Long-term readers may know about my fascination with the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue, purveyors of the ridiculous, useless, and overpriced, along with a handful of things I might actually want (and a smaller handful of which I bought.)

Let’s start with the not actually ridiculous but way overpriced category:

The Professional’s High Potency CBDa ( Read more... )

I sometimes play games on my phone and they tend to have ads. I don't understand some of the ads.

I do understand what is being sold in ads for, say, industrial machinery or dentistry for children or a leaf cover for your gutters. I just don't understand why the companies in question think that advertising, say, an 18-in-1 wrench-like multitool on ( Read more... )

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but I happened to get a Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue in the mail not long ago, so I might as well mock some products. I should note that there are things in the catalogue I would actually consider ordering. I could, for example, use new pillows, but they offer so many choices that I have decision ( Read more... )

Celebrity Death Watch: Candida Royalle was a porn star. Jack Larson played Jimmy Olsen in the 1950’s Superman television series and later became a playwright. Moses Malone was a basketball player. Max Beauvoir was a biochemist who became a high-ranking Voudou priest in Haiti. Herschel Silverman was a beat poet. Jackie Collins wrote trashy ( Read more... )

Celebrity Death Watch: Yvonne Craig was an actress, most famous for playing Batgirl. Melody Patterson played Wrangler Jane on F Troop ( Read more... )

Goals: I normally do a quarterly wrap-up of progress on my goals for the year. But I have done next to nothing in that direction over the past 3 months. I even fell behind on keeping track of spending in April and May, though I got back on track in June. And I knitted almost all of another big afghan square (the ones that count as 4 ( Read more... )

I have at least 2 more genealogy updates to do, but let’s catch up on other stuff first.

Celebrity Death Watch: Viktor Legostayev was the chief designer at Energiya, the Russian spacecraft company. Anita Ekberg was an actress. Dallas Taylor played drums with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Abdullah was the king of Saudi Arabia. Colleen ( Read more... )

I asked my mother what she wants for her upcoming 80th birthday (in January). Her reply was "to be left alone." (Hint: that is not what she is going to get ( Read more... )

I haven't done any product mockery in a while. But I have been saving clippings for that purpose and clearing them out will sort of count as house cleaning, right ( Read more... )

Between Pesach and tax season I am behind on everything. So this is another of those catch-all bits of rambling ( Read more... )