Item 1: “Team Microsoft” Water Bottle

It truly dumbfounds me what people will rally around these days. Great throngs of fanatics will convene in worship of musicians, athletes, people who film themselves playing videographical games, and, worst of all, politicians. These people who find themselves the objects of mass adoration, often entirely by chance, will then seek to capitalize on what the wise among them know to be fleeting fame, and they will do this through the fabrication and widespread sale of merchandise. A disappointment to the philosophical optimist, to be sure, but to the realist, simply the human condition bearing itself out. However, even the most jaded realist will admit that a line must be drawn somewhere, and it is my firmly held opinion (as of the start of this paragraph) that the somewhere in question ought to be software companies. A beverage vessel that simply read “Microsoft” would have been forgivable, but one that signals an allegiance to the corporation, a firm unquestioned belief in its superiority to its competitors, a willingness to waste precious moments and energy debating the issue with representatives of Team Google, cannot be condoned. Though I seldom wish my journalistic subjects ill, I hope this one stays lost.

Item 2: Indiscriminate Acronym on Tote Bag 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a reasonable intellect must be in want of any clue at all as to what “COWI” means. A designation for the ninth bovine in an assortment whose names were given alphabetically, with the objective of avoiding emotional attachment to the animals? An omen forecasting the unification of Colorado and Wisconsin? Scrambling the letters yields no results (other than “WCIO,” whose implications are so obvious that I will leave them unwritten in the interest of word count conservation), and nothing can be gleaned from the orange hue or the serif font. Every time I delve back into these shelves, I feel I know less and less.

Item 3: Vial of Elixir 

A potion of deep amethyst with ruby speckles, its purposes shrouded in mystery; however, I have several theories, including hypnosis, resistance to hypnotism, and the enhancement of one’s previously honed hypnotic abilities. Intriguingly, the lid indicates an aerosol-esque application of the concoction, though this detail holds little relevance compared to the simple Holmesian observation that the liquid has already been depleted by more than half the original volume (judging by the relative altitude of speckle residue). After administering a conservative spray into my ears, which I followed with an ultimately futile attempt at self-hypnosis in a bathroom mirror, I concluded that years of study must be required to use this potion effectively, leaving me with a newfound respect for the possessor of this vial despite the absentmindedness that led them to mislay it. Or perhaps I succeeded in hypnotizing myself, and included an instruction to remember the attempt as a failure, for reasons I wished not to impart to my future self. It would explain my recently acquired and barely controllable urge to click my heels and turn a cartwheel whenever I hear the school bell.