Next it will be the "After" Christmas ones

It’ll stop soon. I know it will. The first wave came in early November. Just a light one at the time. No real problem, we could pretty much just sweep it up. Towards the middle of the month it started to get serious. It seemed that it was steady every day. Then we went away over Thanksgiving and when we got back it was a deluge. Now every visit to the mailbox requires a wheelbarrow and several trips back and forth just to get the plethora of catalogues in the door. Yes it’s the time of the season for companies far and wide to break the mailman’s back and fill my garbage cans with shiny four color expensive profferings for pricey crap I will never buy. And you thought buying gifts was now done mostly on line? It’s to laugh judging by my stack from every vendor from Abercrombe & Fitch to Wine Enthusiast. It’s no secret how they get to me. I made a purchase with a credit card sometime, somewhere. That pretty much sealed my fate. My home address became the happy hunting ground for direct mailers of catalogs and it’s almost impossible to stop. Our address changed from an RR nearly ten years ago but I still get a catalog or two dozen sent to me that way. Let’s look at the Wine Enthusiast Holiday 2009 catalog. 65 pages of stuff. Oh look-something called a EuroCave wine cellar. STARTING at $6995. Just the thing for the cardboard box of wine I buy now and then. Abercrombe & Fitch? The largest size men’s jeans will fit ½ of me. They are “destroyed” and cost just $150. The “undestroyed” are only $90. I don’t get that at all and won’t get either. Here’s one that really threw me. In Bed Bath & Beyond’s offering (Motto: Beyond any store of its kind) they have two pages of kid’s toys. I guess that’s the beyond. One of the toys is a Kid ATM machine. I am not making this up. Features automatic bill feeder and coin counter-keeps a running total of savings and withdrawals and includes ATM Card. Only $19.99. That’s such a colossally stupid idea on so many levels it just blows my main circuit board to think about it. The caption about says it all: “Make your kid feel all grown up and in control of their money.” The slippery road to hell just got another coating of grease, I fear. One good thing about catalog season. Should we run out of oil for our furnace we can always make a bonfire in the yard with them. Kindling? L.L. Bean has a box of “Fatwood.” 10lbs for $39.95.