Buyer Beware

A bizarre catalogue arrived in my mailslot last week. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why I would have been sent the "Security Cameras Direct" catalogue, which contains interesting items such as the "World's Smallest Color Video Camera" (USD$125), the "Ultra-tiny Video Camera" (USD$89), and my personal favourite, the "Hidden Camera Inside Smoke Detector" (USD$79 for the wide angle model).

Alright, I don't want to stereotype, but it all seemed so American to me. Which is why it didn't take me too long to recall that I bought AHC a pair of opera glasses for Christmas. We like opera. It was also kind of a joke because AHC needs new glasses and he keeps putting it off. (Seriously, man, just go get the damned things!) Anyway, I was having some trouble finding them (not helped by the fact that I left it a bit late in spite of having this good idea for at least a month before the holidays), so I turned to the world wide web for a little shopping. Practically the only place I could find the ones I wanted was on this American website. In spite of my trepidation about turning my credit card info over to a US company (as if they don't have it anyway), I clicked my way to a pair of opera glasses for AHC.

Is there some correlation between opera glasses and security cameras that I am unaware of? It just seems so unlikely to me. God only knows what mailing/marketing list I've gotten myself onto now. It's my own fault, I know. As TF&C put it: "if you... don't want your personal information collected by retailers and data munchers, don't buy so much crap and quit putting pictures of yourself on the internet."