Along with liberty, I think frugality is a bedrock American trait. I would never flaunt expensive clothes, but often boast of the shirts I got from Building 19.

However, there are certain times when I’m into coveting.

These times are all shortly after takeoff. That’s when I get lost in yearning for things I want but don’t need.

I adore SkyMall.

If you haven’t come across it, it’s a catalog found in the seatback pockets on most airplanes. Actually, it’s a compendium of many catalogs, selecting for inclusion the more indulgent retail items in America. For the most part, they are unnecessary. You could live a full life without a single item from SkyMall. In fact, the things in there are emblematic of a soulless acquisitive culture.

And I want everything in the catalog.

The current cover displays a telltale product. You know how anyone can make a crushed-ice dessert by putting cubes and flavoring in a blender? That’s not good enough for Skymall. It features a fancy, professional vendor’s cart used to make sno-cones at poolside.

If I ever visited a home that had one of these, I would advise the proletariat to start the revolution there. But secretly, I kind of want one.

I’m intrigued by SkyMall’s contempt for frugality. Take the concept of putting up a beach umbrella. Why do that when you can instead order a tent-like “beach cabana” for $69? You throw it in the air and it snaps into shape. It even has curtains for privacy. I am not sure why one would go to a sunny shore and seal oneself into a nylon cocoon, but SkyMall is also about whether you simply . . . can.

You won’t find a Bic pen in SkyMall. You will find a $99.99 ballpoint pen that also takes video. I don’t know why you’d need this, but I would like to have it. Just as I would like to have the $250 eyewear that looks like sunglasses but actually broadcasts video an inch from your eyes in a way that makes you feel you’re watching a widescreen. It is a product that says: Why, logically, watch your television, when, illogically, you can watch the same image on eyewear plugged into the TV?

I turned the page and found another item that virtually no one on the planet needs. For only $169.95, SkyMall will send you a voice-activated R2-D2. This is the ’droid featured in the Star Wars movies. Why would you want this? Because it obeys the commands — “Turn around” and “Move forward.” Also, it occasionally gets in a bad mood, and can be snapped out of it with the command, “R2, behave yourself.” On all three counts, I find this to be far more responsive conduct than that displayed by my non-’droid dependents.

To its credit, SkyMall does offer a more pragmatic robot. It’s the Roomba, a self-propelled round vacuum that travels by itself around your rug. If you are afraid something like this would cost $350, don’t be. It’s listed at a patronizing $349.95. You know those big consoles in video-game parlors that your children have put thousands of your quarters into over their lifetime? You seldom see those in homes. Where would a private citizen even buy one? SkyMall. They are selling one for $3,700. It weighs 300 pounds and costs $200 to ship. It is programmed with dozens of games. I want it.

The last I looked, humans have survived a century or more by transporting toothbrushes in low-tech toothbrush cases. That is no longer adequate. For $29.95, SkyMall will sell you a case that sanitizes your toothbrush with ultraviolet technology. Don’t need it; want it.

There is this other cool product called an Aculife that is designed to deliver electrical pulses to acupuncture spots. SkyMall seems to say that if you moved the Aculife around your skin, it can even find these spots by itself. They are called “qi points.” For $179.95, the Aculife will improve your “qi flow.” I don’t know what “qi flow” is, but I want more of it.

Just as I want the Head Spa Massager. You wear it like a helmet, and it sends positive energy into your scalp. It costs $49.95.

You know those “claw” machines at arcades, where you put in money, and lower a grabber, but always come up with nothing and get really angry? For $69.95, SkyMall will sell you a small version that offers the same experience at home.

If there is an ultimate example of unnecessary, it’s this next one. Have you wanted to decorate your home with a realistic squatting sculpture of an overweight Japanese sumo wrestler wearing a black diaper and in seeming need of the same upper support that Dolly Parton likely uses? For $95, SkyMall will sell you one.

That strikes me as a good one to end on.

Wait — there’s one better. For $225, you can get that same sumo person on his knees with a glass coffee-table on his back.

Sadly, I didn’t buy it. I didn’t buy any of it.

I may soon make another trip to Building 19, or Target, for essentials.

But even more, I look forward to flying again and taking SkyMall from the seat-back pocket.

Needing is fine. But wanting is more fun.

mpatinkin@projo.com