New! Lego! Catalogue!

The Summer 2006 Lego catalogue arrived in the mail today. As usual, it's brim-full of over-specialized Star Wars, weirdo mechanized alien, and now Batman, kits. My inner curmudgeon would beef about the dearth of plain-old studded rectangle bricks, but I actually get a kick out of the newfangled Technic pieces.

Page 46: Mindstorms NXT is out. (Warning: music, of the sort that you might expect to accompany a plastic robot, will play when clicked.) Now all I need is $350 clams. That, and a bucketful more robot-building enthusiasm than I had for the original Mindstorms.

If you look through the catalogue for any length of time, it soon becomes apparent that every single photo caption -- every stinkin' one of 'em -- ends in an exclamation point. To wit:

• "Desert skiff measures 20cm long!"
• "Three floors of treatment rooms!"
• "Hatch opens!"
• "Cook a hearty meal in the galley!"

I am I somehow unaware of a Danish bent for this most clumsy of all punctuation marks?