Hand models, being essential to the global economy, must be protected at all costs.

Without them the rest of us would be quite helpless when trying to order a watch from a catalogue. Also mitten sales would plummet, and Palmolive would become just an ordinary dish soap.

Martha Stewart doesn’t care though. That’s why she allows the furniture she sells to cut off hand model fingers anytime it wants to. It happened recently you know – and not just to any ordinary hand model – he was a magician and a banjo player too.

Notice that’s all past tense – way past tense.

Patrick Albanese was a banjo playing hand-model magician who liked nothing more than to do things with his fingers. He’d use them to pick things up, he’d use them to put things down, and if our general suspicions are correct – he’d use them to cuff rabbits to the inside of very long and tall top hats.

One day, not too long ago, he was using them to pick up a piece of lawn furniture. He’d acquired said furniture from Martha Stewart’s Living Omnimedia company. Sure he did – he trusted her. He’d probably purchased her fine products before – and heaven knows he made the Quiche Lorraine from her Oct 2007 issue of Martha Stewart Living.

We made it too. We found it salty.

Anyway – Albanese picked up the lawn chair – and then the unthinkable happened. the AP says:

“A hand model, magician and actor blames a Martha Stewart-branded lounge chair for snipping off a bit of his livelihood. In a lawsuit filed Monday against Kmart Corp. and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Patrick Albanese said he was moving the Martha Stewart Everyday lounge chair on a deck in June when the front tubular legs collapsed, crushing his right index finger between one of the chair legs and a tubular bar on the base of the chair. The lawsuit said the fingertip fell beneath the deck but was later retrieved by a relative. Albanese’s attorney, Guy Cook, said the finger tip was reattached by a surgeon.”

All we can say is too bad Tyra’s transgender friend didn’t know about a chair like this. He/she could have been in the right body years ago.

The whole thing’s got us worried though – what’s a hand model to do once his finger-laced appendages become scarred and hideous? Sure, he could probably model snow boots or something but that’s never been lucrative.

That’s not to say they could never be lucrative. Snow boots are a fine product, the world’s just nort ready for winter-time dry socks yet. Not on a major scale its not.