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Nearly in time for your holiday spending spree, here’s a miscellaneous collection of stuff I think is neat. I’ve searched the entire planet to bring you the most intriguing stuff money can buy, at an incredible value to you. Well, not really, but you get the idea.

By the way, any of these gifts would be welcome under my own dead evergreen, if I were the sort of person who would chop down a tree to celebrate a modern secular interpretation of an old religious holiday (not that my respect for the local flora should prevent you from sending a present).

Disclaimer: none of the items listed herein should be considered a substitute for sound advice from a medical professional. By the same token, they are no substitute for really good sex, or even marginal sex. On the plus side, most of these won’t require you to make awkward small talk afterwards.

Gifts for Foodies

This is the best bread knife in the world. I’ve tried a half-dozen different bread knives and saws over the years, but none of them are fit to lick the crumbs from this slicing machine. It is equally suitable — by which I mean superior — for day-old multigrain sourdough as for oven-warm focaccia. The killer feature that differentiates this knife from its competition is the bowed blade, which not only prevents the operator’s fingers from grinding into the cutting surface, but more importantly provides an easy way to apply leverage for cutting through the heavy bottom crusts of hearth-baked breads. Unbowed blades require the operator to cut the crust with the knife tip, which is neither safe nor effective.

The gift that keeps on giving: cookie- and brownie-of-the-month subscriptions from Allison’s Gourmet. Normally I wouldn’t suggest subjecting anyone to a regular dose of white sugar, refined flour, and butterfat; I’m making an exception here because the white sugar is organic cane juice, the refined flour is organic whole-wheat, and the butterfat comes from soybeans. That’s right, kids: vegan baked goods. Disclaimer: I haven’t actually tasted these. If they’re horrible, talk to Allison, not me. It’s a neat idea in any case.

For more foodie gifts, see my Pizza Tools Roundup (which covers breadmaking tools too) and my cookbook/bread book reviews.

Miracle Foods

Flax seeds are one of a very few foods that probably won’t kill you. Further, while they’re not killing you, they’ll give you a big dose of fiber, cancer-fighting lignans, and omega-3 fatty acids. The two keywords to remember are golden and organic. If you can’t get these in the bulk-foods aisle at the nearest grocery or healthfood store, you can find them online, even at Amazon.com.

You’ll want to grind the seeds before eating them, or they’ll pass right through you, like buckshot through flannel. Buy an inexpensive coffee grinder, like this $20 Braun KSM2, and dedicate it to flax grinding. Don’t put your french roast in there unless you enjoy your flax with mocha.

Tibetan Goji berries look like dwarf red raisins and taste like cranberries, more or less. They contain 500 times as much vitamin C by weight as oranges — they’re the second-richest source of vitamin C on the planet. (The richest source of vitamin C, of course, is Linus Pauling’s urine.)

Goji berries are packed with 18 amino acids and antioxidants. And they actually don’t taste like vomit, unlike some of the other miracle foods I sampled at the Green Festival. Eat goji berries like raisins or any other dried fruit. The best prices I can find are from the Tibetan Goji Berry Company, although if you’re not ready to buy in bulk you can get decent prices at (you guessed it) Amazon.com: ~$28 for a starter bag (4-6 weeks’ worth).

Nothing says “I love you” like a big bucket of fat. Virgin Coconut Oil is reputed to boost energy, fight yeast infections, and relieve digestive disorders. Most importantly, it’s the foundation of a better Thai curry, which is reason enough to keep some at hand.

Gifts for Musicians

I listed Etymotic ER-6 headphones in a previous edition of this gift guide, but they’re worth featuring again because I’ve discovered another application for which they are superior: they’re the best headphones I’ve ever used for recording music.

Most over-the-ear headphones do a lousy job of insulating the user from ambient sound. In a recording studio, this has two unfortunate effects:

1. the user can’t hear his headphone mix if the room is loud (which is always the case for drummers)
2. the microphones can hear the headphone mix. Headphone bleed is not usually a big problem, but these Etymotic headphones make it easy to avoid.

The ER-6 headphones provide significantly more isolation than do any other style of headphones. This means both the user and the mics hear exactly what they’re supposed to, with no cross-pollution. These are ideal for any acoustic musician: horn players, guitarists, drummers, stringed instrument (e.g. dulcimer) players, etc. Anyone who relies on microphones to capture sound will benefit. And they’re damn fine headphones for your iPod, too.

Pete Frame’s Rock Family Tree diagrams are everything your CD liner notes are not. There are two volumes described briefly here, showing the incestuous life cycle of dozens of great band, from Zeppelin to the Police, from King Crimson to the Sex Pistols. See also the Jethro Tull example I put together.

Every gigging drummer you know needs at least one 90° XLR mic cable, to keep the cable on the snare mic out of the way. Soundmen sometimes carry these cables… but sometimes they don’t, and than that honking SM57 with the cable shooting straight out the back is exactly, precisely, in the way.

The Tape Op book is a must-have for musicians interested in recording. It contains the best articles from the first few years of the magazine of the same name, which unlike most studio magazines covers inexpensive ways to get great sounds…

…although you’re still welcome to buy a fancy-ass large-diaphragm condenser mic if you want to.

Gifts for Home Theater Aficionados

Don’t laugh; I really am going to suggest a $1900 gift. I bought a plasma TV over the summer without ever having seen it. It was a huge risk, but it was well worth it — the picture quality is incredible. I just realized that Amazon beats my special mafioso pricing by over $200. Check it out: the Panasonic TH-42PWD6UY, $1895 at Amazon.com.

That plasma monitor has no speakers, but there are great inexpensive choices to be found:

• Rogersound Labs Digital Fidelity One is a 3-piece sub/sat set that is, according to reviews I’ve seen, certain to outperform anything else in its price range ($60!). It comes with a money back guarantee. They’ll probably look better on your desk than in your den, though.
• The Logitech Z-2300 is a THX-certified 3-piece (sub/sat) speaker system that sells for $108 and was reviewed very well at Macintouch.

Green Gifts

The NightStar is a Faraday flashlight. It has no batteries: it gets its power from the interaction of magnetic fields. You can leave it under the bed or in the glove box for 10 years and it will still work when you reach for it. There is no bulb to break, no batteries to expire or corrode. These flashlights are waterproof, unbreakable, and cool as hell: a must-have for hikers, campers, fisherpeople, and anyone who thinks landfills full of AAA batteries are a bad thing. These “shakelights” cost more than dimestore flashlights, but remember that they last forever with an ongoing maintenance cost of $0. I bought one last month and it makes me smile every time I use it.

The Union of Concerned Scientists is my favorite eco-nonprofit. The UCS is a group of non-partisan scientists who won’t stand for bullshit from either major political party nor any megacorporation. They’re our best advocates for sanity in the debates around the food supply, clean vehicles, energy, and the environment. Give a Gift Membership for $25; the recipient will get two copies of the glossy UCS magazine plus four newsletters full of timely eco-news and an opportunity to easily send messages to senators and representatives regarding current legislation.