Never mind that I live four blocks from a cheese shop with literally hundreds of pretentious, smelly fromages for sale. And never mind that the recipient of this tasty 57,000-calorie snack lives less than 10 blocks from me. I found it cheeky, campy even, to order a huge blob of cheese online, paying more than $50 for this little in joke, funny only to me. This was at the height of the dot-com mania, and my click-to-shop habits followed the loony logic of mountaineering:

Why climb Mount Everest? Because it's there.

Why buy highly perishable food products through your computer? Because you can.

Because I could, I bought half a dozen books, four boxes of candy, three opera videos, a barbecue grill and a froufrou decorative bamboo box filled with smelly perfumed bath products -- the kind of luxury doodad that no one ever buys except to give away -- without leaving my ergonomic chair.

Deep in the throes of my online-shopping orgy, I chose to have most of my purchases sent to my apartment, like some kind of early, bonus Christmas. When they arrived a few days later, I opened the boxes to find -- surprise! -- the same items I'd chosen on the screen, and I then wrapped them up to bestow upon my lucky family members. Online shopping had freed me from crowded malls and their saccharine carols jingling all the way; it had released me to spend even more time in front of my computer.

As if that weren't enough, I was participating in -- contributing to even -- the Future of Shopping. I was a maverick, a pioneer, paving the way for the sheeplike mall dwellers who would soon follow my lead and flock to the online shops.

But that was last year. This season, I haven't bought a single gift online. I have no intention of clicking my way to the consumeristic climax of Dec. 25, propping up the sagging economy and flagging e-commerce stock prices with my mouse. Why? Because despite the attempt of online retailers to put on a merry face, this holiday's e-commerce offerings constitute nothing better than a grim, picked-over flea market.

Last year the flood of venture capital dollars pouring into shopping sites helped create a Reagan-esque trickle-down bonanza for the cheerful online shopper. Everyone was part of the great dot-com boondoggle. Sites fat with money but starving for customers did everything they could, including giving stuff away, to entice people into making a purchase.

It was a freebie free-for-all. Free shipping! Free upgrade to overnight delivery! Twenty dollars off with no minimum purchase! And my favorite, from now-defunct drugstore site More.com: "Buy now and get the same price for life!" Or until the site goes out of business.

Sure, it's novel and convenient and fun to shop online when the sites are paying you to buy from them. In the good old days, dot-coms were like robotic Stepford wives, pleased to do your bidding. Now they just want you to buy stuff. Where's the fun in that?

The Free Software Project
Read Andrew Leonard's book-in-progress on Linux and open source -- and post your comments.