Sales of Crappy Christmas Gifts Reach Record High

collective Charlie Brown-style "Auuuuugh!" sounded around the world upon the release of the newest economy figures Friday. In addition to the disappointing early returns for the Christmas season, and spending figures falling below already-low projections, initial reports suggest that one industry not suffering this year is lousy Christmas gifts.

Lousy Christmas gifts, a sub-industry all its own, is notorious for maintaining steady sales from year to year, apparently never suffering from the effects of recession. However, 2003 marks the first year, if early indicators are correct, that crappy Christmas gifts will actually be on the uprise.

"The old adage about the recession," said some hobo who claimed to have a background in economics as we fed him a can of creamed corn, "is that the fluff industries are all the first hit. Luxuries, things like that. But there are rock-like reliables in all areas of the economy, and Christmas gifts are no exception. When the country hits on hard times in the yuletide season, cool gifts are the first things to go. No one's going to shell out for costly electronics when cheap, affordable, crappy gifts are available. Most Americans are tightening the belt—which, ironically enough, is one of the first crappy gifts to see a boost in sales."

Most holiday shoppers bear those theories out.

"I would have liked to bought my son that MP3 player he's been talking up all year," said Syracuse, New York-area housewife Mabel Donner. "But with things looking so bad for the economy it doesn't look like a good time to buy some new-fangled radio. So I'm getting him that book of inspirational sayings I saw in the mall."

Books of contrived sentimentality are not the only Christmas gifts with a sharp rise in sales this year. Also seeing an increase are socks, underwear, courderoy slacks, snow pants, gay sweaters, suspenders, and T-shirts and hats certifying they were purchased by grandparents.

Outside of clothing, food is also seeing a sales boost, especially cheese and sausage gift packs and giant tins of caramel-covered popcorn. Sales of advent calendars featuring dried, nasty chocolate alone have provided a much-appreciated lift to the German economy. In addition, minor sales increases have occurred in virtually every area of the economy for crappy gifts; even crappy video games like Pokémon Pro-Skater and Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen Virtua Fighter are seeing a sales spike.

Most kids have yet to experience the nightmarish reality of Christmas morning, 2002 as of yet; but some, like Craig Sharmet of Ledervehn, Pennsylvania, have already seen early warning signs.

"Grandma gave everybody their Christmas gifts yesterday," said Sharmet. "I got a Jesus calendar. It's a calendar. And it has pictures of Jesus on it. For every day of the year. All next year. Jesus."

Alice Keeler of Tumasca, Arizona, can sympathize.

"Aunt Sandy showed up Wednesday with presents for everybody and said we could open them, and we were all flipping out 'cause we were so happy. Then we opened them. I got a glitter puff T-shirt with the American Idol logo on it. I'm not sure what's worse—that people would think I like American Idol the TV show enough to wear a T-shirt of it or that people who don't know the TV show think I'm saying I'm an American idol or something. The possibilities are terrifying. And I had to thank her for it."

On the brighter side of the story, all forecasts indicate that shopping traffic will increase significantly just after Christmas, when the stores fill with the countless consumers attempting to return Shania Twain CDs and subscriptions to Teen People.

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Well, it looks like Pete Rose might never get into the Hall of Fame now, which is a bummer for him since I hear he has a lot of money riding on this. Apparently in his new book he admits he gambled on baseball back when he was a manager, only never on Sundays. I don't know what in the hell that's supposed to prove. Rose also said he never bet against the Reds, which I'll only believe if they can prove he hasn't gambled since around 1990. My God do the Reds suck.

Rose thought the deal was that they'd let him into the Hall of Fame if he would admit to gambling, but in reality they were just waiting for him to get a decent haircut. Keep waiting guys. It was a hilarious joke on Rose back in the 80's when they told him he was "banned" for gambling, nobody actually expected him to believe that skylark. Then it became this running joke over the years to see when he'd finally catch on. Eventually everybody got tired of waiting and decided they should come up with a new way to tease Rose in 2003, hence the whole "fess up and we'll let you in, Petey" gag.

After all, everybody in baseball gambles. The double play was invented on a bet, you think those lazy bastards would have thought that up on their own? The commissioner himself almost won fifty bucks two years ago after he bet a drinking buddy he could contract two teams without anybody noticing. Hell, if he'd picked the Expos and Brewers he'd be $50 richer today. Bet that keeps him up at night.

As for Rose, nobody has the heart to tell him he's not in the Hall of Fame because he's an asshole and nobody likes him. I hear next year they're going to say he can't go into the Hall of Fame because he masturbates too much. That guy'll believe anything, I swear.

Some argue that Rose belongs in the Hall since he holds the career hits record, but he only ended up with that because he kept hanging around the clubhouse for years after he should have retired and nobody had the heart to tell him he wasn't on the team any more. He was like baseball's annoying little brother who can't take a hint. It'd be sad if it wasn't so funny.

The gag on Rose last year was that if he admitted his wrongdoing, they'd sneak him in the back door of the Hall with a coat thrown over his head. So he writes this book, which is about 300 pages of Rose bullshitting about how he was a hero in Vietnam and two paragraphs were he says yeah, he bet on baseball and lied about it for 20 years, but it was all the losing teams' fault anyway since if he'd always won then it wouldn't have been gambling. To that, all I can say is forget the Hall of Fame, get this guy some kind of Hannibal Lecter award for convoluted logic. This guy's a miracle.

