Filling Your McMansion

Visited Costco for flu shots recently, for the adults of the house (kids get theirs at a municipal clinic next week). Boy, you can get just about anything at Costco, though lately Christmas decorations and a large selection of toys have taken over the place, at least in the vast middle part of the store. Everyday items remain in the side aisles.

Easily 90 percent of what they offer, I don't buy, but I always enjoy wandering through the stores. Somehow it's good to know that if I really, really wanted a pool table or a jukebox or a turkey fryer, I could go there are get one right away.

I wonder, who has room for some of these things? Then it occurs to me that a major demographic for the warehouse store is people who live in McMansions. After all, if you've got a McMansion -- a house so big you have to capitalize it, because "mcmansion" doesn't look right -- you have to fill it with things. Otherwise, you live with yawning voids, and I suspect that makes people uncomfortable, especially someone who's gone to all the trouble to supersize his or her house.