Catablogging
The holiday season must be approaching, because those importuning catalogs have started arriving in the mail. Some of them are just plain WHACK. Here’s one that appeared in a wine-lover’s catalog. It’s a chessboard with pieces from the Lord of the Rings. One side has all the heroic characters, and the other side has the villainous ones. Each piece has a crystal shot glass or goblet (hob-goblet?) nestled in it, and the idea is that each time you claim a piece, you chug the shot therein. I dutifully choked down the Ring in the 70s, more because it was an excellent conversational gambit with women of the era than because it was a great piece of writing. If this game, even at its bargain price of $995.00 (down from $1,200.00) were available at a reasonable price, I might re-evaluate my lukewarm opinion.
Another sorta whack catalog came from www.despair.com . This at first glance looks like any of those cheery little things you get if you own a business with all these posters, postcards and screensavers with motivational aphorisms - you know, the puppies, kitties and darling babies doing plucky things. Except, upon closer inspection, the items from Despair, Inc. fall distinctly outside the party line of most corporate mission statements:
Meetings - None of us is as dumb as all of us
Dysfunction - The only consistent feature of all your dissatisfying relationships is you.
Adversity - That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
Despair - It’s always darkest just before it goes pitch black.
I have no idea why this came to my house. My subscription to the National Lampoon ended sometime in the late 70s, and, despite my wan efforts, irony and parody have been wrung out of public discourse by the bellicosity of the right and the pusillanimous anxiety to not offend of the left. So, which one of you assholes put me on this list?
Thanks - it’s a breath of fresh air.
