Rubbish presents. They've been around for years.
But the times they are a-changing;
in the olden days, even rubbish presents had at least some kind of use.
Like... "comedy" socks. Irritatingly zany, but they still kept your feet warm.
A chocolate orange. It's not thoughtful or original in the slightest, but undeniably tasty.
Or even a horrendous Christmas jumper knitted by your Aunty,
featuring a Ford Cortina on the front but with the perspective all wrong.
Thanks Auntie Gladys.
These days however,
cheap imported techno-tat is completely ruining gift-giving celebrations of all kinds.
Because if someone wants to spend no more than a fiver on you,
they simply buy you a USB gadget.
Yes, it's this unimaginative and half-hearted generosity which has
spawned the creation of a thousand utterly impractical USB-powered products.
There are USB cup warmers, USB mini-Hoovers, USB waving flowers...
These terrible, tacky products now somehow qualify as fully-fledged presents.
It seems that even the most pointless of gadgets can be transformed into the perfect gift,
simply by making them run off USB power and writing 'executive' on the box...
One thing that all USB-based gifts have in common
is that twenty-four hours after being unwrapped, they will inevitably be located in a bin.
In fact, a lot of time would be saved if the gift-giver just got
"cool-usb-gadgets.com" to deliver the gadget directly to a landfill site in China.
What's doubly bad is that USB gadgets also qualify as ironic gifts
i.e. gifts that are apparently so crap they're good,
when in actual fact they're so crap… they're crap.
Basically you're saying "Happy birthday mate, here's your present
it's cheap and crap, but it does spout out barely-discernable catchphrases
from some kids' TV show that you may or may not have liked in the eighties."
The increasingly low costs of technology, paired with the
increasingly high levels of mass delusion that people actually want any of this rubbish,
have ensured that pound shops and eBay are rammed full of
things you can stick in your laptop but still cost under a fiver.
I always thought that technology should be used to enhance society, to advance it.
But when it comes to gift-giving,
it's more corrosive than a leaky Duracell at the bottom of a toolbox.
So what is the most ridiculously redundant plug-in gadget on the market?
Well, for my fiver, it's got to be the USB dog-that-humps-your-keyboard...
Actually, d'you know what, that's brilliant.
No, that's the best thing I've ever seen.
Can we get me one of those? I ne..
Look at it's little face! He's not gonna stop!
It's burning itself into my mind's eye.
