Earlier today, in the restroom of my workplace, a Soap Opera Digest appeared before me and I happened upon an advertisement for this Faith Friend Collectible Music Box: Pet Dog Lover Gift. (Yes, that is what it’s called. Don’t believe me? Click the link and read the HTML header.)

I’m sure there’s already at least one web site dedicated to enumerating these sorts of collectibles and making fun of them where applicable. So I won’t make fun of this one… but I don’t even want to, because something about it attracted me, actually. I don’t know if it was the pale green color of the not-Faberge egg, or the dog’s facial expression, or the pure overkill of the design concept — a smiling Yorkie rising out of a not-Faberge egg, with a music box playing “You’ve Got a Friend,” plus 22K gold accents and 100-plus Swarovskis, crystals, and rhinestones, all topped off with the inanity of this caption: “Yorkies Leave Paw Prints On Our Hearts” (all capped, if you please; yes, even the preposition). Despite this totally jacked-up concept, it manages to look sort of nice, in the end. In an Easter, pillow-mint sort of way.

I love it. Please, someone, buy me that thing for Christmas.

Enthusiastic Recommendation of a Five-Year-Old Movie

Oh my god, why did none of y’all tell me how much I would like AI: Artificial Intelligence? Was it because you were sick and tired of Steven Spielberg, or because Haley Joel Osment creeps you out? Well, I can certainly respect that, but we saw that movie on cable, at a hotel, over the weekend, and it just about killed me, I got so into it.

There’s no use in me telling you all my thoughts about an old movie. I’ll just say I liked it because it gave me a lot to think about. If you haven’t yet seen it, you might want to rent the DVD and check it out. Or go to a hotel room and catch it on cable. (I swear, I see more movies in hotel rooms than anywhere else, seems like.) At first the movie pissed me off really badly, because I hate stories about evil mommies or even just run-of-the-mill, crappy mommies. But then I realized the crappy mommy was just incidental to the moral questions the movie wanted to ask, and so I relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the ride.

I can do something kind of useful for y’all today… Here’s a link to the 1969 story the movie was based on: Super-Toys Last All Summer by Mr. Brian Aldiss. Free vintage literature! Enjoy.