Actually, we are — but the thrill is gone.

The two biggest attractions at the show — Microsoft Steve Ballmer's demo of Windows 7 and Palm's Pre smartphone — are more apologies than anything, mea culpas for the subpar products they replaced. There are, as always, gee-whiz products that will likely never hit the mass market, like Dick Tracy-style watches and games where you control a ball with your mind.

For the past decade, gadget porn — media which seductively presents the latest gear — has been a growth industry. When Wired first started showcasing gadgets as erotically charged objects of desire in the '90s, not for nothing was the section called "Fetish." (The love affair sometimes went hilariously wrong.)

But the sex angle somehow seems out of step with the national mood. The Consumer Electronics Association argues that gadgets have become a necessity, not a luxury, and so spending will hold up comparatively well. A Forrester Research survey, on the other hand, suggests that consumers are cutting back, with 63 percent saying they won't buy a smartphone like the iPhone this year.

Of course, survey-takers routinely lie. And an $199 iPhone is hardly a luxury splurge on the scale of a Louis Vuitton handbag or an Ermenegildo Zegna suit. Come on — it's on sale at Wal-Mart!

So we'll keep buying gadgets. That won't change. What will: Bragging about the latest gear-shopping expedition will be socially unacceptable. Flipping through a glossy digital-camera layout on the subway? A little pervy. Who does that in public? Gadget blogs, though, will thrive — since they can be enjoyed in the privacy of one's home, like a filthy DVD.

When that comes to pass, gadget porn will really have earned its name: a shameful habit most indulge in, but few discuss. It will be the new parsimony's dirty secret.

Giddyup Horse Simulator: Is it just an iGallop, or a refitted Sybian sex seat? [via Shiny Shiny]

You ever watch "Pimp My Ride" and wonder why everyone always acts happy with their newly freaked-out car, no matter how normal and boring the owner looks and how ricockulously expensive to maintain the car looks, now that it has twelve monitors, a speaker system that runs on its own generator, and a frappuccino maker? Well if my car included a rear-tire monitor, I'd cry on camera. Because how'm I supposed to keep the ladies' attention on my spinners?

Nevermind if this toy is a wicked loud noisemaker. Men: This is what you look like when you're drunk and trying to "make her happy first." Except in this photo, you also look like you're biting a tiny keg.

Women: I don't know, you're on your own with the Hello Kitty Lady Shaver.

True, coffee usually smells better than it tastes. Still, Aroma is just a bitter disappointment for the morning caffiend. Gizmodo's Mark Wilson says it gets "kind of sticky and nasty." Oh good, an alarm clock you have to wash out. Now just imagine how grody this gets after a year of use. Also imagine buying fake coffee refills to put in your fake coffee cup. Now draw scary parallels to your soy-nonfat-decaf habit.

YouTube on TV? Seriously? Look, I want to see my poorly planned, near-absurdist three-minute stunts on the Internet, and my poorly planned, near-absurdist three-year "deserted island" shows on the TV.

See what I did there? This was all an excuse to mock "Lost".

There's one thing a talking meat thermometer needs to tell you: "Meat's done." That is IT. I defy you to think of any absolutely necessary message other than this. Therefore, it doesn't actually need to SAY "Meat's done," now does it? A "Bing!" would do just fine and feel less creepy coming from the waist of my pants.

Blah blah blah, electrical stimulators don't do anything for muscles, blah blah quackery, blah blah mildly painful procedure at best, blah blah WHERE IS THAT DOCTOR'S HAND GOING? I'm starting to suspect he's not a real doctor.

I'd demand that any adult buying these gets a sex-offender background check, but who cares? In a battle of hidden-camera-nosed plush toy vs. toddler slobber, everyone knows who will score the K.O.

Thanks to Valleywag's brother site Gizmodo for most of these shots. They go to Vegas so we don't have to. See more gadgets that should have been aborted at TIME and Shiny Shiny.

