Since, due to a scheduled digestive coma slated to run from Thursday night right through Sunday evening, you very likely won't be hearing from us again until the 2004 Holiday Shopping Season is officially in full swing, we thought we'd take this opportunity to make a few suggestions about what you ought to buy when you're checking off that list of loved ones. Sure, we could just keep going on and on about how you should buy scads of really expensive gear via our Amazon.com / Amazon.ca / Amazon.co.uk links so that we can cash the affiliate checks and roll around naked in all the money come January, but we're not going to-- partly because we just did even as we said we wouldn't (man we're sneaky!), but mostly because we've come across the absolutely most perfect gift ever to grace this plane of existence, and despite the fact that such an act runs counter to everything in our nature, we're going to tell you about it even though we won't get a dime.

This is hard for us. Honestly, instead of reminding you that AtAT apparel makes the ideal holiday gift for the drama fiend in your life or that you can get tons of Apple logo merchandise from The Missing Bite to make your Mac-loving friends adore you forever, we're going to take the hit for the team, forgo all that luscious profit, and recommend that you buy everyone a stapler with some ink on it instead, even though we don't get squat when you do.

"A stapler?" you ask; "Yuh-huh" we reply. See, we found this message in our inbox entreating us to "check out our celebrity-autographed staplers!"-- quite possibly the most entertaining subject line we've seen in commercial email since that spam we once got that shouted "CHAIRPAK! Where do you want to sit today?"-- and apparently there's this thing that Staples does every year where they get a hundred or so famous folks each to autograph a stapler, which is then auctioned off to the highest bidder with the proceeds going to a charity of the celebrity's choice. What could be more perfect? Seriously, who wouldn't bust out in tears of overwhelming gratitude when they open the box and see a standard-issue desk stapler signed by one of the twins from Dude, Where's My Car? (She's also apparently in some little show called Alias and smacked around a blind Ben Affleck a bit last year, but to us she'll always be Wilma. Wanda. Whatever.)

To bring this whole thing just slightly on-topic, we should mention how incredibly disappointed we are not to see a Steve Jobs stapler in the listings, but apparently the guy's too busy doing CEO things to take a few seconds to scrawl his name on a piece of office equipment. Bill Gates, on the other hand, was not, and the stapler with his John Hancock on it is currently going for $555. Actually, with a prize like this, forget about giving it away as a gift-- win it for yourself! Aside from being a perfectly good stapler capable of fastening together two, three, or even four sheets of paper, just think of all the great voodoo curses you'll be able to perform once you get your hands on something that Billy-Boy actually touched. Celebrity stapler: $1,000, maybe. Using the dark arts to give said celebrity permanent pus-seeping face boils: priceless.

And then you can just buy something from Amazon to give as a gift instead. Oooo, we're shameless.