Last fall, Dave and Allison Petrullo of Commack, N.Y., installed a custom-built Cal Spas grill on their patio with an outdoor refrigerator. They spent more than $100,000 renovating their backyard with a new synthetic deck, masonry, a whirlpool and a pool waterfall, so $6,500 more for Mr. Petrullo to have a brick sanctuary with a Cal Spas grill as its central altar seemed like nothing. “I told him to just go for it,” Ms. Petrullo said. “And get your dream barbecue.”

Though they have actually cooked on the grill only three times since they installed it, it has been a hit with Mr. Petrullo’s friends, who congregate around it at parties and give it a going-over like a pack of high school boys around a Corvette, Ms. Petrullo said. “They like to lift up the hood and play with the knobs,” she said. “They open the doors underneath, and they open the fridge next to it to check it out.”

You spend $6,500 for a grill you use three times and then show off to your buddies? I’d much rather have a $40 Smokey Joe that I use at least THREE TIMES A FUCKING WEEK for roasting veggies, smoking meats, and searing bison steaks. I love that little grill. I’m smoking bacon on that little grill tomorrow. Has Dave Petrullo ever motherfucking smoked bacon?

Don’t get me wrong: I want a bigger grill, but right now, I’m just eyeing the Performer model from Weber. But even that “bigger grill” is only $370, not some $6,500 conspicuous-consumption ego stroke.

Sure, it would be delish to have a custom job with built-in fridge, hot smoker, and sink. But that ain’t happening while we live in NYC, and it’s hardly my A1 consumer-lust fantasy anyway.

Some folks just got more money than sense.

Item 2: Ikea is the new Wal-Mart:

Ikea had not predicted that up to 6,000 people would descend on the new store, in Edmonton, with a stampede to get in resulting in a frightening crush….

The chaos meant the new store – the 12th and biggest to open in the UK – had to close just over 40 minutes after opening because of what Ikea described as the “unforeseen numbers”.

Congratulations, consumer America Britain, this is the life you deserve.

It looks just like this, except that mine is graphite, a darker grey.

Drool. Let’s be straight, though: I don’t like the photo-album much. It would work great for simple images, but, say, a Grand Canyon panorama would look like shit on the iPod. What I love about this is the introduction of a color screen.

Get the wireless keyboard and mouse options and set it up with wireless internet, and you’ve got one of the cleanest computer setups around. I just wish I had the $2400 or so to get the 20-inch and set it up the way I’d like.

Thursday night, after much consideration, I went to H.H. Gregg and purchased a home theater audio system, which is now hooked up and pumping nice sound. Although it’s at the cheaper end of the price spectrum, it’s the full deal: receiver, subwoofer, center channel speaker, two front speakers, two surrounds.

I initially had problems getting sound through the surrounds. The receiver has a test mode that enables me to check the sound coming through each speaker. The surrounds worked fine. However, the Fight Club DVD (among others) has a section allowing you to test and set the audio and video for your system. While testing, I noticed no sound was coming from the surrounds.

Puzzled, I tested various possible problems before finally figuring out I had pushed a wrong button on the face of the receiver that disabled the surrounds from pumping out audio. So that problem’s now fixed and I watched (actually, listened to) about an hour of Fight Club last night. That movie uses the surrounds incredibly well and so it was a nice way to test them out.

But wait, as they say on television. That’s not all.

I’ve recently found myself in situations where I thought it would be useful or even necessary to have a phone handy. Getting stuck in airports, driving at night, and so on. So I’m joining the cell phone crowd. Kind of.

What I did, see, was I ordered the groovy VisorPhone that Handspring offers. It’s a Springboard module that plugs into my PDA. The face of the PDA then displays a dialpad where you can tap out the number of the party you want to call. Pretty groovy and it beats having both a PDA and a phone.

I wasn’t going to do this now. I figured I could wait, but then Handspring made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’m still not sure how to dispose of the horse’s head, but Handspring is offering the VisorPhone attachment for 49 Yanqui dollars, with activation. I decided I couldn’t pass that up.

But here’s my secret shame that’s now not so secret. When I activated the calling plan, I went a little nutty. I also activated a wireless Internet plan. It’s expensive–probably too expensive. If I don’t use the damn thing, I’ll probably cancel it. But geez, it’ll be cool.