Confessions of a Catalogaholic

I am a catalog-aholic. For me, the best part of shopping is browsing. OK, the best part is finding something that actually fits, looks good and I can afford, but the browsing is how you get there. Catalogs allow me to browse without walking from one end of the mall to the other, something dangerously close to exercise.

Catalogs also show me a wide variety of items that I hadn't realized I couldn't live without. Items so specialized, so unique that they never actually make it to stores. Merchants realize they are never going to sell enough of these items to justify shipping them out to the stores where they would just take up valuable display space while gathering dust.

Things like the Margaritaville Trio frozen concoction maker.

I do love me a good margarita, but I don't make them very often. Crushing up the ice for a frozen margarita is just too noisy and time consuming. When I want a margarita, I want it now! I lusted after the original Margaritaville frozen concotion maker, which combined a high-powered ice-crusher with a blender.

I fantasized about building my own little Margaritaville-themed bar on the deck. I imagined a little grass hut-type awning, a string of parrot party lights, a neon light shaped like a palm tree, a pink flamingo just because, comfy chaise lounge chairs and music by Jimmy Buffet, natch. The centerpiece would be my shiny, stainless steel Margaritaville frozen concoction maker.

The only problem? I have a one-margarita limit. Two margaritas and my head is pounding like a, like a, like a really loud pounding thingy. I just couldn't justify all that snazzy-ness for one margarita every now and again.

But now.

Now there is the Margaritaville Trio frozen concoction maker. An even larger ice shaver with three -- count 'em THREE -- "independent blending stations" for a combined 72 ounces of margarita-liciousness. Available for your very own home usage.

It boggles the imagination! Of all the things in the Williams-Sonoma catalog that I desire but have absolutely no need for, this one takes the cake. It is the apex of margarita technology. The perfect blending (as it were) of consumerism and consumption, of impracticality and, well, that pretty much sums it up.

And I am lime-green with envy.

It's not just the Margaritaville Trio frozen concoction maker, it's the lifestyle that would cause someone to need the Margaritaville Trio frozen concoction maker. Who really needs to make a combined 72-ounces of frozen drinks at the same time, at home, often enough to justify the cost of such a machine? Other than Jimmy Buffet, that is.

And if you could afford it and needed one, would you really want to spend all your time standing around making 72-ounces of frozen drinks? Or cleaning up after a bunch of people who could drink multiple 72-ounce batches of frozen drinks? And if you could hire people to run the machine and clean up after your friends, would you really spend your time looking through catalogs?

I think not.

I think this is one of those products destined to be in the sale catalog next time around. And so, to save the good people at Williams-Sonoma the stress of worrying about how they are going to get rid of a warehouse full of Margaritaville Trio frozen concoction makers, I will volunteer to accept one at no charge.

Ole!