Last minute gifts from left field

By John DeFore

This is the hour of desperation. Brains have been wracked, stores ransacked and yet some holes remain in your Who’s Getting What list.

We feel your pain, and would like to introduce a few oddball suggestions for that loved one who simply doesn’t need a conventional gift. Consider some of these items to be little talismans of inspiration as much as literal suggestions . . . If you’re reading this past the deadline to order online, look upon these ideas to guide you in your final burst of mall frenzy.

• The Ugly Doll ($6-$50): A fixture in hipster gift shops for a few years now, the uglies retain their novelty and charm. While clearly adorable in their own strange way, they also have an edge that says “This is not your kid sister’s stuffed animal.” We suspect they’re secretly coveted by adults as well as kids, and are interested to note the arrival of smaller sizes (right down to a $6 keychain line) more conducive to covert ownership by grown-ups who need to maintain some level of surface maturity. (Also available: a $10 card game that’s fast-paced and kid-friendly.)
• The String Doll Gang ($10): Adults who wouldn’t be caught dead with a doll can always claim these tiny misfits are Christmas-tree ornaments — we’ll look the other way when they stick around after the tinsel comes down. Hand-made in Thailand from a single piece of string, each little guy has his own personality and a card describing his unique purpose in life. (For example, Safety Boy “will help you recover from your injuries quickly,” while Monster Man “helps you to see the beauty inside the not-so-beautiful.”)
• Bird Songs and its companion Bird Songs from Around the World ($45 each): You don’t have to be a dedicated birder, or even a naturalist, to appreciate the neat gimmick of these two books, which combine single-page illustrated profiles of different bird species (250 in the first book, 200 in the second) with recordings — played by an audio device attached to the book — of the distinctive song each makes.
• Domo X Mimobot ($49.95): Anybody with a computer can always use a USB Flash Drive, which is like a keychain-sized hard disk that lets you transport big chunks of data with ease. But it’s a pretty dull stocking stuffer on its own — unless dressed up like the Mimobot line, which combines the craze for designer vinyl toys with office utility. Our favorite takes the form of Domo-kun, the cheery monster mascot of Japanese TV station NHK. (Domo comes pre-loaded with some software goodies as well, including icons and a screen-saver for your desktop.)
• The Gorillapod (starting at $24.95): A step or three up from the standard tripod, this creature-like device has bendable arms that allow shutterbugs not only to stabilize cameras on uneven surfaces, but to attach them to tree branches, bicycle handlebars and all sorts of odd places.
• Vling ($14.99-$19.99): Year-round, Alarm Industries makes hipster earrings and necklaces out of used vinyl records. They made a small seasonal addition to their line, with some cute snowflake tree ornaments (and matching earrings) sure to be a hit with the old-school music lover on your list.
• House of Cards ($35): Not playing cards of the Jack-Queen-King variety, this classic deck — dreamed up by legendary designers Charles and Ray Eames — features a different colorful pattern on each card, and is notched in the sides, allowing tabletop architects to build extravagant structures that won’t collapse with the first sneeze.
• Hammerpress Collection ($16.95): Designed by a company that has carried vintage letterpress techniques into the desktop printing age, these spiral bound notebooks and pleasingly archaic correspondence cards are almost too cool-looking to spoil with a grocery list or thank-you note.
• TV-B-Gone ($19.99): For the cantankerous crank on your list who is driven mad by the proliferation of TVs in public places like waiting rooms and restaurants, this astounding gadget is essentially a universal remote with a single function: Aim it at a TV, press the button, and the power goes off. The keychain-sized gizmo already works impressively well, but a new PDA-sized model is planned that will work on more models of TV and greatly increase the unit’s range.
• The Annoy-a-tron ($9.99): For the prankster on your list who prefers to add nuisances to public places rather than remove them, this matchbook-sized circuit board can be magnetically anchored to the underside of a co-worker’s desk or the top of a roommate’s fridge, where it will intermittently emit a horrible beep every few minutes. (The interval between beeps changes at random, making it all the more infuriating to locate and stop.) Nobody’s claiming this represents the spirit of Christmas . . .
• Smart Mass ($9.99): The Annoy-a-tron above is currently available as a bonus freebie for anyone ordering $30 or more worth of stuff from Think Geek, a web retailer of all sorts of offbeat diversions. One of the cooler things in their catalog is Smart Mass, which is like a brainy cousin to Silly Putty. It’s a “dilatant compound,” which means it has different physical properties depending what kind of force is applied to it. That means this stretchy, squishy material allegedly will shatter if you hit it with a hammer — though we were too busy using it as a stress-ball to test that property.

Come to think of it, a good handful of that tension-absorbing stuff might be just what a stressed-out Santa could use himself this week.