Need gifts? Allow me to suggest

Is it too late to order the Richard Nixon birdhouse? Gosh, I hope not. If you search the museum store at Nixonlibrary.org, you'll see that the ''cozy re-creation of Richard Nixon's boyhood home," miniaturized for our flu-bearing, evolutionary forebears, may have sold out. But the White House bird hutch (''Impress your fine feathered friends with a White House of their very own!!") is still available for just $99.

By way of a public service, I am proposing some last-minute gift ideas for the holidays. Alas, it seems too late to purchase the $12 million gift certificate that would have kept Johnny Damon patrolling center field for the Carmine Hose. But you can probably still overnight a pair of roller skates -- better yet, a portable helicopter -- to your transportation-challenged friends in New York City.

Legal Sea Foods executive Roger Berkowitz has been blanketing the airwaves hawking mail-order lobster, but Los Angeles Times writer Roy Rivenburg alerts me to these more politically charged food ideas: (1) Contra Café, ''a uniquely smooth and full-bodied coffee grown by former Nicaraguan Contras," from contracafe.com. Not available in decaf, the website explains, because ''freedom fighters love caffeine."

And (2) Iraqi Road ice cream, peddled from the starspangledicecream.com website, along with other such flavors that Ben and Jerry would choke on, such as Gun Nut and I Hate the French Vanilla. In case you still want the lobster, it's available at legalseafoods.com, but it ain't cheap.

Isn't this sweet? You know those touching and always-original Christmas letters that people send around this time of year? ''Johanna has a new job. . . . Jonny is prospering in his latest venture"? Now someone is selling theirs on the Internet, for only $29.99!

Yes, Doug and Diane Hughes of Santa Clara, Calif., are selling copies of their 142-page Christmas letter, ''Hughes News," off of the print-on-demand website lulu.com. It's a D-Day level invasion of privacy. You can read young Kaitlin Hughes's college admission essay; Kaitlin is interested in the field of ''Nutrition and Dietetics" and tells about her Advanced Placement English paper ''on how the diet of Madame Emma Bovary may have contributed to her depression and eventual suicide." Yes, if the adultery doesn't get you, the creme fraiche will.

Now that the laws on electronic surveillance have been suspended, your top priority will be to listen in on other people's phone calls. You don't have the 30,000-person National Security Agency working for you, but there are still plenty of handy-dandy snooping devices out there.

You may or may not want to start out with the unfortunately named ''Basement Bugger's Bible," available on amazon.com, which does provide some helpful eavesdropping tips using off-the-shelf technology from Radio Shack. And thespystore.com will sell you useful gizmos like the TeleSpy Remote Audio Monitoring Device, which the website insists ''should be used only in a legal and lawful manner." If anyone complains, tell them George Bush sent you.

Two members of my family already prefer animals to people, and I sense that I may be heading in that direction. How else to explain my fascination with the magazine New York Dog? (In the November issue: ''My Dog Is Gay." In the December issue: ''Is My Dog Bi-Polar?") I suspect their advertisers, like raw food purveyor barfdirect.com, would be happy to fulfill your last-minute gift needs.

Pet Science Labs (petattoos.com) is a big NYD advertiser, offering such must-have items as astrologically aligned dog bowls and temporary ''petattoos," including one that would look just right on Johnny Damon's forehead: ''I [Heart] NY." Canine art is also big, with at least two four-legged Picassos selling their wares. At dognoseart.com, you can sample the creations of a 13-year-old schnauzer named Oscar, who ''finds great inspiration in car rides when he can draw on the windows with his nose." A rival Jack Russell arterrier, Tillie, sells her work at tillamookcheddar.com.

A few weeks ago I received a catalog offering the perfect mother-in-law gift -- a live water buffalo, for only $250. You can also buy one from the Heifer International website, catalog.heifer.org. Won't Mom be surprised when this monster goes to work on her flower garden! Happy holidays, everyone!

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.