RETAIL ROUNDUP

FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON?

For the third week in a row, a different retailer is rounding up your

news. Luckily, we’ve all been caught in parking lot traffic lately, have

jostled for that last good spot and cursed the sparkling new Mercedes

taking up two spaces.

And it all could’ve been avoided, if we’d just received word from

1-800-FLOWERS.COM a little sooner that gifts from “merry window boxes to

glorious kissing balls” could be had without having to start our motors.

We’ve been told we “can visit 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.” But we’re not sure

if that’s over the phone or the computer. We do know we aren’t

comfortable with the mix of telephone and Internet selling in the

company’s name, however. Or the name Algernon. It conjures up Oscar

Wilde, after all.

That perfect lettuce mix

Apparently, salads are a “very important part of a healthy lifestyle.”

Retail Roundup aficionados may recall that past poets of this

particularly perplexing art weren’t the most fit. Well, that’s not a

worry any longer, although we did eat our share of chips, cookies and

fudge today.

So, what was that about healthy? Oh, the good folks at BonJour (the

inventors of the certainly fabulous Caffe Froth and Caffe Froth Turbo)

have solved a prickly problem: We’d all eat more salads if we knew how to

make dressings that were always tasty.

Seems true enough, and with up to 14 different dressings to choose

from in their carafe-like mixer (which comes complete with measured lines

for red wine vinegar, lemon juice and Dijonvinaigrette), we can’t thank

them enough.

This little dandy can be had at 1-800-2BONJOUR, which is almost

certainly a phone number.

Sounds useful, doesn’t it? But as Wilde wrote: “We can forgive a man

for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only

excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.”

Which goes doubly for this little exercise.