Michigan is the state I keep forgetting to think about. For a while it was Delaware, then Maryland took a turn, and now it's Michigan. There are points in my life when you could ask me what state former WB mascot Michigan J. Frog is named after, and I'd say "I dunno. Frog?" I think Michigan agrees with me on this one, because it's the first quarter to primarily depict where it's not. It's mostly an outline of the Great Lakes, which, let's be honest here, is not one of the world's most aesthetic outlines. They're like Rorschach blots without the symmetry. I think they look kind of like an angel scooping out the cat box, but that probably says too much about me. My psyche is sprawled nude before you! D+

Florida

The Florida quarter shows the Space Shuttle...flying over a pirate ship! Near palm trees! If I were still sixteen, I would want this as a poster! In fact, give one of the pirates an electric guitar and you may have the baddest-assisest possible juxtaposition of objects. And of course, you'd need to color it with black light paints. Whenever you hung it on a wall, a bong would spontaneously form out of whatever objects were lying nearby. As it is, though, it's conservatively rendered on legal currency, and that's okay with me. I have no idea where my black light is, anyway. A

Texas

Okay, this one was a gimme. Texans put the outline of Texas on everything anyway. Given how most Texans feel about Texas, its very existence is a violation of church and state. There's also a star, and the state motto, "The Lone Star State." So you've got the state, a lone star, and "The Lone Star State." You'd think this was repetitive, but it's actually engineered redundancy, so that even if the quarter is marred or otherwise damaged you'll be able to identify it as a Texas quarter, presumably so that you can go shoot the person who marred or damaged it. C+

Iowa

I wasn't sure if the Iowa state quarter is incredibly boring, or if I'm being prejudiced by the existence of the word "Iowa." I had to replace "Iowa" with "Mordor" with Photoshop to accurately judge it, and it turns out that it really is that boring. There's a schoolhouse and a tree and some people and I'm about to fall asleep just writing about it. Even if Mount Doom was in the background and orcs were smacking the kids around, this would still be tedious. D-

Wisconsin

Cow, cheese, corn. Yeah, okay. I have no objection to Wisconsin's contribution to the world of casseroles. I'm glad they know their strengths. It also has the word "FORWARD." I was hoping it was the first quarter with built-in e-mail capabilities, but no, that's the state motto. I had no idea. It kind of makes sense, if I was a settler and I found myself in Wisconsin that's what I'd say, too. That's why California's state motto means "I have found it." You get to Wisconsin, you keep moving. You get to California, you've arrived. Just kidding, Wisconsinites! Please do not cut off the influx of tasty beef proteins! B

Apparently, Santa's workshop is able to create any toy any child asks for. Given that Santa will undoubtedly deliver more than a few Xbox 360s this holiday season, presumably he can create products that aren't even commercially available. Perhaps he can use the power of his toy shop to make the toy shop itself unnecessary. It just takes one child to put "Little Tykes Nanotech Matter Assembler" on his Christmas list and Santa can ditch the sack and the elves and just spurt presents out of his new high-tech device like it was a machine gun of joy, shooting "cop-killer" Teflon good tidings. C

Cookies

There used to be some question as to why Santa needs millions of plates of cookies ready for his consumption, but the jargon of fitness has given us our answer: carbo loading. Bringing joy to all the children of the world takes focus and endurance, and Santa doesn't want to run out of glycogen over Scaffhausen. In fact, it seems to me that if the Iron Man competition wants to be taken seriously, they should swap out one of the events for Santa's job. Swimming, biking, and bringing joy to all the children of the world. B+

Sleigh

On one hand, if your conveyance is being pulled through the night skies by magical reindeer, why does it need to be a sleigh? On the other hand, why would it need to be anything else? Given that it's the reindeer that provide the horsepower, the actual vehicle can be anything from a Honda Element to a colossal baked potato. It should probably be something without a roof, though, so we don't lose all those delightful "something falls out of Santa's sleigh" jokes. B-

