I dearly, deeply love CostCo. Industrial-sized warehouses piled with industrial-sized products for industrial-sized people, CostCo sums up, almost perfectly, everything that America is about. Like hams, for instance.

The other night -- standing in line with a ten pound box of dish washing detergent -- I saw a guy push by a cart sagging under the weight of seven -- seven -- Black Forest hams. Huge hams. Monstrous hams. Fearsome hams. Hams, hams and more hams.

There is not a single conceivable reason that this person could possibly need maybe a hundred pounds of ham at one time.

But this is America, dammit, so he didn't need one.