For the gift-givers: finding an original present for new graduates can be as tough as the current job market. We get it. Sure, you can slap a cap and tassel on a teddy bear and call it a day, but that cuteness will wear off.

Instead, how about reassuring him or her that life after crossing the stage isn’t so bad? It can actually be pretty great. (However, the amount of douchebags you encounter daily is much more apparent.)

Here are a few items to assist in his or her solace:

1. Deal With This Stamp. This stamp shows who’s boss, especially when its owner’s timid ‘tude is in need of a boost of confidence.

2. Hey Asshole Pad. A pad for the workplace. He or she will soon understand the true meaning of “asshole.”

3. Travel Log and Pack This! Pad. Life after graduation is all about backpacking through new places and confronting new endeavors. These aids won’t assist in “finding” oneself, but at least he or she can make detailed notes on the trip and won’t forget to pack an extra pair of underwear.

4. Pro/Con Journal. Now is the time for him or her to make meaningful decisions. Present this to the giftee with a welcome sign pointing to the real world.

5. Corporate Flashcards. To prep for the white-collar worker’s first day on the job. Huzzah!

For more ideas, check out our “Grads” section on our site!

Our amazing customer services and operations team is sending lovely Fall 2012 product samples to over eighty reps across the nation. Exciting indeed.

Our customer service rockstar, Jazzlyn, with the new catalogs. Cheesin' for the cam.

Gil and Paul, team operations!

Carboard boxes Instagrammed. That makes it instantly intimately beautiful, right?

The digital girls, moi on the left and our e-commerce manager, Sara, on the right. They barracaded our space with wheelable chairs, so we made it into a half-assed fort. Secret password required!

It’s their “Organizing the Small Stuff” issue, and one you probably won’t want to miss out on. People overuse the cliché, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” as if it’s oh-so easy. But these insignificancies inevitably add up to colossal proportions—and who wants to deal with all of that?

Issues of "Slake" for sale.

As you know, we at Knock Knock are passionate lovers of pencils, paper, and printing presses. I was therefore thrilled last Friday to attend a party for Slake, a new Los Angeles literary quarterly that proudly exists only in paper form. That is, it exists only in real life.

Slake started in summer 2010, and is currently on its fourth issue (“The Dirt”). The journal is new, but has already won several awards (and hit the Los Angeles Times’ bestseller list) for its content—which combines visual art, photography, poetry, long-form journalism, fiction, oral history, and memoir. Its founders, Laurie Ochoa and Joe Donnelly, were formerly the editors of LA Weekly. (On a personal note, I worked with Joe and Laurie for years as a writer and editor for the Weekly, so the party was a homecoming for me.)

"Slake" founder Laurie Ochoa, taking a picture of me while I take a picture of her, because it's just so fucking meta.

Slake is all about fostering a community of writers and artists who are deeply rooted and in—and in love with—Los Angeles, and it’s also about staking a claim for paper as a beautiful and viable medium. As their website proclaims, “Slake sets a new template for the next generation of print publications—collectible, not disposable; destined for the bedside table instead of the recycling bin.”

As previously mentioned, paper is something that exists only in real life. You know something else that only exists in real life? Free beer.

Quantities of free beer were available at this party; the evidence of this is in the blurry, slurry photos I managed to either take or pose for. It may or may not be worth mentioning that free pie was also served by Suicide Girls.

A blurry, blinky shot of Joe and me.

Besides live music and dance performances, other stuff on offer included an exhibition of beautiful photographs of the Occupy L.A. encampment; video footage from the LA riots; and a station where people could create album art for the new vinyl LP by Detective (a musical project from Guided By Voices member James Greer, who is also a Slake contributor).

Laurie Ochoa says that Slake is meant to be enjoyed slowly, in bed or otherwise in a state of repose—and then kept. It should be noted, another advantage to the print-only format is that after inevitable disaster strikes, taking down the “grid,” and we are all shivering in our homes with candles and limited water, Slake will remain to provide us survivors with hours of meaningful, thought-provoking, mind-enriching entertainment. Hey, it’s L.A. Anything could happen.

People making album covers for Detective, the musical project from "Slake" contributor (and ex-Guided By Voices member) James Greer.

Free-pie porn.

Check out our Mother’s Day section, or read gift ideas for every type of mother in your life.

Get to shoppin’, peeps and procrastinators!

How did Rees get into this rare profession? Check out the video below from Paper magazine. It’ll make you want to become best friends with him.

Rees’s quotes to note:

“Once I got into no. 2 wooden pencils again, it really made me kinda despise mechanical pencils and the people who use mechanical pencils, and the people who brag about how their mechanical pencil never needs sharpening. I mean, fuck you. Fuck you.”

“I thought it would be cool to use the Internet to send people pencils in the mail. Because pencils are really kind of the opposite of the Internet, anyways. So I thought it was cool to combine those two technologies, like a really old method of communication, the pencil, and a really new method of communication—social networking and the Internet.” It’s like he gets us.