North Pole

So Santa lives at the North Pole. That...sorts of makes sense. It's isolated from distractions, and that way nobody can claim to own Santa. But why the North Pole, given that there's no actual landmass up there? Why not the South Pole? Well, it's kind of an unpleasant thing to report, but...Santa hates Australians. Can't stand them. Oh, sure, he'll bring gifts to the kids -- that's his job -- but he wants to be as far away from the country as he can. He wouldn't even go see The Lord of the Rings, because it was "made by those God-cursed Australians." I tried to explain that Peter Jackson is from New Zealand, but he just gave me this look, like he pitied me for thinking there was a difference. D

Letters

It is my understanding that an old British tradition is to take children's letters to Santa and burn them in the fireplace, if you have one. That's hilarious. "Okay, honey, now we're going to send your carefully hand-written three-page letter to Santa and send it to him!" *FWOOSH*. I don't think I could do that with a straight face. "Hey, I have an idea! This year, why don't you make an elaborate painted toothpick diorama of what you want from Santa, and we'll send that to him! Oh, hey, I bet Santa would like a comic book to read! Why don't you go get one of your favorites, and we'll lend it to him!" Kids are such saps. A

"And laying his finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose." This seems like an odd ritual to go through just to get the hell out of some guy's house. Perhaps the ritual is necessary? Is it possible that we have found Santa's one weakness? My theory is that if he is unable to lay his finger aside of his nose, Santa is helpless. And using this insight I propose to capture Santa, bind his hands, and subject him to a brutal interrogation until he reveals all his secrets, or at least coughs up that "2-XL" toy robot I asked for in third grade. C

Outfit

Most overweight middle-aged men can't pull off a white-and-red fur suit with black leather boots. Hell, most pimps can't pull it off. But Santa can, and do you know why? Because when you give away billions of dollars of merchandise every year, you can dress however the hell you want. If he decides that next year he's going to switch to an empire-waist yellow chiffon dress and matching two-tone high-heel pumps, who's going to complain? In this country we know whose jolly old ass to kiss if we want our stockings stuffed the way we like it. A

Reindeer

It's interesting that "A Visit from Saint Nicholas," one of the seminal texts of the modern Claus, specifies eight tiny reindeer. I don't know why the miniature aspect of the reindeer has been abandoned. Personally, the idea of big ol' Santa and his big ol' sleigh being hauled around by a bunch of shar-pei sized ungulates comes perilously close to filling me with something vaguely related to Christmas spirit. I think if we're not going to embrace the tininess of the reindeer, we should pick another two-syllable adjective for the poem. I suggest "angry." B

Mrs. Claus

I feel bad for Mrs. Claus. To begin with, her place in the Santa pantheon ranks several rungs below a mutant reindeer. Her role in the whole shebang is poorly defined; presumably she undertakes the standard pre-feminist womanly tasks of cooking, cleaning, and being seduced behind the reindeer stables by a strapping, virile young elf. A quick trip to Amazon reveals several literary attempts to fill out Mrs. Claus's legend with titles like How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas and A Bit of Applause for Mrs. Claus. But how do we know they're real? C+

Elves

I'm unclear on how Santa got his workshop started. How do you even manage to gather a skilled elven workforce? Okay, Craigslist, but how did you do it back then? Ads in the back of Pixie of Fortune magazine? Drive a pickup truck to a street corner just outside the enchanted hardware store? Of all the creatures in mythology, you'd think elves would have about the shittiest work ethic possible, but apparently they're still hard at it, making wooden trains and hobby horses and other toys nobody wants anymore. I can only imagine Santa has some serious dirt on those guys. B-

Conspiracy theories about Kennedy's death are like Elvis's hips: they used to be considered scary and dangerous, but now they're just charmingly quaint. Ah, for the carefree days when the government could reasonably be accused of having nothing better to do than orchestrate a single illegal covert murder. Hey, why don't we see if we can get the CIA implicated in stealing a pie from Old Mrs. Croody's windowsill? C-