So Pete thinks he's in like Flynn now, but of course the rest of the Hall of Famers don't want to put up with his bullshit stories and catastrophic lack of class at HoF functions for the rest of their lives, so they have the commissioner tell Pete that the book was nice and all, but oops! He forgot to say he was sorry. Damn, sorry Pete. They all know full-well that Rose types with two fingers and used up all his good gook jokes in his latest book, so it'll be another ten years before they hear from him again. Then somebody will have to actually read the "Pete Rose's Big Book of Sorta Sorry" book before they can dream up another snipe hunt to send this guy on.

Cruel? Maybe. But you haven't seen the kinds of sport coats Pete Rose wears. Sweet pastel Jesus.

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Thanks to an unprecedented number of Jurassic Park sequels, the BBC's "educational" series Walking with Dinosaurs, and countless truly putrid CGI dinosaur DVDs aimed at children, these terrible ugly beasts of yore have never been more popular. However, none of these irresponsible Hollywood types with their sexy and exciting CGI tools will tell you the real secret truth about these terrible beasts: Dinosaurs were boring.

Take for example the Snorasaurus, the most boring dinosaur ever to walk the earth. The Snorasaurus spent his days sitting in the mud, staring straight ahead and giving no indication whatsoever that it was alive or dead. Eventually, the Snorasaurus would evolve into his modern-day cousin, the legendary boring pet the iguana.

Clearly, the public has been sold a bill of goods about dinosaurs and how exciting they supposedly were. Few will tell you the truth about the Disappointadocus, the most overrated dinosaur ever to live, or his cousin, Hypalamus. That doesn't fit into their neat little "dinosaurs were awesome" worldview.

Few dinosaur lovers today would be loving it if they crossed paths with the Australopithasaur, an Aussie dinosaur known for its withering, pithy tone and general bitchy demeanor. This miserable beast was closely related to Cockbastaranus, the "Asshole Lizard" whom annoyed all others and was often killed by other dinosaurs as a matter of principle, in spite of its inedible meat, which was uniformly stringy and bitter.

The most famous disappointing dinosaur of all, however, was the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the "Terrible Lizard." And in this case, the name was perfectly fitting, as the Tyrannosaurus was uniformly terrible at hunting, fighting, mating, and all other dinosaur activities. This hapless creature was also known as the biggest pussy in all of nature. In spite of its impressive size and terrifying appearance, the Tyrannosaurus was easily frightened by other dinosaurs, birds, ground squirrels, and the sound of the wind rustling through tree branches. Because of his incredible cowardice, the Tyrannosaurus spent most of his time running away from various threats, real or imagined, and hiding among bushes and shrubberies.

These weren't the only miserable dinosaurs of course, as the unfortunate roll call goes on and on. Few scientists care to remember the Oshitodon, a dinosaur known for causing problems it would then blame on other dinosaurs. Most consider this clumsy oaf of nature best left forgotten.

Possibly the strangest of the dinosaurs was the Nonudodon, a dinosaur with a paralyzing fear of nudity, which would fashion strange, primitive articles of clothing out of branches, rocks, pelts and the patchwork skins of other dinosaurs. These modest creatures were often only seen at night, foraging on the forest floor for accessories.

Despite the claims of a few pissy scientists bent on ruining the fun for everyone else, dinosaurs and early man did in fact coexist, and they threw wild parties. Early man loved nothing more than getting dinosaurs piss drunk on fermented goat milk, and this led directly to early man's nomadic nature, since nobody wanted to hang around camp anymore after the dinosaurs had started barfing all over the place.

Dinosaurs did pose a special problem for early man, however, since many early cave-dwellers were trampled by Tyrannosaurus that were running away from threateningly-shaped clouds in the sky. Eventually, early man had to take to traveling around in giant man-sized boots with foot holes cut out of the bottom, knowing dinosaurs would never step in the boots because lizards don't wear shoes.

But how did all these dinosaurs get their names? After the discovery of strange reptile fossils in 1857, Sir Edward Albey named the theoretical beasts Agranamapeus, which is Latin for "Ahhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhh! ArrggggaaaaahhhhhhhHh!" Sir Dingus Reily found this name to be accurate, though lacking in social graces, and proposed instead the name dinosaur, Latin for "Lizards so big you'd totally shit."

Unfortunately, the names of dinosaurs have often reflected the biases of the scientists doing the discovering, especially in less-enlightened historical times. Case in point is the Beaneramus, a small herbivore once commonly found in the land that is now Mexico. Thankfully, modern-day scientists have taken the liberty to give this beast the more politically-correct name of the Labambadon.

Likewise with the Krautosaur of Southern Germany, the bi-curious Fagodon, the McSaurus of Scotland, and the Frogonomin, the French "bird of meat" that once terrified the part of the skies that is located very near to the ground.

Now that you know the truth, do a good deed today and spread the disappointing word to all the small children you can find, before they get all carried away.

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