I’ve always gotten a vast amount of entertainment value from the astonishing and miraculous claims of advertisers and would-be self-improvement guidance gurus. Everybody’s got incredible, and I do mean, literally, incredible stuff to offer me. And asks so little in return! (Often, only $19.95, and if I order before midnight tonight, they’ll throw in shipping and handling, and the second batch is free!)

Why, just this morning there was an email offering to help me confirm the $95K deposit I was (apparently in an out-of-body experience) making in some unspecified account for equally unspecified purposes. No charge for this generous offer of assistance! People can be so selfless, so willing to give of themselves to complete strangers.

I also love the kinds of unsolicited catalogs that appear in the mailbox or sneak in, sandwiched in the middle of the Sunday paper, offering a dazzling array of specialized tools that do things I didn’t even know I needed done, outfits for occasions I would otherwise have dreaded attending for lack of appropriate garb, and mail-order taste treats that I can only assume would make fantastic foundation blocks for the addition to my garage if they are as heavy and solid as they appear in the illustrative “mouthwatering” photos. Not that I am the suspicious type, but do I often check the small print in those last to see if they were sponsored by any orthodontic clinic or the local emergency room.

With my husband’s work as an educator and conductor, he is constantly supplied with offerings of books that will teach him how to be the perfect pedagogue and assume, evidently, Manchurian Candidate-like control of his singers and instrumentalists, not to mention catalogs of instruments used around the world in all of the best (surely they can’t be exaggerating) professional orchestras, Tibetan Buddhist temples, national trophy-winning marching bands, Montessori schools, and the White House at Christmastime. I especially adore the array of costumes on offer for performers, each more likely than the last to make audiences faint in astonishment at the sheer beauty and professional demeanor of his singers. If you happen to judge such things by weight of sequin-age or quantity of yardage when stretched to the full possible extension of the no-iron knit fabrics.

When I was in academia, I mostly received art supply catalogs and sample textbooks that publishers were certain my students and I could no more breathe without than we could imagine surviving a semester of English composition or Introduction to Design unaided by their inspirations. But it was in my work as the university’s gallery director that I got the really good stuff. Along with the usual bibles of workplace safety and inventories of must-have tools (some of which I’m still puzzling over), I got catalogs for ordering more esoteric supplies, like specialty light bulbs that would instantly convert the one-room concrete box gallery into the Quai d’Orsay, archival storage equipment that would only cost me approximately three years of my whole gallery budget for one four-shelf unit (base and casters not included), and my personal favorite, a free subscription to Bathroom World, where I could peruse at leisure (presumably, whilst seated) the marvels of wall-hung thrones, public-proof stainless steel soap dispensers and no-touch trash bins and, yes, signage that would make all of the needy sigh with relief.

I know it’s daft, but I do get sucked in by those 1001-Ways promises of all sorts of how-to pamphlets and book collections and DVDs. It’s not that I fall for the claim that this one will solve forever the mystery of the ages, it’s that I’m so enamored of the fantastic imagery in word and picture that someone labored to cook up to convince me of the claims. If you not only sat down to concoct a mile-long list of things I can do to save the environment using only the old can opener I was going to throw away this week but you even took the time to create flashy illustrations of what a fit, popular, pitch-perfect human being I will become as the direct result of these activities, why–who am I to deny you the opportunity to improve me so?

Ah, I know in my heart it’s all pixy dust. But I do so like dipping my toe in, if only to savor the sometimes fall-down-funny misguided efforts made to better me for my own good. May my admittedly shaky wisdom still keep me safe from all fishy Free Offers, and help me to know the difference between ‘The! Real! Deal!’ and an actual deal. But please, may I also never lose the ability to enjoy an outrageously, stupendously, screamingly awful offer for its sheer audacity and ridiculous beauty.