We’ve always been ardent supporters of the no. 2 pencil. You may have even seen this logo on our products:

Rees also just penned a book about his craft, How to Sharpen Pencils, and is wrapping up his book tour. Sadly, he just came through Los Angeles and we missed him. If you have or do get to see him in action, lucky you!

Click the pic for an even closer look:

Great self-portrait, Panda Paul. You’ve received three coins!

A brief history of the slightly 3D Knock Knock letters. 1. One of our early tradeshows. 2. One of our later tradeshows. 3. And an even more recent tradeshow. 4. The stairs above our offices south entrance. 5. Our office mailroom.

At Knock Knock, we love our K’s. Letterform-wise they’re unique, with their splayed horizontal V’s branching out from military-erect I’s. Since ours repeat, they reduce to a convenient abbreviation: KK. One of the reasons I named the company Knock Knock is, as previously outlined in some of our marketing materials,* because of those graphically flanking K’s.

At the time and for the following ten years, however, I had no idea that K’s could kill. Or at least maim (this blog post is putting the “May” in “maim”; now that I’ve achieved official timeliness, I can move on).

I was at home. It was evening. The house was a mess. I put off doing anything about it for a few hours, but finally it was time to bust a move. And a move I busted, along with a body part. Despite my procrastination, once I started cleaning, I was a dervish who whirled. One of my goals over the last few months, for a variety of reasons, has been to reduce stress, to slow down, to not take on so much (the latter two being linked to the first). But I have two speeds: sitting and watching TV or moving fast, obsessed with velocity and efficiency.

After a little while, everything was basically clean. One of my knickknack shelves, however, was cleared of its objects. Earlier in the week, while my housekeeper was dusting, my three 3-by-3-inch cubes of the travertine marble used to build (or, more accurately, clad) the Getty Museum had fallen from the shelf and broken a ceramic bowl on the credenza below. Ofelia pointed out to me that the shelf was leaning downward and was therefore not adequately supporting its contents. As I finished my cleaning, I saw that she’d placed those objets not back on the inadequate shelf, but on the credenza below. Since I had moved the offending and heavy travertine cubes elsewhere, I thought, “Why ever did she not reload the shelf?” and took it upon myself to do so. These objects included a decommissioned plywood Knock Knock O and a decommissioned plywood Knock Knock K. ( As a general matter of collectibility, I like physical letterforms, and specifically I liked that these two spelled OK.)

Since our very first booth at the 2003 National Stationery Show, we’ve had our logo laser-cut into individual wood letters made of plywood, with a lovely exposed striped edge, that we’ve then painstakingly painted either white or orange. Those of us who’ve set up tradeshow booths or overseen office decor have had the misfortune of painting them and hanging them, each letter with its four-or-more keyhole mounts requiring perfectly positioned wall screws. The individual letters range from about 8 inches in height to perhaps 13, depending on their intended location. They’re about 0.75 inches thick. They’re not only iconic, they’re heavy.

My housekeeper was right—the shelf was inadequate. As soon as I hefted up the letters, they and a few other objets came crashing down. The K landed on my right foot. On one of its eight corners. With a force akin to that of a stiletto heel, i.e., with the same effective weight as an elephant, because, as we all readily know and discuss at cocktail parties, pressure equals force divided by surface area.

My foot, about to give birth to an alien.

My first response, if I recall correctly, was “motherfucker.” I figured this was one of those eye-watering whacked shin or stubbed toe moments that hurt like the aforementioned motherfucker but subside relatively quickly. I kept cleaning. While I was leaning down to pick the objects up from the floor, something caught my eye: a light blue hemisphere on top of my right foot, somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball.

I thought about sitting down at this point, but I remembered that earlier I’d set water and dishwashing soap to boil on the stove in an attempt to clean a recalcitrantly gunked-up pot. I hobbled into the kitchen and took the pot off the stove, poured it out partially, and then burned myself while attempting to scrub. That’s when I said to myself, “Stop. Just. Stop.”

The scene of the krime. 1. My knickknack shelves; please don't judge. Note that the top one is empty save for the feather-light origami pieces (constructed out of KK Pads, I might add). 2. The O and the K, ill-placed on the credenza under the thought that the shelf may be too unstable to hold them. 3. Three-quarters view of the kulprit K, held in order to demonstrate (a) the beautiful striped plywood edges; and (b) the lethality of its heft and corners.

It was about 9:00 p.m., and the last thing I wanted to do was go to the emergency room. When does anybody ever want to go to the emergency room? So I called a friend I thought might know what was going on. This swelling had literally ballooned. When I’ve broken bones or incurred sprains, the swelling is always much slower and more all-over. She suspected it might be a burst blood vessel. I did not go to the ER.

