If you are like many Americans (no offense), you are knee-deep in The Holidays and you don’t care about Fiscal Cliff. I mean, you know about Fiscal Cliff, and you know there are politicians and the president of the United States of America involved, and they are supposed to fix it, so fine, fix it, right? We are in the middle of The Holidays! What are We The People paying your salary for, with our taxes? I pay all kindsa taxes! I didn’t ask for Fiscal Cliff! It’s almost Xmas! Why are you ruining my The Holidays with all this talk about Fiscal? You make the stuff about the Mayan [...]

Christmas is nearly upon us. Are you prepared? Let us help with this guide to gifting for every occasion. All of the gifts here are certified by us as things that people actually would truly like to receive this holiday season. (Hint, hint.)

JUST TRINKETS

Hermes leather coffee cup holder. $195.

Today, Patricia Marx goes shopping with men in the New Yorker! (Yes, subscription-only, so, sadtrombone.wav.) The whole thing is a really quite largely useful guide for men who are baffled and scared, from Brooks Brothers to Bergdorf Mens' Store to 20 Peacocks (although just don't even go in that Ralph Lauren store, gross), and you should note that Ms. Marx's male friend really ought to have bought the blue Zegna suit at Bergdorfs, it's gorgeous. But here is the most relevant passage to our interests. The Tom Ford store on Madison Ave. is America's greatest shopping treature! I bet it was that haughty Russian shopboy Nikolai! No, but seriously: [...]

I texted my sister: I'm realizing I need to invest in a food processor with a shredder wheel. This is pioneer cooking kugel, and she replied, hahah well it will bring you closer to your ancestors who made kugel the same way.

This all comes after I've asked her if she wants the kugel to be from both of us, and if so, if she can kick in a few bucks for my train ticket to Long Island tomorrow, because I've just dropped, like, twelve bucks at Whole Foods on these yams. The farmers market yesterday had none, and the produce at the supermarket by me is… well, I [...]

Got $225k going spare? Why not get yourself a robotic doppelganger? Kokoro, a Japanese robotics firm, will create the sitting robot out of silicone with the same face, body shape, hair and eyes of the recipient. Their speech will be based on recordings of the owner's voice.

The android's facial expressions and upper body will be modeled on the movements of the buyer.

Unfortunately it won't be able to walk so you couldn't take your double with you to the shops, nor will it be sophisticated enough to sit in for you at the office.

But you can probably still have sex with it. And, really, isn't that the [...]

Designer Gareth Pugh really is wonderful because he makes really messed-up things for ladies to wear, hence why you see the Space Vampire Rihanna putting that business on. But the biggest problem in fashion (of fashion's eight biggest problems) today-designers who make great crazy things for women but can't figure out what to do with men-is his huge stumbling block. Let us take a tour of the floor of Barneys, and we will tell you how much it costs to dress up as a really gay guy from the future next Halloween.

Now that we are experiencing The Holidays—and don’t kid yourself about that—I would like to extend a belated happy Black Friday to anyone who observed or experienced that Holiday, or whatever it is exactly, like maybe an Economic Day of Obligation? Non-religious Holy Day?

I don’t agree too much with the idea of Black Friday, and I try to not judge people who want to have Black Friday. You wanna shop, go and do that thing. Shop till you pop, Black Friday, and now, what, Thanksgiving, Brown Thursday, they got you shopping now? Wowee, go ahead and go shopping on Black Friday Eve, fine. They might run out of [...]

"If Hollywood had a bad summer at the Box Office, I think we can all agree that was because Green Lantern sucked, not that 'David After Dentist' was so good on YouTube that we all stayed home." —What happens when all books are free, as they are at Baltimore's The Book Thing?

Why is Walmart spending a seven-figure sum to fight a $7,000 fine levied against it by Federal safety officials after the 2008 incident at a Valley Stream, N.Y., store that ended in an employee being trampled to death? Because they don't want the government to tell them how to treat their employees, mannnn: "[In] fighting the federal fine, Wal-Mart is arguing that the government is improperly trying to define 'crowd trampling' as an occupational hazard that retailers must take action to prevent." You mean, the government wants to tell retailers that maybe using the term "Blitz Line" when opening the floodgates for people in search of cheap DVD players [...]

Wow, Cintra Wilson's discussion of which variety of expensive objects one might put in and around one's vagina today in the New York Times is kind of amazing.

Tom Ford, whose movie A Single Man made $216,328 this weekend in its very limited release, makes, as we have noted, excruciatingly expensive and gorgeous clothes for men. (Women's clothes coming soon-as soon as he raises $50 million to do the line, which, oh my God, it's going to be all made out of ostrich saliva and platinum leaf, I guess?) In particular, in his recent seasons of ties, not a single one of them was bad. But, while my back was turned, apparently Tom Ford just dumped a bunch of men's stuff for next season on the market? And it is REVOLTING.

"I logged on at 12 sharp, and I actually was able to place a summer dress and a sweater that I really liked in my cart. I was told that the items would be held for ten minutes while I continued shopping…. Only after I had completed the transaction did I realize what an ingenious strategy the Gilt Groupe employs. From the minute the sale begins, there is this pressing time constraint and all your most primal hunting/fighting/dominating instincts start coursing through your veins and I found myself in an absolute sweat as I scrolled through the items looking for something, anything that wasn't sold out, and that would [...]

This wonderful new browser plug-in will inform you how many tiny fingers made that garment or handbag you are searching for online. I find this highly useful. The number of child laborers is sort of equivalent to thread count for sheets. The more tiny fingers worked upon it, the more valuable it must be. I think that's their point at least. (via)

After weeks of what Shon Kay at one point described to me as "march, cops, march, cops," this was going to be something new. Occupy Oakland was going shopping.

Shon has been an integral member of the Occupy Oakland media committee since its inception. When I hear critics say OO doesn't understand media relations, I think of people like Shon—and I think of plans like this one, and their role in the days since all the encampments were cleared.

Over the course of the week prior, Shon organized a group of participants who planned strategy. Last Friday, on the busiest shopping day of the year, about 25 gathered [...]

Never, ever get arrested for thieving while awaiting trial for shoplifting. Andrew Parker (real last name Pollack!) did that this week, when he is said to have used someone else's Amex to get two Hermes bags for $11,595… Hey,$5797.50 each, after tax?? Why is he getting a better Hermes discount that me?

The great Yuletide consumer potlatch has been a distinctly muted affair in our understimulated, recession-battered economy. The Elmos and Wiis of flusher times seem to mock us, in that garish mechanical way of theirs, from across the chasm that we created, when all that was solid-not least the multileveraged roofs over our heads-melted into air. And all that's to say nothing, of course, of the high-end dosh that, in a perfect world, would punctuate another productive year of giddy pelf-procuring. So how best to honor the complex holiday mandates of pecuniary display in such a chastened new order? High-end-shopping Financial Times blogger Lucia Van der Post has just the thing: [...]

Look, I like some expensive products. It's because I have extraordinarily good taste! Mmm, do I ever. But the Christmas wish list stories everywhere are driving me crazy, because the stuff on them is pricey garbage. Here's a contribution from W Accessories Director Brooke Magnaghi!