It’s the beginning of the holiday season, which means every newspaper, magazine, TV channel, and web site is rolling out their annual gift guide of expensive stuff your cheap ass will never buy for anyone. Particularly in this economic climate, more useful would be a re-gift guide, which would help you target not only the useless crap other people bought you in the past, but also the junk you want to get rid of. Thusly (?) inspired, we came up with a modest list. Enjoy and please add your own to the comments.

1. Ugly Clothes Your Mom Bought You. It’s sweet when your 71 year old mother thinks she knows what’s in style – sweet, because you can re-gift it the next year! Just keep it in the box and wrap ‘er up again. When they ask what you were doing in Ocean Reef, Florida, a retirement community, say you were visiting. Note: do NOT include the receipt from last year (this goes for all re-gifts).

2. Self-Help Books. Keeping a self-help book hanging around is just depressing. You bought it, read twenty or so pages, and now it’s time to gift that to someone else. Matching the problem tackled in the book to the person you’re giving it to is a bonus, but not at all necessary. For example, I gave “The Ultimate Guide To Cunnilingus” to my great Aunt, and she loved it.

3. Stamps. Who hasn’t been the “does anyone have a stamp” jerk in the office? When you re-gift those stamps that have been sitting on your desk for over year, the grateful recipient will not be, at least for awhile. Just hope the Postal Service doesn’t go bankrupt before they can use it.

4. Trader Joe’s Frozen Food From Your Freezer. That huge bag of shrimp never really got eaten. Dammit, another $4.95 down the drain….not! Just put it in a gift bag, make a neat card with a note saying something like “happy shrimp-a-days! (put this in your freezer now)” and watch their eyes light up.

5. A Basket Of Assorted Unused Items From Your Bathroom. This is a great opportunity to use the straw basket you saved from some present from last year. Go into your bathroom, and choose between 5 and 20 things that you have not, and will not, use. Items will likely include: hair gel; herbal sleep aids (they don’t work); condoms; dental floss; Crest Whitestrips.

6. An Internet Gift. You might think, “hey! A gift from the internet costs money!” That’s not what we’re taking about. Just take one of the free things from the internet, and gift it to someone. A few ideas include: a pre-setup Twitter account; a photograph of a present on their Facebook wall; a poll; a link to one of those chances to get a free iPad; an introduction to a Russian bride service.