Psyche Strainers!, New at The World's Fair Gift Shop

I'll have to work on putting this new building together - The Worlds' Fair Gift Shop - but know that one of our first items will be a scientifically backed, technologically robust Psyche Strainer. This strainer, which is still technically under wraps back in the lab and of which we can't yet post an image, works with Snake-Plane simplicity: it takes the psyche of the populace, and strains it. We can provide a prototype image, which I think Salvatore got from the Crate and Barrel.

The Psyche Strainer we'll be marketing, though, is far more heavy duty, much more impressive. Here's why: It's based on actual scientific principles. Dave was able to cobble together some lost data from the Michelson-Morley experiments of 1887 with a few leftover elements of that new Polymerase Chain Reaction thingy he made from pocket lint. And, to machine the grid and set the filter dimensions, we employed some of the most sophisticated psychological insights from the past several decades. Has anyone heard of Alberman's work on Chimpanzee's? You should check it out. It really makes for good multi-variant coordinates with Psyche Strainers.

But, you ask, how does it work, World's Fair guys? Not unlike a colander, not unlike run-of-the-mill baking equipment, not unlike overgrown mustaches-and-creamy-soup, this strainer takes what was once healthy and plentiful pieces of the American psyche, and separates it from the rest of our livelihoods. It's that simple! Remember when all we had to concern ourselves with in the Bush years, pre-9/11, was the national humiliation that this person had a bed at the White House? That his appearance of incompetence was sort of a bother? Such innocent times. The Psyche Strainers then had less of a challenge. They didn't get clogged so much.

Since the unpaid interns have been slaving away at this for a few months now, we were so very pleased to get free publicity about it from President Bush today. As I heard reported fourteen times in top-of-the-hour blurbs, Bush has observed that the War in Iraq is "straining the psyche of our country." Now if that's not a plug for our new product, I don't know what is. It's exactly what our new product does, straining people's psyches too! Quelle coincidence.

We just wish we'd been able to rush this to market prematurely, a bit sooner. I always argue with Dave - there he goes, 'myew myew myew, I want to wait until the data comes in before distributing these new scientific conclusions' - but I say, come on, scientist man, let's go full-on, willy-nilly, half-cocked with our half-baked ideas. But there he is, as ever, with that Canadian mindset I guess, pressing me to prove that it makes sense to go forward with the project. I say it again: Come on, man, where would we be if we only put out products that made sense or were defensible?

Fffft. Canadians.

I say thank you to the interns. And I say keep in the loop on the new Gift Shop to the readers. And no, we don't take Discover. That's for losers.