9" Digital Photo Frame

From Phillips, makers of incredibly useful products like the 3DO Game System, comes this $250 photo frame.  It is kind of cool - plug in your digital camera or a memory card and you can view a single shot, a set of thumbnails, or a photo slideshow without the need for a bulky PC.  Change the image from your girlfriend to your wife in moments in case of a surprise visit to the office.  Fool your friends!  You can even... okay, this thing is just dumb.

Sharper Image iPulse Bear Speaker System and Light Show for iPod & MP3

Leave it to the guys at The Sharper Image to come up with something this bizarrely useless.  In fact I think it's more the bizarre factor that made me want to include this one because it really isn't cool at all - but it's so weird that it starts to seem cool after a little while.  It's a bear with a pouch that holds an iPod or MP3 player. 

It has a built in speaker (yep - just one - it's not even weird in stereo) and flashing lights in its paws.  Play your music, watch the lights, and seriously question your sanity.  And he's affordable!  The Sharper Image recently dropped the price on this little guy from about $30 to about $10.  Get yours before he's discontinued and shipped back to the North Korean sweat shop from whence he came.

Sharper Image "Now You Can Find It!" Electronic Locator

Also from The Sharper Image (the biggest seller of useless but kinda cool stuff since Ron Popeil) comes this gadget that really does seem like a good idea on the surface.  Stick the eight receiver tabs on stuff that you're likely to lose around the house such as your car keys, the TV remote, your wife, whatever and then, when it comes up missing press the corresponding button on the portable base and the item will beep and flash helping you locate it. 

I got one of these things and put receiver tabs on my Blackberry, my car keys, my iPod, my TV remote, by Falco's Greatest Hits CD, my sunglasses, and my oldest child.  Then I lost the portable base and everyone asks me why I have a colorful dot on so many of my things.  We live and learn.

Hummer

Why does America love the SUV so much?  They guzzle gas, run over our kids in the driveway, are all pretty ugly, and cost a fortune.  The deck seems so stacked against these things that it's amazing anyone drives one.  The Hummer is the king of them all, resembling a tank more than a family truckster and weighing almost as much as the Spruce Goose.  Life imitates art, I suppose. 

Americans like their stuff to be big and mean and wasteful, as proven in the episode of The Simpsons when Homer designs his dream car for his long lost brother's auto company and drives the company into bankruptcy with the monstrosity he delivers.  The sad truth is that a good portion of the population would have gone for the Homer in a heartbeat.  Take a look at the audience featured in Al Gore's film An Inconveinent Truth and wonder just how many of those would-be tree-huggers drove home that day in one of these things.  I'll bet it's a lot.

Next Generation Game Consoles

Ever since the invention of a home version of Pong gamers have had a love affair with the next big thing in gaming.  We've come a long way since Pong, the Magnavox Odyssey, and the Atari 2600, but there is one thing that is true of those systems that is true of today's advanced video game systems.  We don't need 'em.  As a gamer I feel that I'd rather lose a limb than my Xbox 360, but I have to admit that I got along just fine without it for nearly forty years and I could have gone the rest of my days without it. 

Instead of playing Gears of War or Catan for hours on end I could be reading books - or writing them.  I could be jogging and losing this beer belly of mine.  I could be catching up on this season of Big Love on HBO.  I could be spending more time with my family.  There are literally dozens of things I could be doing rather than playing video games.  Thank God I don't have to though.