Exhibit A, ladies and gentlemen: This is the picture that graced the front of the catalog. It's a little hard to tell in this small image, but there's a cabinet built into the table there. Some person had to wake up one morning and say, "Eureka! I shall balance a piece of glass on the point of a pyramid, and it will be the perfect table!"

But that's only the very beginning of the hideous tables in store for you!

This table is probably less physically awful than the pyramid one - maybe. If you like dragons even more than I do, which is saying something. But its name? "The Dragon of Itchen Stoke Manor." Itchen Stoke. Itchen Stoke?

Matt spotted it first, and he was laughing so hard he couldn't even say the name. "The Dragon of- The Dragon of I- The Dragon of I-" He couldn't get any further than "Ih-" before collapsing into the giggles. I finally had to take the catalog away from him and read it for myself.

Next, we have this charming bit of fluff. Who's it for? The people who couldn't resist the lamp from A Christmas Story? Diehard leather freaks? Horny geekboys with too much money who don't understand that a table like this is less likely to actually get them any action?

Your guess is as good as mine!

The catalog would like me to see this as a "Neoclassical Male" sculpture that just happens to be a table.

But the people who buy it? Those are the people who have a not-so-secret dream of crushing and enslaving their enemies, and forcing them to be their furniture.

When I saw this, I showed it to Matt and said, "...because we need a naked and miserable man holding our things for us!"

Okay, so here we have - from the same genius with words who gave us the Dragon of Itchen Stoke Manor - "Gaston, the Gargoyle Butler."

Yeah. Absolutely. Because first of all, if I had a gargoyle for a butler, I'd name him Gaston. Totally. And also? I'd pick out a gargoyle with a human-looking body... sort of... and let him wander around naked as he served my drinks.

Gaston takes the prize in the Most Awful Table Ever category, I think.

Matt found this one first.

"We should get a bunch of them," he suggested, "and go to someone's house who doesn't mow their lawn very often, and hide them there. It would be a fun surprise!"

And that's all I've really got to say about the Garden Pygmies.

When I first saw this, I thought Icarus, here, was naked. But he's got a little loin cloth, so everything's okay! I can still hang him in Penny's room!

Matt said, "Icarus is buff. Look at those fucking calves! Never mind wings, he could've just walked across the water, with calves like those!"

Prometheus brought fire to mankind. For this and other idiot stunts, he was punished by being chained to a mountain, where an enormous bird ate his liver every day, until Hercules finally freed him.

Duly chastised, he now does nothing more spectacular than bring light to your living room.

(They could have at least given him a flame-shaped lamp bowl... Sheesh.)

As a side note - the catalog brags that this lamp is "over six feet tall!" The specs listed show it as 74" - which is to say, six feet, two inches. Which includes the base and the lamp bowl. Which makes the actual man, despite the clever camera-work in this picture, only about four feet tall. Kind of disappointing, wouldn't you think?

And last, but certainly not least: My favorite.

If the naked, miserable man holding up your table just wasn't dehumanizing enough we have this posh, elegant, and... headless woman. With a "sumptuous black faux-leather finish," no less.

At least she's taller than Prometheus.