How do you feel about catalogs? (Or as we used to spell them, “catalogues,” before we got too busy to type the “ue.”) I have to confess, I’m ambivalent.
Weeks pass in which I don’t feel an urge to buy anything except for necessities: chocolate, toothpaste, printer paper, books. And then the mailperson brings me a catalog and ordinary logic succumbs to “catalogic.”
“Egyptian cotton sheets might cure my insomnia!” I think. “A few cashmere sweaters and I could turn down the central heat! If I don’t buy this hummingbird feeder the hummingbirds will STARVE!”
Strange catalogs from another planet
But occasionally I get a catalog in which I don’t want anything, a catalog that baffles me because the “target demographic” doesn’t share my interests (as noted above, mostly books and chocolate). At the moment I’m trying to get a grasp — metaphorical, I don’t really want to touch them — on the people who would buy things from Catalog Favorites.
No nut protection
Apparently the world is well stocked — or do I mean well hung? — with men who are anxious about their genitals. They must be the market for the Christmas boxer shorts that depict a wrapped gift and the words NICE PACKAGE, not to mention the T-shirt labelled PROTECT YOUR NUTS and illustrated with a squirrel pointing a rifle.
I’m guessing that men are also the market for the hoodie with the beer-pouch pocket, the golf ball holder in the shape of a scrotum, and the Big Rig Alarm Clock, guaranteed to rouse the chap and his loved one with lights flashing, an engine revving, a horn honking, and a trucker shouting “Time to get up!” (Batteries not included.)
Women who are living with men like this probably need the “Comfort Cross” made out of olive wood from the Holy Land, and are perhaps well advised to wear the long black night-shirt labelled: “This is my sexy lingerie.”
By now we’re beginning to spot a theme, aren’t we? So we shouldn’t be surprised by the T-shirt with a picture of George W. Bush and the words: MISS ME YET? HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY THING WORKING OUT FOR YA?
Made in China
Most of this merchandise (and also the merchandise I buy, though not from Catalog Favorites) is made in China by people working 12 hours a day in appalling conditions with no benefits. Do they wonder why Americans need this stuff? Do they think we’ve lost our minds? Or do they wish that they too afford to buy Big Rig Alarm Clocks and Comfort Crosses?
Also — hey, the mailman’s here! Maybe he’s brought me a catalog!
