2024 Holiday Gift Guide
Hurray. It’s time for the Mule Design 2024 Holiday Gift Guide!
Once upon a time, gift shopping was relatively easy. You’d hit the little shops on your main street. The book monger would sell you books, the music monger would sell you records and cassettes, and the toy monger would sell you toys. It was pretty nice, and you even knew some of their names.
Then someone decided to put all those shops under one roof, add a Piercing Pagoda, an Orange Julius, and call it a mall. And it was still kind of alright, I guess. Especially if the mall also had an arcade. But it was a little same-same, and everyone wore name tags but you didn’t know them. (Upside, you didn’t feel as guilty shoplifting cassettes from Sam Goody, cause who the fuck even is Sam Goody?)
Then the world’s most divorced man came along and said “what if you didn’t have to go anywhere and I just sent everything to your house.” And that seemed fine until the day you decided to visit your local book monger, they were gone, and the world’s most divorced man was flying to space inside a giant dick.
Now you can’t even do that anymore cause everything online is shit, google doesn’t work anymore, your vacuum cleaner picked up a piece of yarn on Saturday and by Sunday your instagram is nothing but $4 sweaters, and you’re wondering what kind of bullshit is gonna show up at your door.
WE 👏 DID 👏 THIS 👏 TO 👏 OURSELVES.
Anyway, we rounded up some nice shit for you. As always, we hope this selection of shit you can find online is a COMPLIMENT to visiting your local shops. They really are the best.
Our friend John Voss made this delightful cap for angry people. As he says: “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.” So there you go. Buy one. (Do it soon, they’re made to order.)
Our friend Rosemary Campbell (yeah, this is pretty much gonna be people we know. We know good people. Chill the fuck out.) has been making very cool trans zines, including my favorite, George Costanza Is a Beautiful Transsexual Woman. I’d be mad at her for thinking up that title before I did, except that she nailed it, which I respect.
Our friend Lucy Bellwood made these delightful plush demons which you should buy for every child you know because they are guaranteed to make children weird, and we need weirder children now more than ever. Weird children don’t call the cops.
This seems topical: the nice folks at BroadSides made a delightful sticker in celebration of our right to bear arms. It’s only $5. I suggest you buy a LOT.
In the interest of sparing your mailbox from downloading more images, let’s switch to a simple list with delightful emojis:
📆 If you’re into real calendars, it’s time to switch away from that giant swiss type calendar (yawn) and get yourself a wall calendar from Eric Kenney at Heavyslime. (Eric is not my friend. I ran out of friends two posts ago.)
🧳 Looking for a new back pack? I can’t recommend the Peak Designs Everyday Backpack enough! Great storage options, and works really well if you’re riding a bike. Hurry though, they’re hard to find.
🧰 Everyone has the right to go to the bathroom. So when you see a porta-potty with a lock on it, be good samaritan and liberate it by popping the lock off with these handy folding bolt cutters from Steelman that fit in a standard packpack. (Ergonomic handles!)
📘 Want to find out how disinformation works and what we can do about it? Annalee Newitz lays it all out in Stories Are Weapons. Annalee is great at making difficult topics a joy to learn about. It is very much worth your time.
🏛️ Sometimes you need to talk to someone at the bank, but they’re closed. You might want to leave a message on their door. To make sure it’s still there in the morning you should wheat paste it. (And yes, you can make your own, but not everyone has the time.)
🎵 Y’all probably got better musical taste than I do, but I’ve really been enjoying the new Michael Kiwanuka. (I could also point you to the new Kendrick, which is great, but let’s be real… if you’re finding out about that album from me… ehh.)
🎄 Having Christmas dinner with your family but they keep misgendering your sister? The Orion Safety Air Horn from Sportsman’s Warehouse can serve as a gentle reminder to “call them in.”
🎹 There is no stupider way to listen to music than vinyl. And there is no stupider way to listen to vinyl than a Stokyo Portable Turntable. I love it so much. (There is also a DJ set which is currently out of stock, and I’m hoping SOMEONE IN MY HOUSE got the last one.)
📚 Also, buy all our books, dammit.
🏳️⚧️ or you could skip buying all of this bullshit you don’t need and donate all your money to Trans Lifeline. That would be nice.
Happy holidays everyone!