Every year about this time I say the same thing: “I’m doing all my Christmas shopping by mail this year.” And every year on December 23, you can find me at the mall, filled with loathing for my fellow man who can’t park a car straight in one friggin’ inch of snow, and revulsion at the picked-over selection at the stores, exacerbated by the piped-in warblings of Chip Davis’ Hokey Christmas Minimoog. Well, I just got my Christmas catalogs, and the mail-order situation is looking pretty dire too.

I managed to get myself onto one of Lands’ End’s (800-963-4816, http://landsend.com) half-dozen targeted mailing lists. I wouldn’t mind, except that what put me on the list was the pastel purple old-lady mock turtlenecks I bought for my aunt a couple years ago. Now I get the Lands’ End Pastel Purple Old-Lady Mock Turtleneck catalog every couple months, and the mailman thinks I’m freaky like that.

I’ve never ordered anything from Orvis (888-235-9763, http://orvis.com), but that doesn’t stop them from sending me catalogs. Whereas L.L.Bean (800-441-5713, http://llbean.com) is for people who may have been camping once, a long time ago, Orvis is for people whose idea of roughing it comes from L.L.Bean catalogs.

My mom gets Think Geek (888-433-5788, http://thinkgeek.com) now, since she bought about half my Christmas presents from them last year. This makes her the coolest mom in the universe. Where else can you get a t-shirt that says “Roses are #FF0000/Violets are #0000FF/All my base/Are belong to you”? (Okay, maybe six people will get that joke and think it’s hilarious. The rest of you are better off if you don’t ask.)

Oriental Trading Company (800-875-8480, http://orientaltrading.com) shows up in my mailbox from time to time. Whether you’re an elementary school teacher who needs to buy schlock in bulk for your students, or you just need a six-foo-tall inflatable monkey (and who doesn’t?), Oriental Trading has got you covered.

And then we’ve got Lillian Vernon (800-901-9402, http://lillianvernon.com), which is what we used to call QVC (888-345-5788, http://qvc.com) before we got cable. I used to love reading this catalog when I was a kid. I know that makes me a total spazzo, but for the life of me I can’t remember what I thought was so cool about it. Still, you’ve gotta hand it to a company that would monogram a light bulb, if you bought it from them.

Everybody loves food, and I am no exception. Premier Group’s (873-6688, http://premiergroup.net) holiday catalog used to be the highlight of my mid November. Half of the catalog was boring old wine, but the other half was cool stuff like yak bacon and imported Slovenian saltines. You know, things you would never actually buy, but if you went in to the store at the right time, might be skewered on toothpicks and laid out on trays for you to mooch. But I must be getting penalized for buying too little yak bacon and too much Mad Dog 20/20, because I’ve been dumped onto their alcoholics’ mailing list. There’s only about four pages of food in the Premier catalogs I get now, and it’s all stuff like Pocky and hot sauce.

We also get Wine Enthusiast (800-356-8466, http://wineenthusiast.com), which makes me seriously question whether some people are for real. I can’t bring myself to accept that people would actually buy $20/pair “stemless wine glasses” that look so much like the $20/dozen juice glasses I own, or a 450-bottle capacity earthquake-resistant wine refrigerator. Here’s a hint: If you have 450 bottles of wine in your house, your biggest problem is not where to put them or what to do in case of an earthquake.

I also just stared getting Harry & David, (877-322-1200, http://harryanddavid.com) which is apparently how the upper crust spells “Hickory Farms” (800-222-4288, http://hickoryfarms.com). From what I understand, they have genetically engineered an army of bionic pears—the fruit-basket industry’s crowning achievement, to hear them tell it. They are very proud of these pears. It’s not just that they stuff a half-dozen into every single gift basket they offer; it’s not just that they have 10 of the same photo of this one pear in their 40-page catalog (as well as on the cover, the home page of their Web site and their gift cards). What puts it over the top is that when you sign up for their Fruit of the Month Club, you’ll get one box of these pears in December and, because these pears are so freakin’ awesome, another box of the same pears in October. It’s kind of too bad that pears are the most boring fruit ever.

And what’s the deal with Wegmans’ (800-932-6267, http://wegmans.com) Menu Magazine? What bizarre conflagration of personality disorders would produce a person who insisted on local artisanal Bergenost cheese but bought all their onions pre-diced? Where does a grocery store that stocks store-brand potted meat get off selling full-page ads to Saab and Mercedes? And what percentage of my grocery bill goes to fund Danny Wegman’s coke habit? The food photography in this magazine is almost amazing enough to let them off the hook. To be honest, I really only look at the pictures, sometimes even skipping the captions. There is one photograph of what looked to be the best chicken wings in the world—crispy, goopy, the sauce tangy and buttery, just the way I like it. In retrospect, it would have been weird to feature chicken wings in the holiday issue, but no less weird than advertising jewelry on the back cover. The wings looked so good I was almost ready to go out and buy some, when I noticed that the caption read “Candied Sweet Potatoes.”

Yeah, the catalog scene doesn’t look a whole lot better than the mall scene, but at least they won’t make you listen to Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “A Very Rock Opera Christmas.” Unless, of course, they put you on hold.

Dave is, once again, going to put off Christmas shopping until December 23. Spare his relatives from “these cool socks…I found…um, in the store” by emailing your gift ideas to webmaster@artvoice.com.