Best and worst gifts of 2007

Of course, this will be a personal list. If you have a
hankering to mention a particularly tasteful or -less gift of your own, please comment below.

WORST

1. Body Fat Scale (from one fat ass to another?) On Christmas
evening, after I’d had my fill of sugar cookies, at the most inopportune
moment, I opened a body-fat scale marked "From Santa." Quickly programming the
thing with my height (5′ 5.5") and gender, I hopped aboard and was horrified to
read its measure: thirty-seven-percent fat. However, if I program myself as an "athletic
woman," it puts me at only twenty-four. And when I weighed-in as a man? Ten. And
if you sleep it off and try for better the next morning? Eighteen. Needless to
say, I can’t stand the fucking thing.

2. Portraits. Is it really appropriate to give framed
portraits of your lovely children to the single, childless aunt who once walked
away from an engagement to a hot, wonderful man (thus causing suspicions about
her sexual preferences) and who, furthermore, lives in a 600-square-foot box? I
don’t have room for that shit … in my apartment or in my frozen-over heart.

BEST

1. In Vogue. A coffee-table book providing a comprehensive
history of Vogue magazine, with plenty of images, beginning with the
illustrated covers of the 1890s through the ’40s and moving into the magazine’s
heyday, from about 1950 through the mid ’80s.

2. 20 Questions Game. This handheld, battery-operated doodad
asks you to think of an object and then, after asking twenty questions, guesses
what it is – and with amazing accuracy. I’ve found it to be a colossal, but nonetheless
delightful, waste of time. Already, I’ve identified its weak points: food things
and anything feminine other than bra and panties.