Possession Porn

The Christmas holiday season is coming up on us. Retailers are starting earlier than usual to make up for terrible sales last year. Word has leaked out about specials that will be offered at Best Buy, Target, and WalMart.

With all this emphasis on possessions, I'll note this:

I used to enjoy looking at the gift catalogs that my parents used to receive. One I especially wanted to see was from Nieman Marcus, the very upscale department store in Dallas.

That catalog was what I'd call possession porn or what the writer Tom Wolfe would call plutography -- writings about wealth that raise emotions.

I looked at the items in the Nieman Marcus catalog. I wouldn't buy most of them because of they were out of my price range. Besides, I didn't want them.

It was a lot like looking at women on a web porn site. I couldn't screw most of them because they were out of my price range. Most of them, however, I wanted.

There's one big difference between pornography and plutography.

On the internet, some companies charge $29.95 a month -- or even more -- to look at pictures of naked women. No company that I know of charges anything to look at pictures of luxury cars, jewelry, and expensive geegaws on the net.

(By the way, my father never ordered anything from Nieman Marcus.)