Stupid new products from the 2012 International Home and Housewares Show.

Before I leap into the subject at hand, this is what happens around here when I get a craving for something sweet in the middle of the night and there’s no more sugar-free pie. I start horsing around on Wal-Mart’s website and place an order for the following awesome products:

A couple of details I’d like to mention: 1) Smucker’s sugar-free caramel topping is fat-free, too; and 2) I never knew until 15 minutes ago that Vlasic makes sugar-free bread & butter pickles. I love these stupid things and I’m so excited I can hardly breathe. YEE-HAW! As soon as everything is delivered on Wednesday I’m immedately going to eat peanut butter with raspberry preserves for lunch and baloney on white bread for dinner with a pile of Vlasic pickles.

Holy crap. Fine dining!

You may have seen the news recently that Dick Van Dyke, age 86, married a spunky 40-year-old makeup artist named Arlene Silver in Malibu on February 29. I totally get it that Van Dyke wants companionship. What I don’t get is why Arlene wants to see him naked.

And finally, here’s the latest scoop from the International Home and Housewares Show currently underway at McCormick Place in Chicago. The hot new products of 2012 include: 1) fancy slip-on covers called Garbage Pantz in a variety of exciting patterns that will dress up your outdoor trash cans; 2) overpriced Kitchen Aid appliances in idiotic colors when white no longer performs to your satisfaction; 3) Teflon-coated Toast Bags for sliced bread in case you’re sick of cleaning the crumb tray in your toaster (you’re supposed to clean the crumb tray?); and 4) Mighty Mugs that will never tip over unless Junior decides to drop-kick one across the kitchen.

And now I think I’ll forage for leftovers, pour myself a nice tall Marcy-tini and read my Clifton Webb autobiography for a while. If you like books by deceased actors, this one is really a gem.

Thank you for reading this.