Crushalogs.

One day's worth, stuffed in my mailbox:

I feel like I got mugged by Christmas.

These were all thick, weighty catalogs, approaching ten pounds of paper. And yet that is not even close to the bundle of Restoration Hardware catalogs that thump onto the porch once a year. I've hardly bought anything from Restoration Hardware, and yet these 1970s-Manhattan-phone-book-size piles of paper arrive well in advance of Thanksgiving every year. They claim it's going to pay off for them. I wonder.

I was impressed that seven different catalogs came at once. I guess the timing was no coincidence, them wanting to hit as soon as Halloween was over. For all I know the same catalog printer ran and mailed them.

It still feels early to me to be thinking of Christmas, being almost 1/6th of the year away, but it's not. Hallmark's had their annual ornament bushel out since summer, and the Hallmark channel is already running Christmas love movies.

And yet it's nothing new. The old Sears Wish Book used to show up in September. That was awesomely awesome with awesome sauce in those pre-Internet days. I remember us paging through it like maniacs as soon as it came in the house. "Clothes...clothes...clothes...come on, damn it!...electronics...crap, more clothes?...YES! TOYS!"

The lists for Santa would be ready before October, although we could have just clipped the toy pages and wrote "EVERYTHING HERE" on them instead.

Nowaways I hardly look at catalogs. My wife will occasionally peruse one, but I generally only look at ones that are fun, like Hammacher Schlemmer, and others that have stuff I can't afford.

They all wind up in the recycling bin eventually. Not sure what else can be done. I know you can turn old newspapers into firewood, but I don't know if that works with slick magazine paper.  We don't have a fireplace anyway.