Guys, I’m doing you a big favor here. We women often are often the recipient of gifts that cause us to scratch our heads and go “Huh?”

I’m certainly not saying that the gifts you give have to be expensive, but they should, at the very least, be thoughtful and reflect her taste. You also get major bonus points for creative presentation.

1. Appliances. Unless for some reason you have been specifically instructed to get that Dyson she’s been admiring, don’t go there.

2. Tickets to a game for your favorite team. A CD of your favorite band. A DVD of your favorite movie. You get the picture. Right? If not, then there is truly no hope for you.

3. Perfume you pick because of the packaging. Unless you know exactly what kind of perfume she likes, the worst thing you can do is blithely choose a scent that she might likely hate. She won’t care if it comes in a pretty box or bottle if it stinks.

4. Lingerie. Dude, we know that it isn’t really for us.

5. Fake jewelry and try to pawn it off as real. Nothing could be worse. Nowadays the technology for some of the manufactured stones produces some fantastic looking jewelry, but if you do go that route, never try to pretend otherwise.

6. Tickets to travel somewhere. Unless you have gone ahead and made all of the necessary advance reservations for car, hotel, and anything else. The only things she should have to do are pack and get on the plane/in the car.

7. A gift card. I think that gift cards are handy things you can get for people whose taste you don’t know very well. That group hopefully doesn’t include your significant other.

8. A magazine subscription. No. Just, no.

9. Books with such titles as “How to Look Ten Years Younger” or about the latest diet craze. Unless your goal is to sleep on the couch for a long period of time. If it is, then be my guest.

10. Any gift in which it is obvious you bought in a last minute, desperate attempt to buy something. Anything. We can always tell. And then you are toast.

Ladies, care to chime in?

No jokes here; just a simple guide to donating 100 lbs of food to the Greater Boston Food Bank, for free.

Go to this post, read it and leave a comment and Tyson Foods will donate 100 lbs of food to the food bank for each comment received. No strings, no coupons, no mailing lists.

Thanks to Beth Kanter for passing this along. I’m cross-posting this at all my blogs today and suggest you do the same.

From Will Turnbow via Kotaku

If she gets this when she turns four, what in the name of all that is holy are they going to do for her Sweet Sixteen????

Mix together seven separate cakes, seven batches of rice crispy squares, several pounds of icing, a little fibreoptic cable, a little plywood, a few robotic parts and one magnificently obsessed gamer dad, and you have the birthday cake di tutti birthday cakes, even if I bet her dad cried when they ate the darn thing. What does a SuperMario taste like, anyway?