Hammacher Schlemmer - 2009

It’s that time of year again. There are only 49 shopping days to Christmas. The carved pumpkins are just getting tossed out with the garbage. Halloween candy is getting stale in the cupboard. Kraynak’s has been operating its Christmas Tree Lane for several weeks already…it’s Kraynak’s time of year!!! And my mail box is being deluged with catalogues.

This year Christmas won’t be near as much fun because nobody has any money. But that makes looking through the catalogues that much more enjoyable as one yearns for the go-go days of the tech bubble, then the housing bubble, then the oil bubble. Pop goes the bubble!!! Maybe one day when the Republicans are back in office, we might be able to afford to buy something again. But I digress!!

One of my favorite catalogues is the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue. The first time I saw it I thought they were selling Nazi memorabilia. But to my delight, I found it is a high end gadget catalogue with something you can’t afford for just about everybody on your Christmas list.

After all, who wouldn’t want a Perpetually Rotating Solar Globe? It operates entirely by harnessing light and the earth’s magnetic pull in a frictionless environment allowing it to spin continuously. Wow. Call AlGore. Maybe the government can give General Motors some more TARP money to make a car out of it. All yours for $399.99. The car might be a little more expensive. What's that? They already make it? It's called a Prius? Ouch!!!!

Here’s something for someone who is lactose intolerant like me: an Automatic Odor Remediator. For $199.95, this box, the size of Kleenex box, will sit on unobtrusively on your end table releasing micro-droplets of a pleasant, subtle scent. These droplets are much smaller than one’s you buy in a spray can, therefore staying in the air in perpetuity rather than falling to the ground. Kind of like carbon emissions. Oh well, I think I will just open a window and sit by it.

Dude, check this out. Video recording sunglasses and video recording pens and a video recording watch. They record up to four hours of video AND sound!!! You can spy on everybody and they wouldn’t even know it. Just put your pen in your shirt pocket. Comes in handy if you are going to look for financing at your local ACORN branch, especially if you are into hookers! But don’t do it in Maryland. You will end up in jail. Seriously, these things are kind of creepy.

900 bucks will buy you the Always Accurate Solar Watch if you are a tad OCD about the time. It resets the time six times per day by tapping into the nearest atomic clock??? And it recharges from the sun. How cool is that? Beats my system, which involves subtracting 5 minutes from the grandfather clock in the hall, then adding that time to 10 minutes forward of the time showing on the clock in the family room which should equal my watch’s time plus 3 minutes after subtracting 4 minutes from the clock in my car. OR…I just push a button on my cable TV to see time brought to you by Armstrong Cable. One Wire – Unlimited Possibilities.

Finally, for $59.99, I can get my dog’s genetic genealogy checked. Send these folks a swab of your dog’s saliva, and it will check your pooch’s genes against the genes of thousands of purebred dogs…and you get your own little genome. What fun!! Do you think they could test the saliva of some of my relatives? I’m sure some of them would be related to those dogs. Did I say that?

Well, time to put the catalogue away, and put my dreams back in my pocket. I guess I will spend some quality time watching Home Shopping on television. Merry Christmas to all...and to all a Good night!!!

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