Chemtrails

Atmospherical irregularities? Try eugenics! The theory is that certain jet vapor trails are actually evidence of a vast plan to dump chemicals into the air in order to thin the weak from the population. Unless they're inoculating us against anthrax. Or, my personal favorite, they're altering our brains to make us more vulnerable to mind control by high-ranking government warlocks. If we're going to be secretly ruled by warlocks, I'd like them to be powerful enough not to have to rely on commercial aircraft to do their dirty work, but I'm willing to settle. C+

Faked Moon Landing

Seriously, who cares? This is like proving that the Triangle Factory Fire was a hoax perpetrated by William Randolph Hearst. A couple hundred historians and National Geographic subscribers might clutch at their chests and call for Emma to bring the spirits of ammonia, but most people would shrug and go back to discussing Tom Cruise's latest public froth-fest. We haven't been to the moon in over thirty years, and we're clearly never going back until Richard Branson gets really, really bored, so let's move on, shall we? D

Princess Di's Death

This one's a gimme. The jet-setting former wife of a future figurehead? Clearly someone that powerful cannot be allowed to live. She had the ability to sell out issues of both Us and People. Her very appearance on television could lead billions of her mind-slaves to comment on her dress. Plus -- and this is the kicker -- she was active in many charities. I'm not one to give a free pass to laser-wielding Rosicrucian assassins. Ask anyone. But in this case they were only doing what needed to be done. B

Manufactured Tsunami

Just to prove that middle-class American white guys don't have a monopoly on unhinged fantasy lives, Al-Jazeera has been a vector for a number of theories about the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, the most interesting of which holds that the U.S. caused the tsunami with those gigantic underwater electromagnetic pulse generators we're always goofing around with. This is of course completely untrue. We used to be into unleashing massive oceanic disasters on the third world, but since about 2003 we've been into knitting. D+

This is a deck of cards you can put in the dungeon if you want to screw your players over. In theory they can end up with good stuff, like twenty-five pieces of jewelry, but on the other hand they may wind up with their souls trapped on a distant plane of existence. When the upside is a couple dozen trinkets and the downside is your spirit gets torn from your body, that equals screwjob. The nasty thing is, it's a deck of cards. How can anyone possibly resist drawing from it? If it were a magical telemarketer adventurers would have no trouble hanging up on it, but a deck of cards is just too alluring. A

Sphere of Annihilation

It's always nice when a magic item's name is also its description and warning label. Nobody mistakes a sphere of annihilation for an ice cream maker, unless one of your players likes to play a half-orc with an intelligence of three just for the comic possibilities. At that point a ball of absolute destruction is the least of your concerns. According to the rules if you touch the sphere only your deity can bring you back to life, but if your deity cared that much about you, it probably would have imbued you with enough sense not to touch the damn sphere. B

The Moaning Diamond

Ideally, the Moaning Diamond would be called that because it originally belonged to wealthy heiress Angelica Moaning, but no, it actually moans constantly, which to me is enough to strike it from my magical wish list right there. I can hardly stand those mechanical barking puppies, and those come with an off switch. I don't care if the Moaning Diamond combines the power of the Cloak of Serriptitious Rubbing with the Lube of Eternal Ecstacy, I have better things to do than drag around a caterwauling rock. D

Talisman of Ultimate Evil

In a fantasy world, "ultimate evil" is a hotly contested title. You may be planning of enslaving the Gossamer Pixies of Sharing Glen and making them weatherproof your onyx tower of doom, but somewhere out there there's an overlord planning on using them as cat toys. As ultimate evils go, the talisman is pretty lame. It just makes a crack in the earth open up and swallow a good cleric. It can't even wipe out an entire tabernacle. I'd have to call this a talisman of unremarkable evil at best. Maybe they could just call it "the crack rock." D+

