Things about stuff

Woody says "holiday greetings" in a big way. Retailer: Target.

I can’t say good-bye to the holidays without a nod to the season’s best offensive holiday gift items. Unfortunately, I have photos of only two.

This snuggly little guy is eager to be taken for a spin. Retailer: Garden Ridge.

The magnificent gingerbread ornament was dubbed Woody, and apparently pining is his annual holiday tradition. I bought two a couple years ago — the second was given to a friend I exchange hokey ornaments with each year. If Target still sold them, she’d get a new one every year.

The penguin was left on the shelf at Garden Ridge. I don’t even want to google this to find out what’s going on there.

  

The editor in me was drawn to the video below because of the reviewer’s logo, and then to the simple, from-the-heart-but-not-really game review. In the fictitious spotlight is Duke Nukem Forever, a game in development FOREVER and decimated here by Zero Punctuation in fewer than five minutes. After watching the review, I know I will never truly meet that blondie guy, except perhaps as a skeleton with a rocket up his bum. And incidentally, how can you not greatly admire any strategic, animated use of “poot”? You indeed will shrivel before its mightiness like it’s a cold day in the locker room.

  

A new spin on an old classic. PHOTO: Leigh Hedger, April 14, 2009.

No one needs an existential crisis on the commute to work. It’s dangerous. Especially when the driver has easy access to a camera.

After seeing this Rally’s sign, I briefly assumed it was the most anti-Zen item on the menu. But maybe it couldn’t have been more Zen.

Somehow, the new wings Rally’s is offering already are classic. This could be an old family recipe, an older Rally’s menu favorite brought back from posterity or perhaps just wings left over from last week with a fresh coat of grease to freshen them up. But then there are these oneless tenders. Perhaps they’re just one step beyond classic — so old they’re nothing to anyone anymore, thereby achieving a new state of onelessness. Or they could be a step beyond the classic sense of classic, so pervasive to the tastes-like-chicken culture that they’ve lost their sense of origin, of chicken matter itself. They’re so imbedded in the belly of the deep fryer that diners can’t help but share in the communal offering of chickenness with every bite of anything ordered.

Or, perhaps the deal is that they cheat you of one tender with every order. Could go either way.