Whimsy Speaks Again

I would have thought that by now paper would be a thing of the past.  Not so, if the daily contents of my giant rural-type mailbox is any indication.  And those catalogs!  I used to order almost all my Christmas presents by catalog, as my extended family is almost entirely out of state (well, actually, they're all in California).  So, I get a lot of catalogs from the residuals of passing my name around from company to company.  Then, there's the magazines.  I already get The Atlantic, Harper's, Scientific American and lots of poetry journals and mags.   Add to that the two magazines (whose details I actually forget) I ordered from the young man who was working his way through divinity school or some such nonsense that I didn't believe even when he was right there telling me.  And then, there are the 5 more magazines I receive for turning in my Continental Airline miles.  Oh, well, there's at least a separate disposal bin for paper that the Longmont trash pickup people collect in a separate truck.  OK, on to catalogs.  But, first a few goodies from Harper's:

Findings:  High testosterone is correlated with risk-takers.  An Austrian study finds that people agree on which cars are angry/dominant/masculine, but not on those that are disgusted, extroverted or neurotic.  Sexologists can predict a woman's predilection to orgasm by the way she walks.  Sexist American men make over $11,000 more on average than non-sexist.  A prominent geneticist has concluded that human evolution has ended.  The Mediterranean diet is disappearing from the Mediterranean.  Space smells like hot metal and fried steak.  Polar bear cannibalism is on the rise.  HIV first infected humans before 1884.  Negative political advertising has been shown to be more informative than positive.  A 10 year old boy in Iowa discovered a 74-million old plesiosaur fossil.  It was determined that it was killed during the Manson Impact by coming up for air, looking around, and getting a lungful of hot glass shards.

Harper's Index:  The $750 billion bailout exceeds the U.S. GDP of a century by 50% (adjusted for inflation); The amount funded into the FDIC by banks approximately equals the fees they receive from ATM use;  One out of 8 Fortune 500 companies are in an emerging nation;  Sudan exports approximately the same amount of food as it imports (535,000 tons); Since 2002, the government has ruled in favor of the 1,288 workplace safety whistleblowers only 17 times; 36% of all Christmas trees sold this year will be artificial; 1,156 people belong to the FaceBook group "Belgium Doesn't Exist";  Four million U.S. postage stamps were mistakenly printed with the phone number 1-800-TRAMP-24 (a phone sex site) instead of 1-800-STAMP-24.

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There was a time when everyone received dozens of catalogs a month from Christmas, and maybe you still do.  It seems the cost of paper, ink, and media-class postage has put a hitch in the giddyup that was catalogs. 

But, not for me.  I still receive dozens of catalogs, from the preposterous to the inane.  The preposterous arise from the fact that every year I send an upscale Christmas gift to my best clients.  I've settled on Dean and Deluca for the past few years, sending their "Snacks on the Run", which would distribute among my valued clients and their varied employees a nice mix of chocolate, toffee, dried fruit, nuts, Swedish Fish, and yes, Gummy Bears.  Which reminds me, and I may have told you this story, but the first time I arrived in Hanover for Hanover Messe, the gigantic industrial fair in Germany that more than a million people show up for, that I was staying at the Vier Grenzen Hotel (which basically means four borders or four frontiers) and it was just across from this giant factory that had Gummi Werke in these huge letters on the top of the building and I honestly thought "My God, this must be the home of Gummy Bears", but it turned out it was a tire factory).  But, I digress. 

