Gift
Dear Mr. Sarcasm,
We are invited to a friend’s 35th wedding anniversary party where the couple are renewing their marriage vows. The affair will be held at an upscale hotel and will be a black-tie party.
What do you think would be an appropriate gift for the occasion? Fortunately, finances are not an issue.
Please do not reveal my name or location — my friend is a fan of yours.
— NO NAME, PLEASE
Dear No,
A fan of mine, eh? Well, that narrows it down to about six people, three of whom I’m related to.
I mean… I’m the greatest! Everybody reads me! Hooray for Mr. Sarcasm, the greatest and most popular Internet phenomenon since “Gonads and Strife!”
Sorry about that. Sometimes I forget that this column is meant to be a service to you, the public — that it’s not about my own, incredibly relevant problems. No, this is all about you and the ridiculous non-issues that you believe to be existential crises of the highest order.
“Finances are not an issue,” you say. Do you know what it’s like to barely be able to pay your rent? To watch your dog have to eat Ramen noodles because dog food is just too expensive? To have to create and maintain your own critically acclaimed and staggeringly popular advice column on a TRS-80 connected to a black and white television with rabbit ears? I mean, rabbit ears! Hi-def widescreen extravaganzas are common even in the low-rent district these days, and my television/computer monitor has rabbit ears!
Okay. That’s out of my system. Now on to your irrelevant, whiny problem. Oh no, I’m too rich! I can’t decide whether to buy my friends the diamond-studded stretch SUV limo or the orbital satellite stocked with vintage Dom Perignon that has an orbital tether connected to a mansion below, on which a former Navy SEAL skillfully slides down each night with a bottle of the champagne in his teeth and a tray of cheeses balanced precariously atop his aerodynamically smooth shaved head.
Really, I’m done now.
You know, I wouldn’t know what to do if I were invited to a “black-tie party.” I had to sell off the pieces of my tuxedo to the high schoolers in my neighborhood around homecoming time so I could buy something off the 99 cent menu at Jack in the Box. (As a paying customer, this granted me access to their elite bathroom facilities, enabling me to bathe myself in their sink.) I had a lot of fond memories of that tuxedo — prom 1992 (”Word to Your Future”) really was something special. But so is this creature comfort we call “continued existence,” I suppose. It all depends on how you look at it.
You know those movies where there’s a “black-tie party” and some stanky hobo or low-class schlub wanders around, stealing hors d’ouvres and making society women say things like “well I never!”? That’d probably be me at one of those things. Though I should note that, while poverty stricken and possibly in possession of qualities that would have me confused for a homeless person, there is a key difference separating me from the common hobo: a bindle.
You know what I’m talking about: a small collection of possessions wrapped in a handkerchief and tied to a stick. Man, that’s class. Me, I just have this fanny pack with the logo of a prominent local sports team emblazoned upon it. Actually, I have about sixty of them. The marketing geniuses working for the Seattle Mariners somehow overestimated the public’s desire to wear fanny packs. Their mistake was my good fortune. Man, finding that discarded crate in the dumpster completely made it worth having to scrape half a gallon of old saurkraut off the top. That was easily the best day of my life since moving here to the west coast.
Oh. Right. You had a question, didn’t you?
Why not buy your rich friends a shiny new I Hope You Die? I understand that’s always popular. A few pounds of The Most Painful Kind of Cancer Imaginable would also go with just about anything. Or you could go understated and get them a simple card with A Bus Accident in Which All the Peripheral Passengers Emerge Scot Free But Which Mangles Us Beyond All Recognition and Forces Our Closest Living Relatives Into a Difficult Decision Involving Feeding Tubes.
That’d be my choice.
Thanks for writing!
