Top Ten Gifts for Your Most Eccentric Friend or Relative

Do you have a friend or relative who is odd and unusual? Or a friend or relative who has everything they need but appreciates unique or weird gifts? Then this list is for you. I have found the weirdest gifts and compiled them all into one handy top ten list.

1.) Bizarre Pet: For this, I would recommend stick bugs. You can often find stick bug eggs on e-bay. Many people in England keep stickbugs as pets, and they are easy to care for, needing only a small living space and ivy or other plants that can be found in one's yard to eat. They don't even need water, really, just for their leaves to be spritzed from time to time. They're also cute and you can hold and handle them.

2.) Weird Game: Shocking Duel is a sadistic but intriguing game in which two players grasp handles that give out electric shocks, first only slight ones, but then as the game continues, the shocks increase gradually. The first person to let go is the winner.

3.) Odd Fashion Device: The Biniki is the world's first "butt bra." And they make them for men and women.

4.) Strange Energy Measurement Device: The Egely Wheel Vitality Meter is a small device created by a scientist named Dr. George Egely. It consists of a small wheel resting precariously on a base with a set of colored lights on it. If someone puts their hand next to (but not touching) the wheel, it will move. It is believed that the wheel moves more rapidly for those with a higher energy (or "vitality") level. The lights indicate how fast the wheel is going. It's also believed that those with very high, focused energy can change the direction of the wheel by willing it so. Egely wheels can be found online.

5.) Crazy Bumper Stickers: There are a ton of create-your-own bumper sticker websites, so why not go to one and create something really random and dada, like "Only the bird knows what the sidewalk really thinks" or "Funky french fries master marital law."

6.) Unusual Dolls: What else would you expect from a bunch of unemployed philosophy majors? The Unemployed Philosophers Guild is a catalogue and website where you can find odd trinkets, from slippers that look like Freud to breath mints called enlightenmints to a coffee mugs filled with Shakespearean quotes. But your best bet is one of the puppet sets: the Great Writers Puppets set comes with magnetic finger puppets of Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Dickens, and Tolstoy, and they come in a box that can be converted to a stage. Then there's the Great Revolutionaries Puppets set. This one consists of Gandhi, Mandela, Che Guevara, and Trotsky. The Great Philosophers Puppets set includes Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, and Plato, and the Great Psychologists Puppets are Freud (of course), Anna Freud, Jung, and a couch. There are more that I haven't mentioned, so check them out for yourself!

7.) Interesting Plants: There is a plant called the telegraph plant (desmodium gyrans) that is very sensitive to touch, sunlight, and heat. When it is stimulated, its leaves rapidly shake back and forth for a few minutes. These aren't native to America but you can buy seeds online and grow them as long as you keep them in warm conditions with incessantly moist soil. Another sensitive plant called the Mimosa Pudica will bend its stalks and close its leaves when its touched and not reopen them until it has not been touched in 30 minutes. Another exciting plant to own is the venus flytrap or any other type of carnivorous plant.

8.) Disturbing Food: Chocolate covered bugs may sound gross, but I've heard they're actually pretty good. Nowadays, they cover ants, crickets, and larva in chocolate. They also put scorpions in lollipops. All totally edible.They make good gifts for anyone who has an insatiable sense of curiosity.

9.) Inexplicable Furniture: Why not buy your beloved eccentric friend or relative a big chair shaped like a hand? That way, they can always feel safe and protected, as though they are sitting in the hand of some large, benevolent creature.

10.) Random Message Sending Into Space: Support science and buy a random gift at the same time. MIT in conjunction with Georgia Tech are planning on sending a spacecraft into space and are asking for donations in turn for putting pictures, messages, and signatures submitted by the donors on the satellite (and MIT's webpage). They then will take pictures of the spacecraft in space. Also, if you choose to put the message on part of the satellite that's returning to earth, they will give you that actual piece of satellite. So put your loved one's name on a satellite, or a note to them, or an inside joke, or a quote they love. That makes for a pretty cool gift. Unexpected and tax deductible.