ABC reporter Amanda Congdon took a taser to the back at the CES tech expo this week, after gushing to the camera, "I'm so scared! I haven't been this scared in a really long time!" Unfortunately, we can't show you the video here, as it's trapped on ABC's web site (it must be too New Media for us).

Also read: How a taser works, and the medical effects of tasers.

Sources:
Arrested Development
Celebrities Get Tasered
Officer Tasered in Training
Taser Demonstration
Omar Gets Tasered On Cops
UCLA Police Taser Student in Powell
Unnecessary Taser Use?

A big part of the fun of Apple events past was watching the tech press get totally end-run by Jobs and company. Four Macworlds ago, analysts promised nothing but price cuts for the recession. Reporters rumormongered a story buried somewhere in CNET's archives: The new gadget would be "a portable multimedia device, less than one inch thick." Correct if they meant a one-inch thick supersize, metal-skinned, $3,300 PowerBook. Oh, and a 12" Mini-Me version, too. Surpriiiiise!

The other part of the fun was writing about stuff readers could actually order, instead of rewriting long-term promises for, say, Intel's now-forgotten Viiv. The dual thrill of liveblogging a Stevenote was (a) letting 2 million fellow fanboys in on the show, and (b) hitting reload on the Apple Store in another browser window so I could order mine first.

No luck today. Steve hauled out a TV box we'd seen already but can't have yet, and a phone for which we can only "sign up to learn more." I've made a name by doing hands-on reporting about stuff that's ideally already available. If this is the new face of Macworld, I can stay home and read it on Engadget.

Funny thing is, though the biggest surprise was when Steve's clicker conked out, the press grunts here grouse about the lack of advance briefings (watch Time's reporter rub his exclusive meeting in their faces.) A few drinks into Tuesday evening south of Market Street, it's hard to avoid a boozy Macworld hack who needs to tell you that after fifteen — no wait, twenty years following this industry, he can totally fucking assure you my friend that this is what happened today:

• The iPhone and Apple TV are late products the company couldn't keep secret any more.
• Bloggers have destroyed Steve's leash on the God damned media.
• Those wet-nosed brats at Google leaked. He had to decloak, he had to.
• Jobs needs the buzz ASAP to save himself from this stock options ... this .... fiasco! He's a disgrace to the company that built the computer I saved up my pennies to buy back in — [Bartender, cut my friend off, ok?]

Here's what's really going on. Apple isn't competing with Microsoft anymore, or with Dell or with white-box PC makers. The former Apple Computer is now just Apple , a consumer electronics company. The consumer electronics industry already has its own calendar. Sales are geared up for Christmas, followed by next year's new product previews first week of January. Even His Steveness can't buck the schedule.

If Apple were starting from scratch in 2007 we'd have gotten the iPhone demo onstage in Vegas today. But over the years Jobs has garnered a hugely disproportionate mob of fanboys in the tech press (guilty as charged, Jack) who'll fly to Frisco for the occasion, at the expense of skipping part or all of the consumer electronics industry's Super Bowl.

Why unveil the iPhone today instead of June? Because the competition are doing the same thing, same day as they've done every year with their own infuriating "sign up to learn more" preview campaigns. By holding his own mini-CES 500 miles away, Jobs literally stole the show. As I sit here typing in a sulk, an NPR stringer in Vegas just messaged, "CES is dead because iphone is all that mattered today. there is a mood of — like everyone here went to the wrong party."

I hate to say it, but: Genius.

So, I'm in Vegas for CES watching a bunch of self described music execs party at The Wynn and this guy is out of control drunk. He actually not only grabbed the breasts of some random women in the group as he walked past her, which was definitely NOT well received, but was actually overheard saying "you know, I never realized what an asset you were to the company" to another women in the group he was with as he ran his hand down her ass. All the while he's bragging about how he just got his second round of funding for his music company.

Guesses, of course, go in the comments.