The other day in the newspaper we got a catalogue from a company called "Hedonics."

Yes, that is a tawdry and suggestive name for a mail-order firm. Their products probably all come wrapped in brown paper. No judgment, but if I were the mother of the person who started that company, I would totally be embarrassed.

At least that is what I thought when I saw the name. Unfortunately, on the inside there was not anything tawdry. Instead there were a bunch of gizmos. Here are some examples:

1. A contact lens washing machine.
2. A pair of blue sunglasses to help you see your golf ball when you've hit it into the shubs.
3. A Wine Breather.
4. (A Wine Breather bubbles air through a fresh bottle of wine so you won't have to slurp it to get all the flavour.)
5. Yes. Oh, for the love of Pete.
6. Indeed.
7. Shut up, stupid pretentious Hedonics catalogue.

It was a grave disappointment. Page after page of idiot gimmicks designed to make rich people all sweaty, and not a single tawdry photograph of a lady in her undershorts. What a stupid waste of a name, I thought.

Then.

On the last page, tucked away in a discreet corner, this headline:

"Stress Relief At Your Fingertips!"

Along with it, the photo you saw at the top of this very posting. Here it is again, to refresh your memory:

Underneath it there was another photo. Here it is:

I am not normally a skeptical person, but I frankly had my doubts that anyone would really use this device to massage a headache out of her temples. That's why they invented codeine, right?

So.

There was only one possible explanation.

It was not really a temple massager at all but was instead meant to go in your pants and tickle you on your bits.

For confirmation, I turned to the world's most reliable source of salacious and titillating content, the internet.

Aha! I was right! The temple massager is totally not for your temples!

What is the lesson here? The lesson here is that if you are very very rich, so rich that you can buy a machine to breathe your wine for you, you will be shy and reserved and incapable of just plain old going out to buy a bits-tickling machine because what would the neighbours think?

The other lesson here is that if I were the mother of the person who started the Hedonics company, I would once again be totally embarrassed.

Then again, my mother is probably totally embarrassed right now too.

Haunting how everything comes full circle, isn't it?

Posted by Bret at October 20, 2003 09:42 PM