Staff of the Magi

This is pretty cool, even if it sounds like the Three Wise Men's secretarial pool. First off, it can cast an imperial assload of different spells. Plus, if you break it in half it completely explodes. I think this would make for a great fantasy Mexican standoff -- although it would have to be called The Standoff of Galthanganogathorinar or something -- with two wizards holding their staves over one knee, eyeing each other warily. Traditionally at this point the unexpected happens, ending the standoff, but frankly I'd like to see them blow up. B+

This, I don't get. Political connection: none. Boston connection: none. Colors: not red, white, and blue. There isn't even some tenuous slogan like "America was pre-owned too, but thanks to N.A.D.A you don't have to slaughter Prius owners to get the car you want. Probably." I can only assume this is part of some plan to wrest control of the used car-pricing market from Kelly Blue Book, some long-term scheme to install N.A.D.A. as a powerful but poorly-named automobile sales lobby. This would be more believable if the guide wasn't just for July-September 2004. It's hard to consolidate political influence with a three-month expiration date. D

Program

Lots of words, lots of pictures, lots of ads, all to hammer home two main points. First, John Edwards looks just like the late John Ritter. I would not be surprised to see Chrissy and Janet handed important cabinet posts. Secondly, firefighters love Kerry, at least some firefighters. I imagine the Republicans have their own firefighters. Firefighters are a major political power nexus now. I hope they don't abuse their newfound influence. They might start demanding bigger hats, or tax subsidies for people who see Ladder 49. C+

Dunkin' Donuts Coffee

I just want to point out that I love those little vacuum-packed coffee packets where it feels like a stiff brick of coffee chaw but when you open them, poof! Grounds! For you! Even better would be actual coffee chaw. I'd love to chew on a brick of coffee like a hillbilly in an early Looney Tunes short, then spit into a spitoon. It would go "clang!" If Kerry did that it would help against charges that he's out of touch with the common man. But not Dunkin' Donuts coffee. We don't want him that common. B

The Good City

This book is subtitled "Writers Explore 21st-century Boston." I am a lover of literature, but I can barely stay awake even reading that. If it were less vague ("Writers Explore the Sewers of 21st-century Boston") it might draw me in, but as it is when I thumb through it all the words appear to read "Wouldn't a nap be nice right now?" I don't think many delegates are going to take time from the politicorgy to read "An Eden of Sorts: An Unnatural History of the Shawmut Peninsula." I dunno, maybe that's what the coffee's for. D

ID Holders

Hey, practical. I've been to few conventions, and none that specifically make space for Idahoans, but I know that they generally require ID and that without a chest pocket there's no place to clamp it. At most conventions I go to people just attach it to their lightsaber clip or cloak folds, but I doubt that applies to many people at the DNC. Although politics would be vastly improved if it did. Say what you like about cosplay, Kerry would look great dressed as an Ent. I'd vote for an Ent. Until such time as I am given the opportunity by this so-called "democracy" to vote for fictional sentient trees, this neckstrap clip thingy will have to do. A-

The frog is red, white, and blue, because it's a national political convention. That's such an obvious choice it's pathetic. It's like naming your cat "Fluffy" or your butler "Jeeves." The frog is named Tad Jr. but he has the word "Boston" on his chest so that eight years from now when you're saying to yourself "Where in God's name did I get a tricolor frog?" The answer will be right in front of you. I think more plush toys should have that feature. I have a handful of stuffed animals that would say "One of Those Claw Games at a Denny's You Went to Drunk." C

A Pink Razor

I didn't go to the DNC myself, and the guy who sent me the packet, Dave Barker, is a male guy, not a female guy, so I'm not sure if this is some sort of gender mismatch or if there's some connection between the Democratic National Convention and pink personal care products. I imagine Ann Coulter could think up about six. The thing I like about this is that it's called a "Passion Venus." I'm glad we've reached the point in society where all feminine products have names like silicone vibrators. B

