If you have two hundred dollars burning a hole in your pocket, and you’ve already got twelve and a half copies of The Grail Code, you’ll be delighted to know that you can get an officially licensed Da Vinci Code Cryptex for your money.

It really works, the ad says. You can put any little thing you like inside it, and then lock it up with a combination you set. Too bad it’s not big enough to lock away a copy of The Da Vinci Code. But it is probably big enough to lock away the officially licensed Da Vinci Code Invisible Writer pen that the same dealer is selling for about $30.

After you’ve spent your $195, you’ll want to sit down and figure out your password. What will it be? You’ve got just five letters to work with, so it has to be pithy.

You could, of course, pick five letters at random, like KCYEG. That would be very hard to guess. But it would also be hard to remember. Besides, it ought to be something appropriate. If security was all you cared about, you could get more security from a dollar-store padlock.

Will it be GRAIL? No, that’s too obvious. Anyone could guess that.

How about FRAUD? No, and for the same reason.

LENNY (short for Leonardo) might be good.

Or how about SILLY? That about describes the whole enterprise.

But it’s made me think. There’s a whole area of authorship Mike and I haven’t even dipped into yet: merchandising. All we have to do is come up with some cute little novelty that reminds people of our book and can be turned out by the thousands in some Indonesian factory. Not some cheap grail-on-a-keychain or sword-of-Galahad bookmark, either. Apparently people are willing to pay real money for book souvenirs.

So I’m taking advance orders for the new officially licensed Grail Code Hovering Chalice. It’s made of real gold-tone metallic plastic, and it really hovers, just like the one in the famous scene at the beginning of the Grail quest in Walter Map’s romance. All it costs is $295.95, and it comes complete with the nearly invisible nylon fishing line needed to accomplish the hovering. Won’t your guests be impressed at your next dinner party, when the Grail floats by and their favorite dishes miraculously appear in front of them while they’re distracted by the flying cup! Instructions and recipes included.

Send no money now! We’ll bill you later, when you’ve forgotten what you ordered.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Blog Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.