Coming to a seat pocket near you: the Kickasserole

You're sitting there on an five hour flight - you've finished your book, the iPod is dead and you've already seen all of the movies playing on the back of the seat in front of you. You're eyes shift downward and there it is: the SkyMall catalogue, the only thing you haven't read on the damn plane.

So you pick it up, start browsing through. You come across a couple of tasteful and mildly innovative objects and you think, "Yeah, I wouldn't mind one of those." Perhaps a teak shower mat or a set of cheese knives. Then you turn the page and there's something so unspeakably awesome - like a personalized "Kickasserole" dish, or a pair of slippers with flashlights in the toes, or a mascara tube warmer - and you think, "Holy crap, these guys are geniuses! I can't believe that they let normal people buy this stuff. Surely these kind of miracles should only be available to astronauts and physicists and Nobel prize winners."

Except you don't. Instead you concentrate on not snorting-laughing your apple juice out of one nostril onto the lap of your seatmate.

In their ongoing series, SkyMall Mondays, Gadling.com explores the zany world of inflight shopping for innovation. It's one of the funniest things I've read in a while.