A Pad of Paper

This is nice paper, but it has "Crane's" -- the manufacturer's name -- at the top of every page. I've had an aversion to using products with overly prominent trademarks on them since a bad experience with a Le Car in 1983. It also has the history of the company written on the inside of the cover, so it doubles as a way to get really bored. C-

Macaroni and Cheese

Kraft plays both sides in the political game, distributing boxes of mac and cheese at both major conventions, the Democrats getting donkey shapes and the Republicans getting elephant shapes. Maybe they have a Libertarian version with little guns and copies of Atlas Shrugged, I'm not sure. At any rate, this is just the sort of political favor-buying that needs to be eradicated in this country. Whoever ends up in the White House, we know who will be calling the shots in the arena of global cheesiness issues. If the next administration establishes national cholesterol minimums, we'll know who to blame. B

A Coupon

I'm glad to know our political representatives can take comfort and solace from five free digital prints at CVS pharmacy. At 29 cents each, that's a big buck forty-five worth of freedom. These are the things that make us a beacon unto the world. You know how many free prints government representatives in Syria get? Well, pretty much all they want, it's a totalitarian state. But they're dark, somber digital prints, color-balanced by the forces of oppression and sent to the printer of tyranny via the USB cable of non-representative rulership. D

The original Hampsterdance page was an excellent testament to the power of animated gifs and an inability to spell. It was also one of the first tangible signs that the Web was no longer the purview of those who put "tell computers how to be" above "laugh without spitting" on their pre-incarnation skill request form. True geeks don't care for the adorability of spastic rodents any more than they care if Todd will help Dorian get Ace back on One Life to Live. D

Dancing Baby

The Dancing Baby was the first Internet fad to make it off the Web and into the fantasies of a fictional anorectic attorney, beating out the "juggling eggplant" sequence in Ray Aden, ADD DA by two weeks. In true Web form, the animation required a random-yet-catchy soundtrack to really hit the big time. It's hard to beat a song with the words "Ooga Chaka" in it, and I admire the restraint in not using something like "Baby Baby" or "Ice Ice Baby," but I probably would have picked Imperial March from Star Wars. But I'm like that. C

Star Wars Kid

Now that Warhol's prediction about fame is coming closer and closer to fruition -- the current Mean Notoriety Time is two and one-half hours, down from six hours in 1995 -- it's time to add an addendum to the effect that the fifteen minutes of fame will be followed by five years of lawsuits. Such is the case with "Star Wars Kid," a young man named Ghyslian Raza who videotaped himself pretend-lightsaber fighting with a golf ball retriever. The video ended up on the Web and he had to suffer the humiliation of millions of strangers knowing his name is "Ghyslian." Legal briefs have been filed, but no amount of suing is going to prevent this sort of thing. In the future, your only recourse will be to never do anything dorky. Good luck! B

Frog in a Blender

It's hard to define this objectively, especially since I'm dedicated to the idea of no research whatsoever, but it seems to me that Frog in a Blender was the first massively popular Flash diversion. Presumably millions of people longed to torture and kill profane amphibians, and aside from a few lucky exorcists in the middle ages who got to take on possessed newts, they were unable to fulfill their needs until Macromedia came around. Beats hell out of yet another Pong clone. I guess. C

Domo-Kun

Fame is fickle. In one country you're a beloved television star, and in another you're an incomprehensible anti-masturbation spokesman. Such is the fate of Domo-Kun, a bizarre little Japanese character a friend of mine described as "a spam creature," who entered American consciousness via a graphic explaining that every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten. Why God would choose a fuzzy toothy stop-motion cartoon character as the agent of His righteous-yet-obliquely-directed wrath is never adequately explained, but the picture came from Fark, and they never explain anything. Adequate explanations are so rare at Fark as to make Mary Poppins look like the information desk at the New York Public Library. A