Drinking paraphernalia: Twenty-seven-piece double-shot checker set. On Monday, there were no fewer than four of these “shot glasses on checkerboard” games for sale locally.
Price: $40
Worth the risk factor: +1
DIY alternative: You can get a checkerboard and shot glasses for five bucks at Goodwill, and avoid dealing with the Kijiji seller/poisoner. Sure, the Goodwill glasses won’t be a matching set, but after 27 double shots, who cares?
Drinking paraphernalia: Small beer cooler.
Price: $50
Worth the risk factor: +5
DIY alternative: There’s always the kitchen fridge or, in winter, the great outdoors. But this is actually a useful product; it can “hold up to 21 beers,” says the seller/axe murderer. We were going to rush out and buy until we got to the end of the ad: “Beer not included.”
Drinking paraphernalia:
Martini shaker.
Price: $25
Worth the risk factor: -2
DIY alternative: If you’re into the ceremony and spectacle of mixing drinks, sure, get a shaker, but a regular large drinking glass works just as well. And the seller/Jack the Ripper gets points taken off for observing that the shaker top “is used as a shot glass for measuring!!” Real drinkers don’t measure.
Drinking paraphernalia: Pair of martini glasses.
Price: $25
Worth the risk factor: +7
DIY alternative: You don’t need special glasses to drink martinis—Dixie cups work, in a pinch. But we’d risk an encounter with this seller/throat slasher because of the added feature of a weeble-like “speckled ruby ball base” on the glasses—no more embarrassing crotch spills!
Drinking paraphernalia: Bachelorette party supplies. Get an “anatomically correct male inflatable doll” only used once, a “novelty drinking cup with straw” for a potential bride (three guesses what the novelty is) and a “pin the junk on the hunk” game.
Price $70
Worth the risk factor: -10
DIY alternative: Ladies, no. Just don’t go there. There is no question that you will be chainsaw-massacred, dismembered, disemboweled and buried in a pensioner’s backyard if you attempt to purchase these products. The obvious alternative is real, actual men or a chaste Victorian tea party. Anything, anything at all, but this.
Drinking paraphernalia: Travel bar.
This lockable case can hold up to three bottles and includes cups, shot glass, ice strainer, spoon/pick, bottle opener and a corkscrew.
Price: $25
Worth the risk factor: +10
DIY alternative: There is no alternative. Every serious drinker must own a travel bar, and if it means dealing with a Hannibal Lecter wannabe on Kijiji, so be it. Go buy this now.
This article appears in Sep 8-14, 2011.