Books are the ultimate gift form.
There are some gifts that are good for a lot of people regardless of their interests, but these guides never seem to know any of them and it’s annoying.
For instance everywhere cold that I’ve lived, people would love another heated blanket, even if they already have one. Or really just any blanket, can’t have too many. Also a good evaporative humidifier is something everyone needs and no one has. It took me 15 years to buy a real carpet cleaner for myself, just check their house while you’re over to see if there’s one lying around. Consumable stuff is great because even if they already have it they can use more soon.
Guides ignore this kind of thing and pretty much exclusively recommend stuff that most people wouldn’t like due to tastes. “Get them this clip-on book light!” but they only read on tablets, or they already have a light because that problem needed immediate solving, or they simply don’t like the kind you bought because there are so many.
Anyway the guides are terrible, but they don’t have to be.
Metal flasks are such a stupid gift.
You want whiskey? Buy a god damned bottle. A flask holds A big pour of liquid. You’re going to bring a drink somewhere? Good one, Bevis.
Sneaking it into something? Nope, it’s metal and clunky big.
Metal conducts heat, so your bodyheat hot whiskey will burn the whole time, no matter how good it is.
Be an adult and buy a plastic nalgeen flask you keep in your sock. Does the place do pat-downs? Ok, then chug 8 oz of whiskey in the parking lot like god intended. They can’t take it from you when it’s in you already. ; )
I bought a plastic flask in college and my buddies ragged on me for being cheap… they all borrowed it at least once because the venue they wanted to go to had metal detectors.
Yep. Taken mine into Pitchfork, hockey games, and whatever else. Metal flasks are as useful as a plaque on a wall. Nice visually, not functionally.
Or get them a Tungsten cube. Every man wants a Tungsten cube.
Am man, can confirm.
That’s true, am man, want this.
Am man. Didn’t realise before that I wanted a tungsten cube. Now I want one.
fuck. A cube shaped hole just appeared in my life.
Wombat turds are cube-shaped
Are they made of tungsten?
If you would feed a wombat tungsten powder…
True, I have a tungsten cube! It’s a small one, and I have never had an object get lost in the couch more easily. Sinks right to the bottom.
This tungsten cube cured my mortality. I, in my exalted wisdom and unbridled ambition, bought this cube to become fully accustomed to the intensity of its density, to make its weight bearable and in fact normal to me, so that all the world around me may fade into a fluffy arena of gravitational inconsequence. And it has worked, to profound success. I have carried the tungsten with me, have grown attached to the downward pull of its small form, its desire to be one with the floor. This force has become so normal to me that lifting any other object now feels like lifting cotton candy, or a fluffy pillow. Big burly manly men who pump iron now seem to me as little children who raise mere aluminum.
I can hardly remember the days before I became a man of tungsten. How distant those days seem now, how burdened by the apparent heaviness of everyday objects. I laugh at the philistines who still operate in a world devoid of tungsten, their shoulders thin and unempowered by the experience of bearing tungsten. Ha, what fools, blissful in their ignorance, anesthetized by their lack of meaningful struggle, devoid of passion.
Nietzsche once said that a man who has a why can bear almost any how. But a man who has a tungsten cube can bear any object less dense, and all this talk of why and how becomes unnecessary.
Schopenhauer once said that every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. Tungsten expands the limits of a man’s field of vision by showing him an example of increased density, in comparison to which the everyday objects to which he was formerly accustomed gain a light and airy quality. Who can lament the tragedy of life, when surrounded by such lightweight objects? Who can cry in a world of styrofoam and cushions?
Have you yet understood? This is no ordinary metal. In this metal is the alchemical potential to transform your world, by transforming your expectations. Those who have not yet held the cube in their hands and mouths will not understand, for they still live in a world of normal density, like Plato’s cave dwellers. Those who have opened their mind to the density of tungsten will shift their expectations of weight and density accordingly.
To give this cube a rating of anything less than five stars would be to condemn life itself. Who am I, as a mere mortal, to judge the most compact of all affordable materials? No. I say gratefully to whichever grand being may have created this universe: good job on the tungsten.
It sure is dense. I sit here with my tungsten cube, transcendent above death itself. For insofar as this tungsten cube will last forever, I am in the presence of immortality.
I once had to spend a night holding an Aluminium cube. The vendor suggested we all go out and club it. I had no option. It was that or go with wood. I figured it’d be safer with the metals.
For the first time ever I saw the lesser metals in their natural habitat, and it weren’t pretty. I’d seen them clustered at exhibits before, being proud but… this time I was surrounded.
Everywhere I went it felt like they were watching me; fish-white sheen puckered by the rusted light; tight forms peering out for fresh meat; screechy, booze-soaked surfaces hollering out for a hand to take ’em halfway up the road to the next all-night watering hole. A shatter of glass; a round of applause; a sixteen-year-old mother of three vomiting in an open sewer, bairns looking on, chewing on potato cakes. I ain’t never going back to holding Aluminium… not never.
