Evil returns can be bad, it's true. Ah the joys of returning something to Nordstrom's, where my grandfather shopped because it was close and they treated him like a god (he feels that he is a god, and so should always be treated as such, but usually only Nordstrom's obliges) but we lived in Boston and the nearest Nordstrom's was in New Jersey. He bought me Ugg boots in about 1993, way before they were at all cool and were just practical yet hideous.

I like gift cards as long as they're in a reasonable amount for the store they apply to. Like, $25 to Banana Republic? Not a good gift card, because the recipient will almost certainly be forced to spend some of their own money to fill out the cost of an item.

Yes! This. That makes me cranky.

Downtown is pretty deserted. It looks like a lot of people are just staying home.

I'm fine with gift cards. If it means I don't have to schlep shit back in my luggage? (I've been actively lobbying to NOT be given anything this year. It doesn't seem to be working.) Or, in the case of a friend who got married, buying her a whole table saw would have been a little extravagant a gift from me, but with a gift card, I was able to buy a "share" of the table saw.

It'd be kinda weird getting one from someone random , but from family or for certain big events?

I find gift cards a little depressing, actually. I mean, if you get a present you may get bizarrely wrong things, but I don't like trying to pick out my own present. I always feel the need to buy things on sale, or practical things I actually need, and I always have to chip in some of my own cash to cover the ridiculous shipping.

Am I alone in this?

It depends on the gift card, for me. You can buy damn near anything from Amazon, including vibrators. Seriously. So I never have a hard time shopping there. And my feeling with a gift card is, "Hey! I can get that DVD set/rabbit pearl/collected works of Shakespeare that I've been wanting but am too cheap to buy myself."

And, of course, a gift card to a wine store (local, that is -- a bricks-and-mortar store, which you may not have been referring to) makes me giddy happy. I feel guilty spending $40 on 1 bottle of wine if it's my money, b/c I'm cheap, but if it's someone else's money, then I have no problem being self-indulgent.

I've never thought it was weird when I got a table saw from someone random.

The Constitution grants the president authority to wiretap citizens without court approval?

Waaaal, there was a thing on Public Radio this morning explaining where the cloacal logic comes from. Everybody agrees that the president gets a lot more power when the country is at war; there is a law from 2001 that says "the president can do almost anything he wants to to bring those bad, specifically Sept. 11 terrorists to justice;" and, well, this is a president who stocks his departments with bobble-head dolls, so of course they tell him that anything he does is legal.

OTOH, there's a pretty specific law from the 1970s to the effect that wiretapping in excess of 15 days without a FISA (or other) warrant is a big no-no. And, there is no specifically-declared, Congressionally-approved, officially-official War on right now. (Even the administration admits this, trying to rephrase/rebrand the whole thing every couple of months.) And, just because a bobble-head doll tells you yes is not a reason to go forward.

I think we can safely blame all this on Hoover, if we work at it. I am pretty sure the 1970s FISA law is a direct result of evil crap Hoover pulled like COINTELPRO, so if Hoover had never pulled his crap, Congress would never have reacted and passed a law, and the president could fall back on the "well okay I shat on the spirit of the Constitution, but what letter of it did I break?"

Which, I can think of a couple of letters too, but that would take lawsuits and the Supremes and all manner of delay, whereas "You broke this law right here, buddy" does not require somebody in a bathrobe to extrapolate from generalities.

I'm in the "I like gift cards if you paid attention to where I like to shop." Tower Records, great. Visa use-anywhere, well, I'll spend it, but less great.

And my lawyer instincts won't let me get away without saying: Don't sit too long on those gift cards. Some of them start charging fees if you go too long without using them. (This advice not valid in all locations.)

I love gift cards, especially when they're from Target. Yay Target! I still haven't spent the cards I got for my bridal shower (Fredrick's of Hollywood, Victoria's Secret, Aveda Salon), but all of the Target gift cards got used immediately. Teh Awesome.

My in-laws give me gift cards. I am not that complex or picky, I swear, and I even keep and Amazon wish list with books and music and clothes from Lands' End and simple non-intimidating stuff, so it does feel a bit like they are afraid of me (which I think they are, in a general way, because I have sophistication coming out of my bottom, you know) and/or can't be arsed to make a decision.

My ideal would be that the only people who buy me presents would know me so well that they would pick things that I would never have thought to ask for, but love anyway. The people best at this are my mother, Nutty, and rather less reliably (larger percentages of WTF?) my husband and grandfather.