Trap-Ease is magnificent if there are mice in your home. You insert some cheese and set the trap, and then you can even go out to the opera. In a normal trap, the mouse, on entering, touches a spring activating a metal bar that kills him. Trap-Ease, on the contrary, is designed in the shape of an obtuse angle. If the mouse dawdles in the vestibule, he is spared (but he doesn’t get to eat the cheese). If he nibbles, the object turns 94 degrees and a shutter comes down. Since the device (which costs eight dollars) is transparent, you can, if you choose, watch the mouse in the evening when there’s, nothing good on TV; or you can liberate it in the fields (the ecological option), or throw the whole thing in the garbage, or—during sieges—empty the trap directly into a pot of boiling water (or oil).
LeafScoop is a glove that transforms your hands into those of a palmiped born, through radioactive mutation, from the crossbreeding of a duck with a pterodactyl via Dr. Quatermass. It is used in the collection of fallen leaves in your eighty-thousand-acre park. Spending a mere $12.50, you save the salary of a gardener and a gamekeeper (we recommend it to Lord Chatterley’s attention). TieSaver covers your neckties with a protective oily film so that, Chez Maxim, you can eat tomato sandwiches without then appearing at the Board of Directors meeting looking like Dr. Barnard after a difficult transplant. Only fifteen dollars. Ideal for those who still use brilliantine. You can wipe your forehead with the tie.
What happens when your suitcase is crammed to the bursting point? Fools rush out and buy a second suitcase, in suede or pigskin. But this solution means that afterwards you have both hands occupied. Briefcase Expander is, so to speak, a packsaddle that sits astride your regular suitcase, and you can use it for everything that won’t fit into the first bag, achieving an overall girth of six feet or more. For forty-five dollars you enjoy the sensation of boarding the plane with a mule under your arm.
Ankle-Valet ($19.95) allows you to conceal your credit cards in a secret pocket fastened to your calf. Indispensable for dope smugglers. Drive-Alert is placed behind the ear when you drive, so that the moment you doze off—or start to zzz, as the comics put it—and your head slumps forward beyond an established safety limit, an alarm goes off. The photographs indicate that it transforms the wearer’s ears into something reminiscent of Star Trek, Elephant Man, or the young Clark Gable. When you are wearing it, if someone asks you, «Will you marry me?» don’t answer with too vigorous an affirmative. The ultrasounds would do you in at once.
I would also mention in passing an automatic birdfeed distributor, a personalized beer stein with a bicycle bell (ring it to order a second round), a face sauna, a Coca-Cola fountain in the form of a gasoline pump, and Bicycle-Seat: a double bicycle seat, one per buttock. Good for those with a prostate problem. The ad informs us that the device has a «split-end design (no pun intended).»
If between planes you also explore the newsstands, you learn many things. Some days ago I discovered that there are various magazines addressed exclusively to treasure-hunters. Trésors de l’Histoire, for example, which is published in Paris, contains articles about fabulous caches possibly buried in various zones of France, giving specific geographical and topographical details and information on treasures already found in those localities.
The issue I bought includes directions regarding treasures to be found even on the bed of the Seine, ranging from ancient coins to objects thrown into the river over the centuries: swords, vases, boats, not to mention other goodies including works of art; there are also treasures buried in Brittany by the apocalyptic sect of Eon de l’Estoile in the Middle Ages; treasures from the magic forest of Brocéliande, dating back to the days of Merlin and the Grail cycle, with detailed instructions for identifying, if you strike it rich, the Holy Grail itself; treasures interred in Normandy by the Vendéens during the French Revolution; the treasure of Olivier le Diable, the barber of Louis XI; treasures mentioned—ostensibly in jest, though they actually exist—in the Arsène Lupin novels. Further, there is a Guide de la France trésoraire, which the article only describes generically, because the complete work is available for 26 francs. It contains 74 maps (scale 1:100), allowing the reader to choose the region most convenient for him.
Meanwhile, the reader will be wondering how you hunt for a treasure underground or underwater. No problem: the magazine offers articles and advertisements describing a vast range of equipment essential for the treasure-hunter. There are different types of detector, variously sensitive to gold or metals or other precious materials. For underwater hunting, there are wetsuits, masks, machines with discriminating devices that identify only jewels, and, of course, there are fins. There are even special credit cards with which, after spending two thousand dollars, you can select another two hundred dollars’ worth of goods, free. (The existence of such a bonus is puzzling; by this time the customer should have discovered, at the very least, a casket filled with pieces of eight).
For eight hundred dollars you can be the proud owner of an M-Scan. Though somewhat bulky, it can identify copper coins at a depth of twenty-two centimeters, a chest at two meters, and a metal mass enclosed in an impenetrable cell as much as three meters below your feet. Further instructions explain how to hold and orient the various types of detectors, advising that rainy weather facilitates the hunt for large masses, while dry weather is best for small objects. The Beachcomber 60 is specially engineered for searching beaches and highly mineralized terrain (as you can imagine, if a copper coin is buried next to a vein of diamonds the machine might act up and ignore the coin altogether).
Moreover, another ad reminds us that ninety percent of the world’s gold is still to be discovered, and the easy-to-handle Goldspear detector (fifteen hundred dollars) has been specially conceived to identify auriferous veins. A pocket detector (Metallocator) is available at a modest price for use in fireplaces and antique furniture. For less than forty dollars, an AF2 spray will clean and remove rust from the coins you find. Also for the less wealthy enthusiast, there are numerous radioesthesic plumblines. And for further information there are numerous volumes with such alluring titles as The Mysterious Story of French Treasures; Guide to Buried Treasure; France, the Promised Land; Caves and Caverns of France; and Treasure-hunting in Belgium and Switzerland.
You will wonder why, with all this inestimable wealth at their disposal, the editors of this magazine waste the best days of their lives writing instead of setting off for the forests of Brittany. The fact is that the magazine, the books, the detectors, the fins, the rust-cleaners, and all the rest are sold by the same organization, which has a chain of shops virtually covering the continent. So the mystery is quickly elucidated: they have already found their treasure.
What remains to be discovered is the identity of those who enrich these editors, but they are probably the same people who, in Italy, try to find spectacular bargains at televised auctions and rush to exploit the incredible beneficence of wholesale furniture outlets. At least the French enjoy some healthy hikes in the woods.
1986
How to Follow Instructions
Anyone familiar with Italian cafés knows—and has suffered from—those high-tech sugar bowls that are activated by the customer’s attempt to remove the spoon from the bowl. At the first, faint tug, the bowl’s lid comes down like a guillotine, causing the spoon to fly into the air, scattering sugar throughout the immediate vicinity, while the victim mentally consigns the inventor of this device to a concentration camp. But, on the contrary, that genius is probably enjoying the fruits of his crime on the remote and exclusive beach of some island paradise. The American humorist Shelley Berman once suggested that in the near future the same genius will invent a totally secure automobile, whose doors will open only from the inside.
For a number of years I drove a car that was, in many respects, excellent—except for the fact that the driver’s ashtray was set inside the left-hand door. As everyone knows, a driver grips the wheel with his left hand, keeping his right hand free to deal with the gearshift and the various knobs and dials. If you also smoke with your right hand, depositing the ashes in a receptacle to the