In the morning, the goiter had flattened and the black and blue had spread. To the ER I went. X-rays showed that nothing was broken, and the doctor confirmed that I had indeed burst a blood vessel and incurred a hematoma; the injury was to soft tissue. Over the course of the following week and a half, the swelling shifted across my foot, immobilizing my toes, and the black and blue traveled all the way to my ankle. I couldn’t put on a regular shoe for a couple weeks, and a month and a half later there’s still some pain at the point of impact. (By the way: I do not recommend doing a Google image search on “hematoma.”)

Why, you’re now no doubt asking if you’ve read this far, am I telling you this story, illustrated with gruesome pictures of my long-without-a-pedicure foot? Because it’s ironic (but in the incorrect, Alanis Morissette meaning of the word, not the gap-between-words-and-meaning literary definition). Because it’s so very me. But mostly because it’s ironic. And iconic. I don’t know that I’ve ever had an experience that was so simultaneously ironic and iconic: basically, during my partial leave of absence and my attempts to slow down, reduce stress, and not take on so much, the very essence of Knock Knock fell on and injured me.

1. A day later; please note that my toenails are not fungally yellow, but instead bear the remains of a months-old pale pink pedicure that looks yellow in this light. 2. A few days later. 3. A few days after that. Note that the bruise goes all the way up to my ankle; the difference in coloration between the two feet is not the result of lighting.

The lesson I’m drawing from this incident is mostly to slow down, because it’s when I move quickly that I make mistakes and have accidents. (FYI: I very rarely get sick; I have accidents and injuries and structural afflictions and surgeries.) But the kicker of it is that my speed mostly helps me in life. I’m really fast at a lot of things, so I get a lot done. Do I accept that speed works for me but periodically results in injuries and accidents (and not just of the physical kind), or do I slow down, reducing my efficiency and my life satisfaction (because I’m so impatient, slowing down is a nightmare) but possibly managing not to kill myself? I don’t have the answer to that. But I will tell you that the shelf has subsequently been fixed, and I have not moved the O and the K back up from their temporary position on the credenza. I’m also cleaning less. And that in itself is nothing if not slow-down-and-smell-the-roses self-improvement.

*Why the name Knock Knock? Well, first off, Knock Knock’s founder, Jen Bilik, had glued plastic letters that spelled out “KNOCK KNOCK” to the outside of her front door (and “WHO’S THERE” to the inside), and when she decided to start the company, she looked around and the words popped out at her. When she thought about it, she realized that “Knock knock” is a call-and-response command that invites a “Who’s there?” question. Knock Knock also reminds us of childhood, which we hope to honor with our glee, open-mindedness, and purity of purpose. Because Knock Knock is one word repeated twice, it lends itself nicely to the design of letterforms. Graphically it’s a palindrome, with consonants flanking a center O, the odd K at either side, and the N and C tweaking what might otherwise constitute cloying symmetry. Also, Jen thought it would be fun to answer the phone “Knock knock.” And by the way, we’re actually Who’s There Inc. D/B/A Knock Knock. Long story.

Knock Knock's namesake front door (which, oddly enough, I now live next door to).

@JordanCompton1 has been a longtime Knock Knock-Twitter crony. Our day-to-day convos mainly span the arts and pop culture, but also sprinkle in discussion of pickup lines she overhears from time to time.

Here’s a little taste of a @knockknock and @JordanCompton1 conversation:

It also doesn’t hurt that she makes us feel like we’re number one:

Our FOKKer of the Month, Jordan!

Name: Jordan Compton.

Location: Seattle, WA

Occupation: Fashion retail associate, nonprofit volunteer, and aspiring blogger.

Favorite KK Product? While I enjoy all of Knock Knock’s products, one of my favorites is actually a seasonal one: the Things You Must Do for the Holidays Pad. The list of suggestions is long enough to suit everyone I know, whether they are naughty, nice, or like most of us, somewhere in between. I give sheets to people as a way to lighten the mood and remind them to enjoy the season.

I also use the Health Life Log, as I consider fitness to be a lifestyle (and I spent a decade training as a ballet dancer). But every health regimen should allow for indulgences, so I try to save room for a Knock Knock dark chocolate bar.

Knock Knock Story Time: I became familiar with Knock Knock several years ago through visits to a store that I lovingly call “The Hipster Emporium.” (You can probably guess its real name.) I eventually started working at the store. In my off-hours, I get a kick out of reading books like Pickups & Come-Ons for All Occasions, A Year of Fortunes (Without the Cookies), and the collection of insults and comebacks . . . not that I use those. When I really want to be snarky, I just send a citation to my sister, who wrote the book on pranks and cruel humor. Next up, Fashion Citations!

Click the pic for an even closer look:

Zooming in more on her nickname story. It really does pull at our heartstrings. We’ll start calling you by either proposed name, Ms. Jamie!

Also, serial-killer audio books? That’s quite the conversation starter.