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Digital Slob
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Gadgets dominate
shopping list
LAST week, we began a survey of high-tech gifts that could satisfy both Respec-table People and Digital Slobs, allowing tokens of appeasement to be exchanged between us without anyone having to get hurt -- assuming no one makes any sudden moves.As tenuous as this civility can be within our own holiday hearths, it's no less a jungle outside, where retail fever has hit epidemic levels. Receipts suggest shoppers are setting gadget gift-buying records.
But, we've barely scratched the gift-idea surface, so we'll continue with more cost-effective (non-plasma-TV) holiday items that may not turn the south wall of your home into an embarrassment of pixel riches, but will produce at least some joy before retiring to the attic with the laserdiscs and 8-track tapes.
Still, compulsively tidy Respectable People would love to have an automated neat-freak understudy, and the robot's latest Discovery series may also be the greatest. I say this because future Roomba upgrades will no doubt achieve consciousness, determine the source of all the clutter and attack us as soon as we turn them on.
» For Slobs, the Unisar TV Listener (www.unisar.com/): Relationships are great, until they get in the way of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien."
Perhaps earlier in the day, she woke you up from your second -- and most important -- nap to watch some guy cry to Oprah about his TV addiction in the hopes it would teach you a lesson. But now that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is on, she wants "peace and quiet."
Before speed-dialing your lawyer, try this $40 wireless headset, which advertises itself as the "marriage saver." Listen to TV while your special someone snoozes in silence, or at least grinds her teeth in bed with her eyes furiously clinched shut because Oprah's point was so obviously lost on you.
» For Respectable People, the Sidewinder cell-phone charger (sidewinder.ca): This $20 do-it-yourself plastic hand crank plugs into cell phones and lets you get up to 6 minutes of call time out of a dead battery, as long as you still possess the same strength and dexterity you used to sharpen a pencil in grade school. This disqualifies many Slobs, but most Respectable People exercise, so they should be able to handle this.
» For Slobs, the LavNav Toilet Night Light (arkon.com): Attach this $20 battery-operated device, which looks like a small fire detector, to the underside of your toilet lid, and its motion sensing technology will illuminate the bowl on queue, letting you answer nature's call without disturbing the natural, dim order of things. Consider it night-vision goggles for your bladder.
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