I really get some amazing catalogs.  Let's start with the middling amazing.  Like Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbeque.  They offer the "Highest Rated BBQ in the Country", so says Zagat.  Four full slabs, which comes with a 16-ounce jar of KC Original BBQ Sauce (isn't that $2.99 at WalMart?) will set you back $140.  They have another couple of dozen arrangements, including the BBQ Super Sampler which has Spare Ribs, Chopped BBQ Beef Brisket, Fire-Kissed Chicken Wings, and Pork Burnt Ends.  Feeds 8 to 10 people for only a hundred bucks.  The offering that most cracked me up was the "Kobe Beef Rib Indulgence".  Kobe cattle are those pampered bovines that spend their lives getting massages when they're not topping up on Asahi Draft for breakfast.  I've had a couple of Kobe steaks in Tokyo back when I worked for Seiko, and it's like eating relatively flavorful filet mignon, except you could cut it with a plastic fork and it costs $90 for 6 ounces in the restaurant, and that was 20 years ago.  Why would you want to make Beef Ribs from those poor beasts? 

Oh, well, on to the next one.  Biscoff has a nice catalog filled with things biscuity.  I can't remember if they're a Belgian or German or Dutch company, but it's one of those.  Their deal is that they basically want you to spend $40 for a box of cookies.  Oh, they have cheesecakes and truffles and pecan patties, but there's a lot of cookies in the mix.  Also Leonidas chocolates.  Which are to die for, actually.  When Cath and I lived in Belgium, I had this fancy job with a big salary and an expense account that covered everything up to the purchase of family nukes, and we would go to the most famous chocolate vendor all the time, which was Leonidas, not Godiva, which didn't have all the much presence worldwide except for their refrigerated cabinets in the duty free stores.  Alan Tamura, my main man, who had made the trek to Europe with us, would take back to the U.S. a dozen kilos of Leonidas every holiday, and even after filling out the customs forms, had to threaten to eat them all before The Agent let him into LAX with a suitcase of decadence.  But, I digress.  Biscoff also sells Leonidas chocolates, which includes the world famous praline, which is not a cookie, it's a chocolate shell filled with this and that, depending upon their whim.  One pound of mixed Leonidas will set you back about 45 bucks.  The rest of the catalog is Madeleines, tiny chocolate Belgian waffles, and endless arrays of shortbread cookies.

If you wanted to get me a Christmas present, you could do worse than ordering from Hammacher Schlemmer (Offering the Best, the Only, and the Unexpected for 160 Years).  They have, of course, their "Best" category, like the Best Robotic Vacuum Cleaner.  But, they also have some oddball stuff that tickles me.  Take the World's Smallest Humanoid Robot, for example, at only a hundred bucks.  Or the Only Widescreen Personal Movie Theater glasses that you wear to simulate the experience of a 52" TV from 9 feet away ($249).  The Belle Epoque Espresso Machine would be nice (15 bars of pressure, naval-grade brass innards) with a heating shelf and complimentary cups ($6,000).  Spring-loaded slippers.  The Maui Pocket Saxophone.  I really like the looks of the 50' Snowball Launcher, with its top-mounted magazine for holding up to 3 snowballs at a time for rapid fire.  The Personal Oxygen Bar.  The Battle of the Mouse King Porcelain Musical Egg.  The wallet made of genuine stingray skin.  The Fish Agility Training Set, which looks like an obstacle course with hoops and soccer goals and stuff to train your piscine friends.  The world's only rechargeable heated insoles.  A walking stick that converts into a telescope.  A pocket GPS locator that, with one push, records where you park you car, and then with another push, tells you where it is and how close you are.  The R2D2 acquarium that holds 1.75 gallons and is "ideal for small freshwater goldfish".  The ear-mounted, hands-free, book light.  A wine glass that will hold an entire bottle.  A box containing gold, frankincense and myrrh.  The laser-guided pool cue.  A remote-controlled tarantula.  A fish-finding watch.  The World's Strongest Crystal Stemware that will "thwart the repeated blows of a 12-gram steel ball" and can withstand 4,000 cycles in a commercial dishwasher.  A bed vacuum that eliminates dust mites.  A planter that grows tomatoes upside down.  A UV light wand that will kill 99.9% of bacteria wherever you pass it over.  Underwater goggles that can take photographs.  Star Wars nutcrackers.  An alarm clock that launches a disk into the air at wakeup time and will not stop complaining until it is returned to its base.  Lighted billiard balls.

More tomorrow.