Sherry Chandler

from the AP via the Lexington Herald-Leader:

MENTOR, Ohio - An electrical fire that filled a department store with thick smoke didn’t deter holiday shoppers, and firefighters had to block the doors to keep customers from coming in, authorities said.

No one was injured in the fire at Dillards South at Great Lakes Mall on Wednesday, but some bargain hunters were inconvenienced.

“It was amazing,” said Mentor fire Battalion Chief Joe Busher. “Even though there was heavy smoke in there, they all wanted to stay and shop. We even had to put people at the door to keep people from coming in.”

A correspondent draws my attention to this example of consumer extremism: The Giant Swiss Army Knife . According to The Guardian, it contains 85 devices, weighs 2 pounds, and costs 495 of ‘em (that’s like $978). Writes Andrew Martin:

Just as you can’t be too rich or too thin, I’d always thought, so you can’t have too many tools on your Swiss Army knife - but that was before I took delivery of the new Giant Swiss Army knife. Grotesque, if superbly engineered, the Giant weighs nearly a kilogram and features 85 devices in all. Unload this mother into the plastic tray as you walk through security at Heathrow and just see what happens.

The Giant is supposed to feature every blade that has ever been incorporated into Swiss Army knives as made by Wenger, one of the two firms that make them . “We’ve sold 20 to retailers so far, and we can’t get them in fast enough,” says Garry Woodhouse of Whitby and Co, sole importer of Wenger knives into Britain. “They’re assembled by hand in Switzerland, and I’m told that the man doing it is working his fingers to the bone.”

…

The Giant does, by its grandiosity, court churlish responses. My 10-year-old son looked at it sceptically for a while, and said, “I’ll bet it hasn’t got a spirit level.”

The article is fun and I, at least, learned more about Swiss Army knives than perhaps I’d ever wanted to know.