Today's Major FUN Award goes to Fidgets.

Your set of four Fidgets arrive in an upscale-looking pin-striped baggie, tied with an upscale metalic baggie-tie. They are mounted on what must be the state-of-the-art in upscale-seeming pencils - each pencil decorated in an iridescently swirling abstractly gleaming metalic sheen. I tell you, the presentation alone, especially given what is actually being presented, makes Fidgets border on BERNIEworthiness.

In answer to the question "Which Fidget is Best," I can only say that as I become more and more of a Fidget Aficionado, I have come to prize all four, equally. Each Fidget lends itself to a particular kind of musing. My set of Fidgets has become a set of conceptual golf clubs. Sometimes the flippant spin of the wingnut Fidget is the only Fidget that will get me to the green of mindless musing, sometimes the complex turnings of the "Bump and Run" unthreaded hexnut.

But what really transports Fidgets across the border into land of that which has received the Major FUN Award is the sheer silliness of the whole concept. It's silly to have these things on top of your pencils. They don't erase very well. They don't help you write any better. They are, if anything, top-heavy pencil toppings. But they also offer mute testimony to a very human need, perhaps a dysfunctional human need, but a need, nonetheless. And they raise it to an art form. And they bring pleasure. And they are frequently fun. And I'm keeping the whole set.

Labels: Major Fun