Shogi: fascinating Japanese cousin of chess. I've only ever seen one kind of set in person, a commercial thing with plastic pieces, but that's fine by me. Nicer ones must exist somewhere, I suppose. I mostly just want to play the game.
Strategy games in general. People are constantly dreaming up perfectly good new ones (Abalone, Inside Moves, Pente, Stratego, Shai, Quarto), far too many to keep up with. On one hand it's good to have a canon of games that many game-players know (Go, Backgammon, Othello, Chinese Checkers, Checkers), which is why most of these new ones are forgotten immediately--but on the other hand players are usually interested to try new games, which is why it's always nice to have a few totally obscure ones around.
Playing cards: hard to have too many of those, either, since they wear out. Cards actually made of paper are a prize these days-generally you can't find anything but plastic. The less slippery the better. The oversize easy-to-read numbers strike me as tacky. Of course, attractive cards are to be preferred over plain ones, and likewise plain over ugly ones.
Hackeysacks and other interesting and durable throwing-and-catching doodads. Yo-yos. Chinese yo-yos. Boomerangs. Those crumpleable fabric frisbees. Interlocking-ring puzzles. You know. Toys. I have a marked preference for toys that don't take up a lot of storage space, though.

Books

Here I can do a lot by referring you to my Amazon wishlist before talking any more about it. And I'll go on updating that. But Amazon lists only specific titles, whereas categories and guidelines can be as useful or more so for gift-hunters...

Wow! Just found an old friend I'd been unable to track down for years, and seemingly these days she has the word "author" before her name. So of course I need her book, in part to support her and in part because her book is pitched to a demographic I just might belong to, after all.
A particular favorite, for instance, is the sort of compilation that crops up from time to time on the sale table at big stores or buried in little ones: essays of literary criticism written by famous authors about other famous authors. In general, the writings of writers about writing is a sweet spot.
Good nonfiction about things I hadn't thought of, or just didn't know that much about. Love that.
In general, because I was an English major, I know fiction and poetry that was written in English far more than I know anything else in translation. I'm interested in your suggestions for remedying that.
There are a lot of people I want to investigate, but not necessarily by owning their entire oeuvre: Susan Sontag, Annie Dillard, Robertson Davies, Umberto Eco, Wallace Stevens, Antonin Chekhov, Anna Akhmatova, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Ranier Rilke, non-Canterbury Chaucer, John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, a lot of others... more will come to me. But more might come to you, and sooner. If you know such an author, tell me where to begin.
Anything and everything by Richard Feynman--except Surely You're Joking which I finally found after many years.
Wow. Found this list on Amazon, compiled by a concerned citizen, and mostly it consists of stuff I'm very interested to read. A real public service.
Further on that oddly politicized bent, I have some interest in reading the Anarchist's Cookbook one of these days. But to the best of my knowledge the book itself is illegal. Oddly. Also I'd always be keen to read any and all Top Secret government documents (or Microsoft documents, or any other evil corporation's or metacorporate agency's secret documents) that happen to cross your path. Just prefer to be informed, you know.
Nitty-gritty government procedures for just about anything.
The explodingdog books, Wish for Something Better and New Job.
Just to reemphasize: I am happy to get books, and books I have no reference for are as good as any others.

Audio

As "Books" above, see my Amazon wishlist for a lot of particulars, and more in the future. But then add these things to the pile:

I haven't been able to find the Brimstone & Treacle soundtrack for a long time.
I'm also perpetually interested in good recordings of classical music--particularly Beethoven, Chopin, Verdi, Puccini, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens, and Vaughn Williams. I also need to get to know Haydn and Brahms and any number of other people, so you could help me out there.
Any recordings of Andrés Segovia, Alirio Diaz or Laurindo Almeida.
Also I should get to know Leo Kottke, but I don't know where to start.
Some pop stars, notably Sting, the Police, Seal, and Tori Amos, are fond of squirrelling otherwise unpublished tracks onto singles. I'm always interested in those. Box sets are another way to get them, of course, and I don't own anybody's box set.

Video

As "Books and "Audio," see Amazon as well as the following.

