Decorate your tree with adaptively reused circuit boards, then buy presents

like this American Gulag bracelet from richterstudios inc,

or wineglasses from the Eden Project store

or a paper pot maker

or a personal solar panel

or a Rockbox open source mp3 player (photo by Andrew Mason).

or a MAKE warranty voider (go on, you know you want one) or any number of other geeky goodies from The Open Source Gift Guide or good gifts from the Good Gifts Catalogue.

Wrap them with last year’s reused wrapping paper (that always feels so pov but hey, Christmas is a stupid idea anyway), or check out some equally pov ideas from curbly

then set your fruit clock and if you’ve been a good primate all year (I have, I have!)

Santa* just might bring you the Christmas present you dream of……

* the existence of Santa is only a theory and is disputed by many children. However, it hardly needs saying that if Santa doesn’t bring the presents, who does? If there is no Santa why are pictures of him seen everywhere in stores and on cards? Furthermore, without Santa’s commandment to “Be good or you won’t get any presents” everyone would be bad and western civilisation would collapse. The “Christmas Conspiracy” theory, that all parents in the world secretly buy presents for their children on the same day every year, is so clearly paranoid and implausible that only anarchists, communists and other unbalanced secular extremists continue to defend it.

probably the greatest investigative journalist that ever lived and a birthday far more worth celebrating than Christmas - after all, at least we know Izzy Stone actually existed. He is now justly recognised as the proto-blogger, the journalist-activist whose relentless campaigning exposed Maccarthyism and racism and the fraudulence of the Tonkin Gulf incident that was the excuse for US intervention in Vietnam. As Wikipedia says

as an outspoken leftist journalist working in often hostile environments, Stone’s stories needed to meet an extremely high burden of proof to be considered credible.

He was often wrong but admitted it, more often right but suspicious of himself when he was and always willing to revise his opinons when more facts became available - as a youthful communist fellow traveller he later criticised Stalinism and as a zionist supporter of the foundation of Israel he later developed sympathy for the Palestinians. He was a man who tried his best to never be blinded by ideology and wishful beliefs of either the right or the left. Truly a figure for our times.

He was also a modest self-critical man distrustful of honours, but he had a great sense of humour. (see Jerry Brucks 1973 film I.F Stones Weekly). He might have enjoyed the joke of being honoured with his own day as long as the right presents were given. What presents would it be appropriate to give on Izzy Stone Day? Well, we’ve found just the place to get them, Individual Icons whose adaptively reused hardware is described as “jewellery that works”.

There is the magnifying glass necklace for close examination,

the plumb bob necklace to help you stay upright

and the spirit level necklace to keep you on the level,

a ruler bangle to help keep things in proportion,

thermometer earrings for when the heat is on

and a compass ring so you don’t get lost.

Some odds and ends like grommets and Phillips head earrings can come in handy too, just to hold everything together.

And in case it all turns nasty,

you should wear a bullet proof rose.

Made of black heavy-weight ballistic grade nylon, this “bulletproof” bloom will protect your heart and love in times of conflict.

You can get it from Generate. Have a Merry Izzy Stone Day!

Perhaps wearing real beer goggles during this orgy of materialism and false bonhomie may innoculate against the alcoholically derived version. They are made from actual beer bottles

and if you want to accessorise you can get a ring and a tie to show conclusively that you really are a complete twat.

We found them on Boing Boing so by now the entire world has probably tried to check them out and Urban Spectacles’ site has crashed from overload.

    

They also make frames from wood and reused materials like record vinyl, including glow-in-the-dark old Kraftwerk albums.

Antipode is one of those sites that is so pretentious that it’s impossible to work out what it’s actually on about although it’s fairly clear that it’s showcasing contemporary jewellery. But we really like the work of one of the featured artists, David Poston, who reuses tin cans.

The world is full of adaptively reused tin cans and we tend to ignore them simply because they are ubiquitous but David Poston’s Reincarnation of Tins series is piss elegant and his statement appealed to us.

He says:

The greater the significance claimed by Art and the more preciousness with which it is regarded, the less it actually has. The same goes for artists.

A potter friend once explained to me that the world gave him huge amounts of input that he digested and was nourished by. The work that he made, his little green-brown pots, were merely the by-product of this process of nourishment, described as his ‘turds’. These turds, though by-products, are indicators of what has been digested and understood, and of the journey that has been travelled.

This makes sense to me.

It makes sense to us too but it seems a bit odd given the site’s overall approach - precious is the perfect word for it.

But while we are on a metalico-religious bent, here is balm for our inner plumber. Have a look at this manorah made from one of our favourite raw materials, galvanised pipe.

And it too comes from a pretty strange site, Notschlock, which is all set up with shopping cart, FAQ (”What forms of payment do you accept?”), etc but only one page and this one item for sale. We checked FAQ but found no answer to our question, “Why?”