A recent trip through the DUMBO annex of ABC Carpet convinced us that while we are the type of family that covets a $4000-marked-down-to-$2700 Italian hardwood cabinet to hide the ugly pile-o-technology that is our telemusicavisual "system," we are also the type of family who can't even afford the much-less-costly (yet still quite...costly), considerably less charming "entertainment center" cabinet offered by the good people at the Pottery Barrel Crate Barn.

But although we are regularly treated by direct-mail marketers as if we have a lot of money to throw away on high-end crap, the purveyors of the low-end-crap know where we live, too. And thus Theresa and I found ourselves thumbing the tiny-images-packed pages of the Home Decorators Collection catalog.

This artifact, which we receive pretty regularly in the mail, is where the rubber of desperate homeowner acquisitiveness meets the road of American single-income-family finances. Jammed brazen cheek by "wood composite" jowl on page after page, the merch in the HDC catalog ranges from doesn't-look-so-bad-considering-it's-under-one-fifty to you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me.

In our (entirely pointless) search for the "budget alternative" in furniture buying, we found terrifying "wall art", the Banana Tree Lamp, the Hand Sofa and this, in regard to which the catalog helpfully notes, "no hunting involved." We found some of the featured items so viscerally disturbing that we had to turn away. Others just gave us something to think about.

(And -- OK, yeah -- we're thinking of buying this for a coffee table.)