I adore Northern Exposure. Best thing that ever happened to a television. But I worry that nobody's ever going to release it on DVD... I want to have as much of that show as possible to pass on to my children when it's been forgotten long enough to be cool. Oh, and if you are actually on this page because you want to do something for me--you might just drop these folks a note swearing up and down that if they release the old episodes in any video format, you'll buy them all. Cannot tell a lie? No problem! Write the same note and then actually do it. It's a good show, dammit! [Update! The first season is out, and was given to me. A good start. But there are several more seasons, and the first really wasn't the best--the magical realism element hasn't crept in yet--so Universal Studios still needs to hear a clamor for the rest.]
I also adore nature shows as a rule. Good documentaries of any sort really.

Household Goods

A spout. We get our milk in big glass bottles, these days, and they don't pour so neatly. My grandparents used to have a simple little plastic attachment like a cap that funneled the milk into a little angled spout, which had its own smaller cap. Perfectly simple little device. I've no idea where to find one now. It would make our lives... a little tidier.
Dishes: this one can be stress-free for the giver. We've decided that matching sets of dishes are too easy, and we'd rather have an assortment of dishes no two of which are the same. So if you see one attractive and interesting plate, all by itself, it'd be perfect just like that.
Maybe a moderately wide-mouthed funnel.
A yardstick. This doesn't occur to me when I want to measure something, or when I want to draw a straight line--it occurs to me when something falls down behind the stove.
Now that we buy so much stuff in bulk, we could use a few more canisters, mason jars or largish tupperware-type containers. Wide-mouthed is always a little easier.
Recently I've been learning to sew having essentially never done so before, and I've found that sitting around mending is really pretty therapeutic after a tiring day (I suspect it's serving the same function TV does for people who have a TV). I'm doing this with borrowed materials; eventually it might be good for me to have my own pincushion (do they always look like tomatoes with little strawberries tied to them?) and pins to pin on it, and of course thread. A note on that last: I'm not half subtle enough to make invisible seams or anything, and anyway I'm so pleased with myself for making anything hold together that I really rather want it to be seen, so bright glaring colors are a good thing. For patches I've mostly been using pieces of ugly old ties, to give you an idea of my aesthetic.

Musical Doodads

Always in demand, but frequently expensive...

Picks--I like the "heavy" or "extra heavy" variety. Not such a costly item, and you can never have too many.
Recently I've been trying harder to use sheet music, so I'm more interested in collecting that that I used to be. Chord diagrams are more helpful than chord names at the moment, but it's also preferable to have staff notation instead of vague beat counts; the more different forms of notation the better, essentially.
Guitars--skip this item, obviously, if you're not fabulously rich. If it's not at least mildly expensive, honestly, I won't want it; you can't really get a nice guitar for less than three hundred dollars, unless you're poking around in the right attic, or something. I favor classical, but the things I don't have are more along the lines of a big old twelve string, a nice Gibson-style electric with sound box, and maybe one acoustic steel-string, though I don't play those much. In the future I aspire to obtain a few obscure guitar-similar instruments: a theorbo, a sitar, a mandolin, a lute. Again, these are things I expect to get for myself over many years; I'm really just including them here for my own reference, and a satisfying sense of thoroughness.
Actually, musical instruments in general are perpetually welcome. I'm delighted with little flutes and whistles and harmonicas, even though I don't know how to play them--I'm keen to try. I'd love to have a drum or two around, or other percussion doodads whose names I don't know, or a baby grand, or a kazoo, or whatever. I think the ideal household would have some sort of musical instrument in every room, bar the kitchen and bathroom.
I am noting here, for my own reference, that I aspire to get a nyckelharpa someday. That's Swedish for keyfiddle, and you pretty much have to go to Sweden to get one. But they sound great.
I am also developing an interest the concertina lately. They have a wonderful, mournful sort of voice; similar to the villean pipe and in a way to a bagpipe, but probably the easiest of those three to learn.
Lots of little doodads go with guitars--strings, of course (by habit I use D'Addario nylon, but I'm not particular (actually I am particular about the nylon part, mind you)), but also the picks, and capos (I still don't have one of the capos I like, the alligator-jaw ones you can place and remove with one hand, but then again I'm not certain they make those wide enough for use on a classical neck), and polish, and the plastic tuning-knob doohickeys, and straps, and cool decorative touches or straps, and cases, and stands, and that sort of thing. Pitch-pipes. Metronomes. Foot-stands, maybe, since I haven't had one for a while.
That's not to mention the electronic things, which I frankly know very little about. I have one good amp and one of those multiple-pedal effects machines. I'd love to have a wireless connection between guitar and amp. A good microphone or two. And whatever the minimum gear is to put down a decent recording--but here I must sadly admit that I don't even know what sort of gear that is.

