Winter Wonderland

I came home to a wonderful surprise, No, the wasps didn't catch bee AIDS. My magazines arrived! Not all of them but some interesting ones.

It turns out Whatever Works is a catalogue of machiney thing mostly. It is a whole catalogue filled  all those things you see at the store but can't decide if you really need it so you go on to another store so you can "think about it" and then tell yourself you could get it on the way out but you don't.

All kinds of "useful" things like plastic Bonsai's and a bird houses that stop dogs from barking and  a "designer" remote caddy and a  Goatee Saver so that you can shave without disturbing your goatie and lots of insect traps and several items that looked suspiciously like vibrators but were called  "contour massagers".

There was even a gizmo that would turn any pair of glasses into bifocals, called "little pieces of tape" and they were very proud of their Designer Duct tape "the duct tape makes a fashion statement!". Looking at the picture my guess the statement would not be "Fabulous!", the tape comes in  black paisley, "wood", houndstooth and wicker. Fin for the whole family. Buy a selection and Dad can repair the kitchen cupboards and the porch furniture, Mom can spruce up her  blazer and the kids can  tape Mom and Dad up and escape to places where everything in the house has not been  repaired with duct tape. They also sell the lock pick set that the kids will use to make a living once they get there.

After I had thoroughly searched Whatever Works. I moved on to The Vermont Country Store. I was a bit put out what they are now using photography instead of pen and ink drawings but I guess time does move on, even in Vermont.  First gay marriage and now fancy photography! I wish however that they would have consulted with the gays  a bit when it came to the Christmas decorations they wanted to sell me . The big ticket items were  a genuwine "tinsel tree" and a color wheel! Together they look like they would burn your house down as soon as you got them out of their boxes.  They seem to just scream Hi! I'm a fire hazard! Plug me in!. I'm guessing you need the color wheel because if you tried to put lights on the tree it would melt. I like kitsch and all but there is a line and I call it The Burn Your House Down Line. Vermont Country Store Fail!

I do in all honesty, think I really need the $19.95 replica of Charlie Browns Christmas tree, especially since I've seen it in other catalogues a whole lot more expensive than that, so I'm folding that page over. Vermont Country Store Win!

And then I came to the toys. Well. Vermont Country Store FAIL!

If the Nurse Cherry books didn't cost $39.95 per box set I know some nurses who would be getting those under the tree. Who can forget Cherry Aimes, Student Nurse, Senior Nurse, Chief Nurse, boy she moved up fast! Army Nurse. Flight Nurse, Veterans Nurse, wait wasn't Cherry a Vet? Visiting Nurse, Private Duty Nurse Cherry sure changes jobs a lot, did anyone check with the Board of Nursing about her? Clearly someone else was suspicious too because Cherry went on the road with Cruise Nurse, Boarding School Nurse, Department Store Nurse and ultimately, Camp Nurse. My how the mighty have fallen! Department Store Nurse? Cherry do you even bother keeping up your licence?

The catalogue even had genuwine recreations of toys from the  "1930s to the 1960s", toys so real you can almost taste the led paint. Toys I know I played with at my Grandmothers house. The Chatter Phone! Snoop and Sniff pull toy! The Chatter Phone! Guaranteed to choke out today's less worldly toddlers in a heart beat. And even better Music Box Teaching Clock and Music Box TV! I had these toys! Gawd I'm 5000 years old! My toys are featured in the Vermont Country Store Catalogue!

Did you know you can buy men's footie pajamas? Oddly, they choose to  use their traditional illustrations for that item, actually, all the sleepwear were drawings instead of  photos. Odd. And because this is the Vermont Country Store, there was also several pages of clothing that even the Amish would reject as too old fashioned and dowdy. I did get a little excited about their large selection of winter weight tights, right up until I noticed they were $39.95 a pair, Whatever happened to Yankee frugality? $39.95 for tights!?. I plowed on. They can't show adult  people in PJs but they can show photos of real ladies modeling bras and panties?! And OH DEAR GAWD  Men in Y-Fronts!

I got winded and had to move on to Collections to cool off - where I found they are selling an alarm clock called the Pole Dancer Alarm Clock, right next to the "Farting Santa on his porcelain sleigh"

Christmas just brings out the class doesn't it?