The World May Be Ending

It's entirely possible that the world is coming to an end. Not because of anything the Religious Right has foreseen, or Glenn Beck, or even Sarah Palin. No, the universe may be verging on imploding because Harriet Carter, the online version of the decades old catalog purveyor of gadgets and trinkets none of us ever knew we actually needed, is on Twitter.

Harriet Carter has been selling stuff from a catalog since about 1958, items including the doggy "Potty Patch" (so your pooch can take a dump inside and not ruin your carpet), the "Fanny Bank" (a plastic coin bank that looks like a bare butt; you can see where the coins go), a heated ice cream scoop, the "Marshmallow Popper" (a kids' toy gun that rapid-fires mini-marshmallows), and "The Solitaire Board" (which allows you to "play your favorite card games anywhere, even if you don't have a table!"). Does anyone actually use cards to play solitaire anymore?

A lot of the items Harriet Carter sells remind me of the kind of chachkas you used to be able to buy at "five and dime stores," like JJ Newberry, Woolworth, WT Grant, or Ben Franklin. They've almost all gone to retailer heaven and most Americans don't remember they even existed or that Kresge became K-Mart. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Harriet is still there ready to supply us.

Anyway, Harriet Carter apparently has decided that this social networking thing is here to stay, so she wants you Twits to "follow" her on Twitter. This company is just one of many that has decided that there's money to be made via Twitter, and it's leading me to conclude that while I thought Twitter was a goofy concept to begin with, the prospect of corporations sending tweets about products I should seriously purchase makes it even less attractive.

I'll do without hearing about what celebrities had for lunch today, or what Harriet Carter thinks I absolutely must have. If the world is ending anyway, I won't have anyplace to store more "stuff."