Started your Christmas shopping yet?

It's terrible to have to write so soon about getting ready for Christmas. Also terrible that it occurred to me to say "the winter holidays", just in case there might be some "readers of other faiths" who might be offended by my daring to speak of Christmas. But I digress...

Christmas catalogues are starting to arrive in Walt's mailbox. Many years ago, two big department stores, fiercely competitive one with the other, used to send out big, thick "dream books". I and my siblings used to pore over these by the light of the flickering candle, while big white flakes of snow fell past the hoarfrosted windows [Get on with it! Ed.]

Yes, well... Sadly, the days of the huge Christmas catalogues are over. Gone are the books with pictures of everything from soup to nuts...literally. Now I'm seeing slim pamphlets from specialty retailers of chocolates, electronic goods, and, of course, toys and games.

There's a marketer called Calendar Club which specializes in -- guess what -- calendars. Apparently they're not making a large or even small fortune selling calendars, so they've added to their catalogue a section called "+ toys & games".

I didn't see any toys but there are all kinds of board and table games. Included are two pages of "word games" -- all variants on Scrabble and Yahtzee. They also have "games that make you think", the descriptions of which make me think, "Who on earth would buy this?"

Under "adult games", where I was looking for "Twister", I found "You might be a redneck if..." which is based on "Jeff Foxworthy Redneck jokes", whatever they are.

But best of all, under "family and party games", you can now buy a great new game called "FART!" Yep, that's the name of the game, folks. [It's supposed to have a "TM" after it. Ed.] Here's the catalogue description:

Flatulent fun with a CD player... Fart! is the side-splitting, sound-sational game that helps players unwind and release a little pressure! Players race to be the first to play out their cards while accompanied by a fast'n'frantic fart chorus that keeps them in stitches! Wild hilarity at the press of a button!

I guess it was only a matter of time until someone thought of a way to make a buck on such favourites as "Burglar Burglar", and the old artificial-fart-under-the-arm trick. Fun for the whole family! Who said good taste is dead?