ThinkgeekJust when we thought we had cornered the market on the cheap and tiny gadget side, the New York Times goes and does something completely unwarranted: They come up with their own cheapo gift guide for the holidays.

Nah, we’re just kidding; there’s room enough for everyone. Plus, we do it much better anyway. (Haha, we still love you NYTimes! Please don’t buy us out. Nope, we wouldn’t want to get bought out for millions, no siree. That wouldn’t be kosher at all; no, nope.)

Anyway, they’ve got a pretty good list of items that all us portable and affordable fans may want to check out. The URLs they provide don’t directly link to any of the items, and some of them plain don’t work (for shame), so we here decided to pick out our favorites and give you the hook up right here and now. Hey, more money for us.

The PowerSquid Outlet Multiplier is a nifty little workaround for all those hefty power bricks you’ve got lying around your apartment. It sells for a mere 15 smackers, so instead of playing musical plugs with your wall outlets every time you get a new plaything, just hook this sucker up and watch the sparks fly. Uh, not literally by the way.

While we’re on the subject of power outlets, the Universal Plug Adapter from AVC takes care of all those weird little hookups you encounter when you’re in strange new territories. And no, I don’t mean places like Pocatello, Idaho. I was thinking somewhere more exotic, like that place where people drink wine and say, “oui oui” all the time. I think it’s called Madrid. Anyway, you can save yourself some major head-scratching with this baby for about $20. Either that, or you need to look at trying out another brand of shampoo.

The SanDisk Cruzer Freedom USB Flash Drive is geared primarily towards students, more specifically the ones who don’t really mind getting beat up when they try to pull out one of these gadgets at the library to do some studying. The removable drive works with proprietary software that allows it to handle copyrighted ebooks and audio, the purpose being to eliminate the need for kids to carry around heavy backpacks filled with troublesome goods like books for readin’ and writin’. The drive retails for around $40, which could mean a significantly smaller investment for you versus future chiropractic visits for aggravated scoliosis.

Finally, here’s a clock that doesn’t need mercury-laden, Earth-killing batteries to run. The innovative Water-Powered Clock from ThinkGeek runs entirely on…er…liquidy stuff, so not only will you hippies have to water your medicinal cannabis plants every day, but now you’ll have to give your clock a drink too! This gadget works in ways too geeky for my shortened attention span to fathom (thanks a pantload, MTV), so trust in the soothing words of the advertorial that this thing works. If it doesn’t, you can always run and cry about your lost $12.99 to the great Earth spirit, Gaia.