Stuff those stockings, stocking stuffers!

So it’s getting close to Christmas, and your stockings are hung over the chimney with care. You know they aren’t gonna fill themselves. You need a bunch of fun, small items, and you know it would be bad form to give your loved ones five toothbrushes just to fill up space. What are you to do? If you’re reading this, chances are you live in a home that’s high-tech and well wired. Why not take advantage of that? Everyone loves high-tech gifts, and now, Cymax and MoreTronics bring you loads of little gadgets that serve as fun and inexpensive stocking-stuffers on the fly. Let’s see what Santa brought us…

This year, give your loved ones what they really want: the gift of terrifying, ear-rattling noise. No, not the new 50 Cent album, I’m talking about the General Electric Key chain Security Alarm. Louder than your voice, this “sound grenade” lets rip with a powerful 120db alarm siren whenever the pin is removed. This is the sonic equivalent of a jet plane taking off from one hundred yards away. Not quite loud enough to cause pain, but definitely loud enough to attract attention in a moment of crisis. It might just save your life one day -- and it looks cooler than your Mickey Mouse key chain.

Utility light or Martian space probe? You won’t know until you turn it on. The clever and futuristic Cyclops Lightweight Utility Light can see around corners, probe hard-to-reach places, and twist around any hook or bar for maximum ease of placement. Uses LED technology that’s battery-friendly and never needs replacement bulbs. Perfect for use in cleaning, repairs, or finding those pesky humanoid meat-bags wherever they try to hide.

Cyberpunk isn’t dead, it’s just resting. Wake it up with the fun and futuristic Jensen AM/FM LED Display Radio. Why stare at a boring old LED clock readout when you can read the time as a Matrix-like illusion projected on your wall or ceiling? Note that this space-age sphere may not actually fit into a stocking, unless you have, say, one of those gigantic novelty ones. But the price is right and dang, it’s cool.

Imagine the rosy glow in little Johnny’s smiling face when he opens his stocking to find the I Concepts Cylinder Usb 2.0 Hub. That’s right, USB 2.0 – because 1.0 just didn’t take it to the max. Just imagine how many peripherals your giftee can keep plugged in now! Dozens! It’s computer e-cybermagic!

Let’s get one thing straight: universal remotes are probably the most amazing advance in human history since the day when cavemen discovered that rocks weren’t edible. Every house should have one, and if you don’t, well… take that rock out of your mouth right now. The One For All 8 Dev Learn Univ Remote is more than adequate to your living room’s varied needs, guaranteed to please on Christmas morn and long after.

Buy batteries online? Well, why not? It’s Christmas – that justifies just about any purchase you can make. Apparently Cymax sells the Universal Battery 4-Pack AA Heavy Duty Battery. A $3 product with $5 shipping, that sounds like a great idea to me. It’s not like you can buy these anywhere else, you know.



Happy holidays from Cymax Stores!

Furnished With Fear: A Gothic Tale of Victorian Horror

Good day to you, gentle reader! Sir Reginald Lackbottom at your service. I recently underwent a terrifying ordeal which I thought suitable to dictate into this Mechano-Aether-Transmission-Logbook for your shock and bemusement.

It recently came to my attention that my nightstand, previously known to me as harmless, was, in fact, haunted. I had been given the piece some years back from my disreputable Uncle, Lord Aleister “Red As the Night” Dunwich. This, in retrospect, should have been my first clue.

New decoration always takes some getting used to, but the nightstand was trouble from the start. Always the optimist, I considered the antique piece’s skull-festooned skirt molding to be a design feature, and I disregarded its unearthly nocturnal moans as a kind of cuckoo-clock. Peculiar but very effective: not only was I awake by sunrise, but in fact, I now barely slept at all.

On the rare occasions when I slumbered, I would awake with a start to find my nightstand shuffling about my bedroom on its wooden cabriole legs, ungainly, like some kind of horrendous wooden squid. I approached Uncle Dunwich about this. He claimed the piece was authentic “French country” furniture, to which I replied, “I suppose that explains it.”

I asked him to take the blasted thing back. I told him that if he was going to give me heritage furniture, he might at least have the decency to assure me that said heritage did not include Belial anywhere in it. In response to this, Uncle Dunwich fled my home, cackling maniacally. I have not seen him since. I still do not believe he has ever been to France, or that he even knows what it is.

The months wore on. The nightstand troubled me none-the-more. I reasoned that perhaps it had overheard the conversation between myself and my Uncle, and pledged to do no more ill. I would believe any man (except a Londoner) capable of such a change of heart; why not furniture as well? A good piece of furniture is like a person, after all: it has arms, legs and often padded seating.

Yet outside my manor, strange things had begun to happen. The streets of Twisp-By-Sea became plagued by penny-dreadful crimes committed in the night, as the news-papers indicated, by a short and silent evildoer. Initially I paid little heed, suspecting the dark deeds to be the work of leprechauns, whose Hibernian nature I have always distrusted. But I grew increasingly troubled as reports grew more detailed. Witnesses reported the knave as having curiously bowed legs and “the flattest head [one has] ever seen.”

Tennyson was thus imprisoned, but the crimes continued. Finally, the truth presented itself to me. I had awoken from uneasy dreams to find my nightstand slinking slowly back into my bedroom, reeking of absinthe and evil. At that moment I knew the nightstand’s ambulatory nature had extended into the township after all, and I was a larger fool than Tennyson not to have seen it before. I leaped out of my bed and tackled the wayward furniture to the floor.

My interrogation was brief and futile. The nightstand offered no word of explanation, nor any word at all, and thrashed around angrily until the sun came up. I pulled the drawers from the thing, but there were no clues; the nightstand was as empty as a Londoner’s prayer. There was only one solution. I sold the nightstand at a downtown antique furniture bazaar (or perhaps it was merely an ill-conceived carnival, I will never know) and washed my hands of the affair.

Thereafter, no more dark deeds troubled Twisp-By-Sea aside from the usual ones. I myself had mixed feelings. The nightstand had matched my décor so well, my room now looked empty without it. I missed the delicate rope-braid embellishments and finely wrought escutcheons exactly as much as I did not miss the nightly swarms of bats and ectoplasm.

I decided to consult my Babbage Mechano-Aether-Transmission Engine to peruse replacement furniture for my bedroom. It appears that the Cymax Mechano-Aetheric Mercantile Company has contracted with woodwrights such as Pulaski, Stanley and American Drew (imagine that! The Colonies producing goods of refined taste! What next, a horseless carriage?) which suit the refinement of my bedchamber.

I may take a chance on this oddly-named Cymax establishment. I hope to have a new nightstand forthwith, and I have been assured by their customer service lackeys that none of their furniture is possessed by dark spirits. In fact, the quality and selection of their non-supernatural furniture is the best I have seen since I attended the exorcism of William Morris’s armoire. My heart is at ease. Truly we are entering a bright new age.