Argh! It’s this time of year again, when I spend most of my computer time squinting and hiding in any shadow I can find. My home office is located in a room of the house that juts out in a semi-octagon full of windows — really beautiful, really a bad choice for a place to do work on the computer, especially with the bright winter sun that comes in one way in the morning and another way in the afternoon. I’d like to tough it out, but I’d go blind. However, I can post this accumulated list of some of the stupidest things I’ve seen in catalogs so far. It’s not hard to put a list like this together. It’s actually harder to winnow it down to just the ones that really made you think “What are these people thinking?”:

• A Cartier Crystal Inkwell — Now, your really crass consumer may point out that no one really needs an inkwell these days, and if they did they wouldn’t want to put their messsy ink in some fashionista designer brand art statement. But really, couldn’t that just be because they didn’t know they could have this status symbol for a mere $610? I’m thinking of picking up a couple for Secret Santa giveaways.
• Portable Light Therapy Visor. — So why would you want a hat that aims green light into your eyes for a half an hour at a time? Why, silly consumer, because “traditional light therapy devices are too large to be portable.” The idea is that this doodad will help with the so-called winter blues. I don’t know about that, but you gotta love the picture of the brave model trying gamely to look cheerful with this stupid hat shining green light into his eyes. And hey, only $199.95 — what a deal!
• Robopet. A little chrome-plated dog that scrabbles around and “sniffs, crawls, begs and scratches,” for only $89.95. Sound good? The copy in the catalog assures us that “Robopet is the loving robot puppy everyone has dreamed of owning!” Everyone? How about Bill Gates, three guys from Silicon Valley named Franky and the HAL 9000 computer? Who else dreams of owning a biotech doggy, for goodness sake? Get real
• 25″ Carbide Cannon T’is the season to get even with your neighbors for getting that yappy rat-dog. Or something.
• Ultrasuede Godiva Keepsake Chocolates Box — adorned with Swarovski crystals — $200. Who the heck wants chocolates to come in a pseudo-bling-covered suede box? And do you know how much real chocolate you could buy for $200?
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  A 6′ suit of armor — You might think this was some kind of joke-item, or cheesy plastic costume for parties. But you’d be wrong. It’s an actual suit of armor, coming from one of those catalogs that seem to cater to Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter fans with a lot of disposable income and a tentative grip on reality. The catalog is full of ornately-carved daggers, axes, sowrds and of course 900 versions of the “One True Ring” (pity Sauron didn’t know how commonplace they were before he got all messed up over it.) And you can own your own suit of armor for $3,900 plus $180 shipping. I just hope one size fits all.
• A Battery Operated Marshmallow Toaster — Has it come to this? Are we, the people of these once-great United States, the kind of hose-heads that can’t even rotate our own marshmallow-sticks by hand? I think it’s just a matter of survival of the fittest. If you’re too low-functioning to toast marshmallows without a battery-operated device, you don’t deserve to have them. But at only $20, it’s by far the cheapest thing here. Good to know that stupidity doesn’t always have to cost you a lot

Well, that’s it so far. But then, the catalog season is just getting serious. There’s probably going to be at least one follow-up, especially as the shopping days dwindle and people get more desperate. T’is the season to have folly.