Your Last-Minute Stoner Gift Guide

The snow's gone, the roads are clear, and the mailfolk deliver on Sunday because greed is a machine that will consume us all. That's why there's no excuse for lateness for your Christmas gifts and why, for the fourth year in a row, I was still hustling to get in the Last-Minute Stoner Gift Guide. Don't worry: There are still gewgaws aplenty. Yuletide blessings to you and yours!

Clipper lighter
Bundle of six for $7.89 on amazon.com.

The Clipper is a refillable midcentury Spanish lighter designed with the workaday hand-roller in mind. The lighter's tubular body angles jauntily near the top so the butane flame is both long enough to curl over the edge of a bowl and safely spaced from burnable flesh. The star-shaped lighter wheel is fun to flick, and the flint doubles as a detachable tamper. Bics are iconic in their own right, but the Clipper is an unsung classic and makes for a delightful stocking stuffer.

Animal skulls
$15-$75 at Paxton Gate, 4204 N Mississippi Ave., paxtongate.com.

Can I interest you in an animal skull? Paxton Gate has whole drawers of them. You've got your beavers, your minks, your coyotes, your standard mice. Skull after skull after skull. Paint on an alligator skull next Dias de los Muertos! Stuff a nutria and have it hold its own species skull in an elaborate Hamlet homage! Huck an empty turtle shell against a wall! The world is your oyster when you own a bunch of animal skulls.

The Nuggy
$29.70 at nugtools.com.

The Nuggy is essentially a Swiss Army knife, except it's green and egg-shaped and stacked with smoking tools. There's a pick, tamper, roach clip, bowl scraper, and tiny dab spoon. There's a flashlight for illuminating searches for dropped bud and a pair of curved scissors that look like something out of the Saw franchise. The piece has some heft, making it too bulky for a regular pocket carry, but the variety of gizmos will come in handy if it's stashed near a smoking station.

Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life
$29.95 at Powell's Books, powells.com.

Much of Charley Harper's work centered on distilling the shapes and colors of natural life into minimalist scenes of balance, whimsy and dramatic action. A raptor's shadow passes over a family of ground squirrels dashing for cover; prairie beasts flee a grassland fire; a grizzly fishes a creek, hunger rendered as a tangle of white tracks deep in her gut. An Illustrated Life captures the best of Harper's work in one tome, and features more than 400 pages of biology-centric action edited and arranged by designer Todd Oldham into a tidy package perfect for perusing post-toke.

The Dopen
$59.99 at thedopen.com.

The Dopen is an elegant iteration on the pen vape. First, it's better-looking than standard pens, with color schemes like gold and white, and oxblood. It's also topped with a clipped cap discretely resembling a high-quality fountain pen while simultaneously keeping the mouthpiece clear of lint and protecting pockets from leaky cartridges. But it's the Dopen's durability that users like most. Vapes can be cobbled together at a lower price, but they're often janky and prone to battery failure. The Dopen is built to last.

Art supplies
Prices vary.

I usually like to recommend a video game at Christmas, when all the best games are out, and because video gaming is a complicated art form that gets too little credit. But we're entering a new year in a changed America, and gaming may not be the most productive use of our leisure time. It's time to create, not consume. It's time to produce good work, to push back the darkness and strife rending our world. It's time to pursue meaning and purpose. Maybe painting isn't your expression. Maybe your calling is to write or sing or sew or whittle. The point is, listen to that generative voice and follow it…

Battlefield 1
$59.99 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

…right after another round of Conquest. Go all Gavrilo Princip and relive the Great War by impaling an Austrian machine-gunner with a bayonet while simultaneously succumbing to chlorine gas! Those were the good old days, back when horses still worked for war and before we had to worry about nukes.