Let's display some affection!

April 24, 2009 5:22 PM

SillyThingsThroughTheMailFilter: my temporary job is a couple hundred miles away from my other half, and I'm looking for suggestions of fun packages I could send him. We're both into computers, science, BDSM, socialism and making things.

Don't get me wrong, I visit him about monthly but hey, I like the man. Cute gestures of affection from a distance are fun, let me hear your ideas!

posted by teraspawn to Human Relations (9 answers total)

Then you need to engrave a butt plug with Karl Marx, add a temperature probe, tell him he needs to write some monitoring software and that you expect at least an hour's worth of data.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:34 PM on April 24, 2009 [18 favorites]

Response by poster: Oh good god you have no idea how much I want to do that now.
posted by teraspawn at 5:39 PM on April 24, 2009 [2 favorites]

A gift certificate to Home Depot would satisfy the third and fifth interests.
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 5:49 PM on April 24, 2009

I forgot to add, accompanied by a card saying "to each according to his needs, from each according to his capacities."
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:56 PM on April 24, 2009

It always amazes me how many people into BDSM are Socialists.

But, depending on how you two play, a nice chastity belt should keep him thinking about you all month.
posted by munchingzombie at 7:00 PM on April 24, 2009

Send him a polaroid of you in whatever situation you choose, and tell him he has to write a short story (short enough to fit on the back of the polaroid) and send it back. Then continue the plot with more polaroid/story combinations. At the end of your temporary job you will have a an interesting little book.

I said polaroid because I just think they are cool, but a print of a digital pic would work, too.
posted by thekilgore at 7:57 PM on April 24, 2009

I am slightly reminded (minus the BDSM and probably socialism) of one of Richard Feynman's stories about when he was as Los Alamos and he and his wife would write coded letters back and forth.

Of course, you won't have the added step of having to include the codes for the censor board.
posted by chiefthe at 8:10 PM on April 24, 2009

Best answer: I have no idea if the postal system would allow such tomfoolery these days, but I remember reading about an art project in the 90s where students competed to see who could send the silliest object through the mail sans envelope. They just attached stamps directly to the objects, put them the mailbox and prayed to the postal gods for safe delivery. One of the objects was a bar of soap with the address carved into it, another was a plastic lizard. This could be a fun thing to try with your partner, as long as neither of you gets too invested in the objects actually reaching their destination.
posted by embrangled at 11:42 PM on April 24, 2009 [1 favorite]

Postal Experiments.
posted by The Michael The at 4:56 AM on April 25, 2009 [2 favorites]