The Worst Things For Sale

This Christmas ornament implausibly combines three different ideas in an attempt to cater to a target market of Minnesota Vikings fans who also like zombies. If you like the concept but you’re not a Vikings fan, you could opt for the $12 mousepad that simply says “Zombie Christmas” in sports-font. I don’t think there’s a context for it. Just a sporty zombie christmas in general. 

This watermelon knife cuts watermelon! Then again, so does any other knife.

The same company sells a cantaloupe knife and a pineapple knife, which are almost identical to the watermelon knife. But why spend $19 when you could spend $57?!  

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, went on 60 Minutes tonight to describe Amazon Prime Air, a service that flies your Amazon Prime purchases straight to your house with tiny, unmanned helicopters. FAA willing, it will go into operation in 2015. I look forward to a future where petty criminals steal my Cyber Monday deals out of the air with big nets.

I used to have a coworker who would tap his pencils. Not while he was thinking, because he was never thinking, but for hours, for fun. These drumstick pencils are just encouraging others like him to continue with their tapping. Tap tap tap tap tap. It’s morse code for “you hate working here.” Tap tap tap.

The only thing worse would be a desk toy that makes drum sounds with a tinny speaker. Of course, such a terrible thing exists, and I hope that your local pencil-drummer doesn’t read this, or he’ll have it overnighted to work so he can play it as soon as possible.

These heart-print panties fit on your iPhone. For some reason.

The Block Erupter USB is a little device that mines Bitcoins. Bitcoins are the electronic cryptocurrency which was once used to buy drugs online through the Silk Road, but since the site was revealed to be an FBI/DEA honeypot, it is now solely used for currency speculation. Mining bitcoins is done through a computational method that uses large amounts of electricity and generates large amounts of heat. In fact, if you check out the customer pictures of Block Erupters, owners have set them up in rows with fans blowing on them to keep them from overheating.

The problem with mining bitcoins in late 2013, apart from the fact that you can’t easily exchange them for US dollars (the main exchange, Mt. Gox, had their US-based branch shut down for violations of money laundering laws) is that the computational difficulty of doing so has gone up astronomically. It’s gone up so much, in fact, that the Bitcoins you would be able to mine are far less valuable than the cost of buying the device in the first place.

Of course, the fundamental problem with Bitcoin mining hardware is the obvious: if the devices were profitable, wouldn’t the manufacturers just keep them and use them to mine Bitcoins themselves? You could ask this question to everyone from the makers of the relatively-cheap Block Erupter USB through the $500+ Block Erupter Blade all the way up to Butterfly Labs, maker of a $4,500+ bitcoin miner.

This item is truly disgusting, so I’ve taken the liberty of blurring it. You can view it in all its unblurred glory on the product listing page if you’re curious. It’s the worst taxidermy I’ve ever seen, and here’s why:

1. It’s just half a cat.

2. The cat’s fur is dirty, stained, and matted.

3. The cat’s body is twisted in eternal terror.

4. The cat has no eyes.

5. The cat’s tongue is hanging out the side of its mouth and its mouth is locked in a frozen scream.

I think taxidermy is fine in general, but this cat definitely should have been buried instead of nailed to a hunk of wood and posted for sale. The same seller also has a dismembered cat head for sale, which they have described as “super cute”, which it is not.