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Digital Slob
Curt Brandao
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Have yourself a merry white-lie Xmas
UNLESS you're accommodating all your holiday visitors by building them guest igloos, the odds of having snow on the ground today are at best 50-50.
But even if few of us had a White Christmas, you can bet almost all of us had a "White-Lie Christmas."
Whether it's, "That's the best fruit salad I've ever had," "Have you lost weight?" or, "Don't worry about the holes your twins hammered into the drywall -- I can patch that back up in no time," you can bet there's been a whole lotta grinnin' and bearin' it going on.
But the most useful of all holiday fibs is actually more of an interrogation tactic, a CIA-style masterstroke of misdirection used in bad-gift situations. It basically goes like this: "I've been looking all over for this! Where did you find it?" Flattery, followed fast by a probe for information that will speed up the exchange process.
So, assuming my loved ones take the bait, here's two things I plan to get with post-Christmas store credit this year:
Video iPod: I gotta have it. Not because my old 2002 1G brick doesn't have enough speed, functionality or storage, but because it's too bulky to fit into this season's iPod fashions.
It was bleeding-edge cool 40 months ago, but now it looks like something Fred Flintstone might use to download MP3s of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm songs. Plus, it can't indulge my death-wish fantasies by allowing me to cross a busy downtown street while staring at the latest episode of "Lost" on a 2.5-inch color display.
The new iPod has more wannabe hangers-on than Hillary Duff at the Teen Choice Awards, from the iDog (amazon.com), a $25 toy that moves to the beat of iPod music, to the $300 SoundDock (bose.com), a monolithic speaker with a iPod cradle that fills your living room (and perhaps your neighbor's bedroom) with your personalized playlist.
And also like Hillary Duff, the new iPod has an infinite accessory closet, from the $24 iPod Hoodie (fredflare.com), a tiny cloth-like jacket that comes complete with a head covering for no reason whatsoever, to the $34 iGuy (tableandhome.com), a rubberized case with arms and legs that turns your iPod into a cyborg albino Gumby doll.
I'm sure someone in Cupertino, Calif., is working on an iPod that can cry real tears, or can grow cuttable hair when you rotate your thumb over the scroll wheel. Perhaps this means my iPod Dream House will soon be complete.
Washable Optical Mouse and Keyboard: Sitting next to my big-screen computer with a wireless keyboard in my lap, it sure looks like I'm living in the future. But for some reason it still smells like the summer of '73 when my air conditioner broke.
Sure, it's possible to clean computer inputs -- but Digital Slobs never do. Thus, our hardware can emit fumes similar to those high school gym shorts that I left in the locker that time over spring break.
Unotron.com offers a solution: Specially sealed keyboards and mice that can be soaked in Dawn just like we do with the dishes -- or just like we're supposed to do, anyway.
And since many Slobs eat burritos off our home row, it should be only natural to then toss it all into the sink.
But, then again, it might also be only natural to leave it there forever and check the grocery aisle to see if Chinet has gotten into the disposable paper keyboard business.