The Long Flight Home

When flying it’s always fun to have a pre-flight beer then browse through the in-flight magazine selection. Today especially. I need to keep my mind off of the purpose of this trip. I’m feeling anxious and giddy, but not in all the good ways. Right now my silliness is fuelled by a 10am beer and inspired by the in-flight “Sky Mall” catalogue.

Items of particular interest:

Fish Finder Watch. Only if you’re one day greeted by Knuckles and Guido or sing like a canary to the wrong person will you need one of these. The rest of us will use the one on the boat.

The four-motor remote control UFO: …It’s now within our grasp and available for purchase. I think we now know what the hell it is and have finally solved the mystery of the “U”…that is with the exception of those in Roswell. We’ll keep our little secret discovery from them.

Huge Inflatable Christmas Lawn Ornaments. Ah yes. Deck the halls..and the yard, and the front entrance with plastic inflatable candy canes, snowmen, elves and other tawdry crap. It all started with those orange jack-o-lantern lawn bags for the lazy and pumpkin-carving inept. But what do we do when all of the leaves have fallen and we’re too comfortable in our homes watching survivor and playing X-Box games to be bothered with actually making a snowman? That’s right! Balloons! Everyone looooves balloons, and balloons with lights in them are even better! Well, with the holiday balloon fad, a holiday phenomenon of balloon deflating (puncturing, if you will) should probably follow. What? What’s that you say? Before you tsk-tsk me how many pumpkin-smashing excursions did you embark on as a teen…or adult? Hmm?? I’ll have you know that I have NEVER because when it happened to my pumpkins as a kid I bawled my little head off wondering who could ever do such a mean thing to something I carved all by my little six-year-old self! C’mon, if an inflatable lawn ornament is found dead on the front lawn what are you gonna do, I mean really? Probably unplug it, pitch it and run right down to the Super Wal-Mart to get a replacement and a motion sensor light.
Ok, ok, ok. So I don’t appreciate these things, but I remember one in particular that I did have a fondness for. It was a Halloween inflatable with three ghosts in a black cauldron. It was a little low on air and a stiff breeze was blowing that night which made the ghosts move in a way they were probably not intended. It looked like one of the ghosts was plugging the other ghost from behind. Priceless.

Ug. I think the person in front of me just let one fly. Peee—yeeww!

Here’s a good one:
Basho the Sumo Wrestler sculpture and glass-topped table. The last thing I want to be eating my cocktail weenies off of is a replica of a 500lb diaper-wearing Asian man with his big flabby rear in the air! This dude would be an excellent candidate for “The Bro”. His four-point stance is nearly a 6-point. (if ya know what I mean)

Collect your favorite limited edition president or historical talking figurine. Wow, Hilary Clinton, George Washington, Princess Dianna, Albert Einstein, Jackie Kennedy…I wonder what they say, and which one do you choose first??! I can’t imagine the fun that could be had with the whole collection! Now the corruption, indecency and scandals can span the decades! This subject is too wide open, even for a blog. I guess I’ll just ask are these REALLY worth the ink used to print the ad???

My buzz must be wearing off ‘cause this one actually looks handy.
From paper to e-mail in seconds – translate your writing into text:
Looks like you can write on this notepad dealio which does an OCR capture and translates it to a data file. Coolio!

I can’t believe people are making money on this stuff!

Whoa, forget the chemistry sets, today’s kids get “The CSI Young Investigator’s Forensic/DNA Kits”
Kit comes with a centrifuge, electrophoreses chamber (huh?), beakers, chromatography ring, (is this like the decoder ring we used to get in Captn’ Crunch?) lab glasses and more equipment to examine DNA!!!
It’s like an at-home paternity test.

The Marshmallow Shooter.
I cannot imagine the fun to be had with this. I’ll bet it’s more fun than hucking those little white puffs into a ceiling fan and watching them sail across the room!
Imagine with me if you will: Campfire, beer, can of gasoline, loaded marshmallow shooter. Sounds like a recipe for a good time!

“Pets like to snuggle-up when they sleep, especially on our Snuggle Balls.” (I’m just quoting the add) I’ll agree to that first statement, however in our household if there’s any ball-snuggling to be done the pet is not involved.
Oh, the product Fleecilis Snuggulus Ballivore is more widely known by it’s common name: “Fleece Covered Beanbag”

“Be on time in any time zone in the world” HAHAHAHAHAA! A dynamically zone adjusting travel clock does not a punctual person make.

The Snow Flurry Projector. Please refer to the “inflatable lawn ornament” paragraph. Applications for this product: neighbor pisser-offer, paranoid-schizophrenic freaker-outer, exterior house cleaner (get the kids to “catch” the snowflakes on their tongue, voila! After enough of that you’re aluminum siding will be spit-shine sparkly)
Caveat of product: What happens if you unwittingly attract an “after-hours” party or a rave. Pest control normally doesn’t handle this kind of thing and you’ve got yourself a real problem. (or good time)

The “Thomas Kinkade The Night Before Christmas Talking House” Now this just freaks me out. I’m assuming they mean the “Amityville Night Before Christmas Talking House” I hope the exorcist isn’t on backorder or “sold separately”!