Wednesday, December 6, 2006

RWA Christmas party

My local RWA chapter is having its holiday party tomorrow night. Our tradition is a white elephant gift exchange where we don't unwrap the gifts till the game is over, so you try to package your gift so the wrapping alone will make people fight over it. One way is to wrap it in hot guys, because we are, after all, an almost exclusively female organization devoted to the writing of love stories. So there are always a few people who show up with beefcake gift bags.

The first year I went to the party, I decided to make my own man wrapping paper related to my writing. I wrapped a box in fairly generic Christmas paper, labeled it "why Susan writes Regencies" and glued pictures of various hot actors in period attire all over it. I had Colin Firth as Darcy, Ioan Gruffudd as Hornblower, Sean Bean as Sharpe, etc., and it was a big hit. Last year I went with the men I would pick if I got to choose my own cover models.

This year I couldn't think of a theme for the longest time. Just a few days ago I decided to do Stephen Colbert's Formula 401 for Women. For those of you unfamiliar with the Colbert Report, he purports to be selling his sperm to female fans. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good image of the packaging he uses on the show, but I found a few geek-sexy Colbert images and decided I'd just glue them to a plain wrapping paper background, label it, and call it good.

One problem: the wrapping paper I bought this week is so flimsy as to be useless. I ransacked the house looking for something else to use, and found exactly one roll of wrapping paper.

A roll I bought for a baby shower a few months ago. It has duckies and booties and teddy bears all over it. And, now, pictures of Stephen Colbert mugging for the camera. Everyone is going to think I'm WEIRD. But that's OK, because they're right. And, you know, at least it kind of fits the Formula 401 thing...

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