So I bought a new phone the other day. And, being me, I had to buy the one with all the latest bells and whistles and doodads and hoohahs.

(Though, in my defense, I was also this close to buying a phone that's only discernible feature is that you could sit it in a glass of beer at parties, and it would still ring.)

So this phone (picture pending) came with a chip and a kit and a brochure and they were all shoved (because Verizon hates me) in this "adorable" little shopping bag with transparent sides.

Transparent sides or, as we call them in the old country, "Mugger Windows."

Let me go out on a limb and say that no shopping bag should ever be transparent. And if you absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely had to pick one shopping back to be the exception to the rule, you wouldn't make it the one full of high-priced electronic hoohahs.

If you had to make that choice, maybe you'd make the Dollar Store shopping bag transparent. Because nothing says "I am too pitiful to rob!" like a transparent bag full of plastic spider rings.

In fact, I'd be much happier if the Verizon folks had packed my hoohas in a brown trashbag and labeled it with a black Sharpee™ to read, "A DOLLAR WORTH OF SPIDER RINGS!!!"

For the records (and because I know that my mother occasionally reads this site), let me just point out that I was not mugged for my phone, my kit, my chip, my brochure, my doodads, or my hoohahs.

Or my many, many spider rings.

(Shut up. You know they're awesome.)