Brilliant, thank you
They’re absurdly overpriced, but I wonder how quickly you’d make your money back if you bought a big one and had men pay a fee to mess with it for a few minutes.
and had men pay a fee to mess with it for a few minutes.
This sounds more sexual than I think you intended.
It’s reverse Excalibur. If you can get your sword into the cube, you become king.
It is imperative that the sword remains unharmed.
~tiny dopamine thrill for understanding that reference~
new role play with the partner invented. Fediverse exclusive
It’s heavy, so they might get fatigued faster than they’d expect.
Use both hands!
William Osman made the tungsten cube so expensive. It was like $2k when he did his video wrecking shit with it. Now they’re asking $10k for the 3 inch cube.
I respect the hustle, but damn.
Still, the 1 cm model is like $50 and would still be absurdly heavy for its size, even if it only weighs 19¼ grams.
Might be worth it to find yourself a bunch of old incandescent lightbulbs and get the filaments out instead.
I would love a tungsten cube and I want think sheets of titanium so I can burn them because turns out titanium burns
The sheer number of flammable metals out there is a little scary lol It’s not that many, but it’s more than most people realize.
Living in an oxygen-rich environment has its drawbacks lol
I’m certain that all metals are flammable if you try hard enough, because all it takes is oxidation. Quite a number of them can burn in a self-sustaining manner in terrestrial conditions, though, mostly provided if and only if you manage to have enough surface area of the stuff available in one place. Powdering them usually works for that. Or, if you’d like to watch some iron burn, a fun science fact is that you can light a wad of regular old steel wool like the kind you’d buy at the grocery store as if it were a cotton ball. The finer sized the better, and you should probably also do this outside.
My admittedly not great understanding of it was along the lines of some metals are too good at conducting heat and would basically put their own fires out in most circumstances. I do not know if that is correct
Maybe, but I can tell you that copper’s thermal conductivity is better than e.g. gold, and copper can absolutely burn in open air if the particle sizes are small enough. Aluminum will too, of course.
I’m not about to try it with my meager supply of gold. The stuff is damned expensive at the moment.
Everything will burn given enough oxidizer and heat!
And an ignition source! Need all four to burn. Fuel, oxidizer, heat, and ignition.
Is ozone just oxidized oxygen? Hmm.
That would be cool… And heavy too.
Heavy and hard!
I want one.
You know how to man, man.
The flannel is imbued with sandalwood scent…
But… I like sandalwood. Also sage and cedar (even tho I’m allergic to real cedar)
Can’t stand those whiskey, smoke, leather, etc “manly” smells.
SAME! Just find it funny that those are the limited selection of “manly” smells.
I prefer floral scents but my wife is allergic.
She’s also allergic to whatever they use for a lot of the “manly” scents so I’m limited to whatever we discover she can be around without sneezing.
We need real manly scents like:
Drunk Tank
Pack-a-Day Smoker
Day Old Beer
Warm Energy Drink
And…
Aqua Velva
What about other manly scents like:
Used engine oil
Grinder cut-off wheel
Varsol
Orange citrus mechanics soap
Tiger Balm
Swap the Fast Orange with Zep Cherry Bomb and that hits way to close to home.
Used engine oil
Orange citrus mechanics soapI kinda like these tbh. Like… I’d buy a shave soap that smelled like gojo.
Let me introduce you to the epitome of “seriously?” :
Chiseled Face - Midnight Stag:Scent is made of the following notes: Russian Leather, Motor Oil, Hoppes #9, Birch Tar, Oakmoss, Gasoline, Smoke, Cedar, Cade, Bergamot, Vanilla
Wait, what? I thought that scent was Extreme Tiger Bear
Oh man, you’re totally right! Of course they’d use their trademark scent that includes hint-of-leather mixed in?!?
Coincidentally, my favorite cologne has notes of violet. And sandalwood…
Love floral scents!
It’s like the gift guide knows me so well
Titties. That’s the only gift any of us need.
Correction: soapy tiddies.
You have to go to Nevada to
sellrent those legally.
I dunno about anyone else, but just hit me with a disposable trinket. Food and drink are fan favorite gifts because you’re not compelled to house them any longer than it takes to consume them.
buy that special guy in your life another pickup truck because his current pickup truck looks lonely
I hate that I’m such a stereotype; but I legitimately want this stuff lol.
You can never go wrong buying a man a sword
It’s educational
What if they cut themselves?
That will be an important lesson
But where do I put my whiskey flavored knife?
In the convenient storage slot next to the built-in man scaping kit (including mustache comb, beard oil dispenser, and straight razor in the shape of an assault weapon)
You forgot they season it with moss, musk, or some random type of wood. WTF do they think I am, a termite?
Something that you really want and is worth $1 but you can’t buy for less than $20 is something you’ll never buy for yourself. That’s often a pretty good gift.
Yeah, I just send people my list of shit that I think I want but I’m on the fence about spending money on when they ask for gift ideas. Can’t go wrong there. Certainly better than them going off script and trying to get something on their own based off what they think they know about my interests.
I bet the side of that flask has little holders for your cigars and beard trimmers too.
