The Greatest Gift of All ©

Online auction websites can be a great source of inexpensive and hard-to-find items. You can sell unwanted gifts that someone gave you for Christmas, like the CD “Peewee Herman sings Madonna,” the manual “100 Things to Make With your Dead Goldfish," or the book, “I Look Like Hitler in a Dress.”

Unfortunately these same sites can be a disaster area for shopaholics and very scary places for children. Actually they can sometimes be fairly scary places for grown-ups as well. There are some items that I never knew existed and I’m not sure that I wanted to even know about, eg the “Jesus Stamp” for one’s toast. The stamp enables you to cook toast with the face of Jesus on it. It became quite a hit as it can provide both a discussion topic for breakfast or a practical joke to play on one’s weird relatives. “Oh my gosh Cousin Melvin! Jesus is speaking to you ... again!”

I once spotted a book on a site by Helen Hope called, “Astrology for Dogs.” Wow! I didn’t even know dogs could read, and then I wondered what made them so superstitious in the first place!

And not wanting to leave cats out of the equation, I spotted a TV game called “Feline Frolics TV Fun Games for Your Furry Feline Friend.” This one hour DVD claims there are positive benefits as it will provide therapy for indoor cats or those left alone without their owners. It includes visual games, stimulating images of fish, insects, rodents and bird. There are pictures of other cats and alternate audio tracks specially chosen for the unique hearing range of one’s cat. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I left this on at home, I might find scratch marks all over my television screen when I return home, from the cat chasing the fun things on the screen.

You can purchase titles for plots of land on Mars or the moon or even have a star named after you. But a little closer to home if you’ve always had a penchant for being in the upper class, then you might like to purchase a square foot of land on Lochabar Island Estates in the middle of the Scottish Highlands. According to Scottish law, anyone who owns a landed estate in Scotland is entitled to call themselves Lord or Lady.

Perhaps you are more into the bizarre, in which case you could buy a shrunken head ornament or a two-headed rubber ducky, while the more average person might like to decorate their bathtub with a set of 4 hippy rubber ducks, kitted out in 60s gear.

Thinking of buying your man the ultimate in blokey gifts? Then why not purchase him a packet of tractor seeds? The instructions read “Plant your tractor parts in a dry area to avoid rust, but close to a shed. Warning: tractors will grow upside down if planted wrongly.” Or perhaps he might like the CD “Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit.”

For the man who has everything, you could get him his own framed tarantula spider or a leather embossed flyswat. There is always a bomb squad baseball cap, or a life-sized half spider/half human plastic skeleton.

For the tough girl there is wasabi lip balm and for the kids, pirate bandaids or bandaids shaped like lips (Ooh, do you have a boo-boo, let me kiss it better.)

For the lady that has everything, you could get her a handbag that looks like an orange juice carton or her very own singing maggot.

Of course for those who love horror movies, you might like to purchase a serial killer shower screen.

And finally, if you have a deranged sibling living in your basement, you can purchase him a leather straight-jacket. ©