Is there any crap people won't buy?

H.L. Mencken famously quipped that "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." I think that would still hold true even if we narrowed it down to just "American poker players." You could also substitute "taste" for "intelligence," and still have a valid point.

Look at this assemblage of poker crap I found at just one major online retailer (in this case, http://www.target.com/). I don't know about the rest of the poker-playing public, but if I stumbled into my bathroom in the middle of the night with a full bladder and found myself looking at a poker shower curtain, a poker toothbrush holder, a poker liquid-hand-soap dispenser, a poker wastebasket, a poker tissue-box cover, and poker wallpaper edging, all faintly illuminated by a poker night-light, I think I'd suddenly need to vomit more than to urinate.

In your kitchen, what would compel you to own a poker slow-cooker, poker barbecue utensils, poker glasses, poker swizzle sticks, and poker coasters? Certainly I can see that a flash drive would make a useful computer accessory for some people, but how are you better off for it being packaged like a poker chip?

Undoubtedly, though, there are people out there who would unwrap one of these hideous things at Christmas and react in earnest, "Wow! Just what I've been wanting!" These people must have more than a smidgen of alien DNA coursing through their veins.

I mean, I reckon that I love this game as much as anybody alive. The percentage of the world's population that spends a higher portion of an average day thinking about poker than I do must be very, very small. But I can't imagine my life being made even a scintilla happier by having such tsatskes surrounding me.

Just a note to my friends and family reading this. If you have ever considered getting me such an item as a gift, well, please don't. Neither of us would want the job of cleaning up the likely result.