Some friends of mine are getting married next week, so today I was faced with the normally tiresome chore of selecting some awful thing from their registry.

But this time I was delighted to see that in addition to the normal dishware, glassware, etc, my friends had registered for a 1.4 horsepower coffee maker.

In the normally impersonal world of wedding gifts, what could be a more appropriate gift from me than something that combines coffee with high-powered output? It's perfect!

(Sorry that you now know what you're getting. Be honest, though: there's not really that much surprise in these things, anyway.)