Toilet Landing Lights
Feb. 4, 2002 -- Can you think of new ways to say "I Love You?" Better hurry, it's almost Valentine's Day.
There's poetry and flowers. But sometimes, all your lover really wants to hear is, "I won't forget to leave the toilet seat down."
"Gift-giving is about making a statement," says Amelia Ostroff, a professional shopper at Itsthethought.com in Seal Beach, Calif.
"If you and your lover have 1,000 inside jokes, that's a great place to start."
Here now, is The Wolf Files' annual list of Valentine's Day gift ideas. Some of these might get you banished to the sofa. Just remember, you were warned.
1. For Couples With Potty Issues: Toilet Landing Lights
End the lid up/lid down bathroom battle of the sexes once and for all with Johnny Lights, a $13 toilet night light that sends out a green warning beacon when the seat is up.
The Johnny Light is designed to protect ladies from that midnight splash-landing, while helping guys not to tinkle on the seat. "I like to think I'm doing my bit to preserve marriages," say Johnny Light inventor Bill Bradford. "Contrary to popular belief, 60 percent of our customers are men."
2. For an Interoffice Romance: UV Spy Pens
If presidential scandals have taught us anything, it's not to leave a paper trail. Entering into an interoffice romance is dangerous business. For those who want to keep their love notes secret, write with UV "spy pens" ($5) With the naked eye, the paper you write on will appear to be a blank sheet. But when your sweetheart turns on his or her ultraviolet "love lamp," ($25) your secret message will appear.
3. For Your Pearl: A Bed of Oysters
Before Viagra, there were oysters. RentMotherNature.com leases oyster beds in Washington state's Puget Sound for $99. Don't order this on an empty stomach. You'll have to settle for e-mail photos and progress reports for a few months. With patience, your bed will yield about four dozen oysters, Hopefully, when the package arrives, via air freight, you and your sweetie will still be going out.
4. To Make a Statement: Monogrammed Underwear
Not ready to tattoo your lover's name across your butt? You can embroider declarations of love on each other's underwear. For $36, you can choose boxers or briefs.
5. For a Princess: A Tiara
When you buy your girlfriend a tiara, you're sending a message: "I don't have the guts to give you an engagement ring." Still, what woman doesn't want a sparkly rhinestone Miss America crown? Just don't blow it with a cheap, novelty store tiara. M & J Trimming — the folks who gave Sex and the City's Sarah Jessica Parker her flower look — make the real deal, ranging in price from $30 to $70.
6. For a Breathtaking Lover: A Portable Oxygen Bar
Chocolates make you fat. Cut flowers aren't exactly the most ecologically sensitive gift. But everybody needs oxygen. Designer "oxygen bars" are pretty trendy and a surefire way to give your valentine some breathing room. Of course, with portable oxygen bars starting at $3,200, you quickly learn that air isn't free.
7. For An Ex-lover: Dead Fish
When it comes to ex-lovers, sometimes words aren't enough. Sometimes you can only express yourself by mailing that louse a stinking bucket of rotting fish guts. At $14.95, it's cheaper than roses. Senddeadfish.com will also deliver crushed flowers and dog poop to your no-longer-significant other.
8. For Culinary Adventurers: Luwak Poop Coffee
Like a good lover, a good cup of coffee is hard to find. Now you can have Kopi Luwak, the rarest, most expensive cup of coffee — if you can bear to hear how it's cultivated.
In the coffee plantations in Indonesia, the luwak, a catlike animal, eats only the ripest coffee berries. Natives follow this critter around, picking the beans from its feces . Their "harvest" sells to coffee connoisseurs for $75 a quarter-pound, or $5 a cup. That's a bit more than Starbucks, but Nate Root of Raven's Brew says it has a "chocolaty, earthy" quality "that rich folks in Japan and Britain just love."
Of course, for the lovelorn, Valentine's Day may seem like a bottomless mug of fresh-brewed Kopi Luwak.
Buck Wolf is entertainment producerat ABCNEWS.com. The Wolf Files ispublished Tuesdays. If you want to receive weekly notice whena new column is published, join the e-maillist.