Clothing

Not much to put here, I don't think, but over time maybe there will be...

Socks! At this point in history I have three pairs of decent sock--just about enough to spoil me. The cheapies I've always bought for myself always develop massive holes in very short order, such that I am not surprised or perturbed by this; it's routine. But the good ones don't seem to do that, and it makes me desperately want a few more pairs of the good ones. (I am a bit allergic to the wool, mind, so woolen socks won't work for me, at least not unless heavily insulated from my skin by other socks.)
Slippers. The ideal slipper is snug enough not to summarily fall off, and has a thick enough sole to shield me from chilly hardwood floors; I have often been fairly happy with moccasin-style slippers, for an example, though they needn't really be outdoor-worthy to be helpful.
Thermals. I have been woefully short on long johns for years, and particularly now that I'm looking for contractor work, I need to rectify the situation. Warm, lightweight layers of whatever variety--Miriam's been speaking well of some silk ones she's got, My old pair of doubled-cotton ones worked well (except the elastic, alas) and the usual webbing is still grand.
Likewise, I have a sudden renewed need for blue jeans, of the heavy-duty variety (as they, like socks, always develop holes before long). I wear something more like 34/36 these days, and I guess I must have a big butt or something because I do have a pretty strong preference for a certain amount of bagginess. Luckily that shouldn't be too terribly hard given current fashion.
Shoes: I can pretty reliably wear a size 12, and favor the gentler sorts of Doc Martens, and I generally need a pair or two of dress shoes--I certainly need a pair right now. It might also be nice to have some hiking boots. But buying sneakers for me is a bad bet--I have very low arches, so I really do need to try them on before buying.
Earrings: I got my left ear pierced when I was eighteen. I've hardly worn anything in it for years, partly because I keep having jobs, partly because I always seem to lose the earrings I like best: simple studs or small hoops, nothing fancy. (Note: I'm allergic to some metals, so gold and surgical steel are the best bets, though sterling silver has turned out fine a few times.)
You can never have too many bathrobes. Very long ones.

Other Odds and Ends

A toolbelt. I've never had one, but it's suddenly looking pertinent.
Some sewing stuff, perhaps--pins and needles and a tomato to put 'em in, I suppose. As far as I can tell these things are always kept in little tomatoes. I have become, if not a competent seamstress (seamstron?), then at least an enthusiastic makeshift patcher of old duds.
Maps. I adore maps, always have. Medieval wild-guess maps, county road maps from gas stations, topo maps, general atlases, whatever, and of wherever. I just like 'em.
Sense of purpose.
A Swiss army knife. For whatever reason, I just cannot seem to keep my hands on a good pocket-knife. I like Victorinox, though somebody told me the Swiss army doesn't use those. Luckily I have no intention of enlisting in the Swiss army. The model name of my last knife--lost in a burglary in 2001--was the "Traveler," as I recall. About as deep as it is wide is right for me. (Note: asking for a Swiss army knife is not the same as asking for a Leatherman! I don't think much of the Leatherman--one is always obliged to do rather a lot of unfolding before one comes up with a knife blade, and the apparent payoff for this is a pair of mediocre pliers. Just not that useful to me.)
Always a welcome possibility: if you want to do something nice for me, support somebody I like. There are lots of cartoonists, writers, and web phenomena out there trying to support themselves with petty merchandising, and I'm always up for t-shirts and books and such if it'll help. (I guess it's mostly cartoonists, off the top of my head.)
Whatever I haven't thought of. This list isn't meant to limit, but to suggest...

personal
index