Don't tell my son, George Rankin.

I've found what I want to give him for Christmas. Or for his birthday on January 14 if I can't get one in time for Christmas.

Everything is of course my fault and I'm to blame for my elder son's sometime preoccupation with interstellar visitors.

After all, I read a lot of science fiction.

I'm sure I infected him with some kind of science fiction meme, probably before he was born.

Now, I want to make it worse by giving him this fascinating, hard-to-store, impossible-to-ignore alien abduction lamp for the house where he is going to rear children some day.

Created by a Nordic designer and originally intended to be a stagecraft-quality prop, it's a gift in the spirity kind of thing we're all accustomed to getting for Christmas from relatives who can't seem to learn that we've grown up.

Only it's far, far better in quality of manufacture and execution than any of the things I used to get from my beloved maiden great aunts before they all went on to their just reward.

I plan to make a statuette of George Rankin to go with the cow in the kidnapping beam.

What good is an alien abduction if you don't get a ride in the saucer yourself, even if you had to saddle a milk cow in order to qualify as an acceptable passenger?

Now if I can just persuade the lamp designer to start production and put them on the market

At a price I can afford.

I'll need several, because GR isn't the only alien-watcher on my list.

"Two brothers," as he and younger son Jack used to say (at least two lamps).