The Ultimate Paranoid Stocking Stuffer: The Handler

Sure, I'm the kind of person who flushes toilets with his foot and pulls his sleeve up over his hand to open bathroom doors, but never before have I considered carrying a special gadget in my pocket to make this even easier.

Enter The Handler, an $11 gizmo that you attach to your keychain for use as a surrogate extremity any time filth is at hand.

The design is quite simple: A button on The Handler (about the size of a Zippo lighter) causes a tiny claw to flip out. You then use this claw to open doors, flush toilets, or pick up your passport out of the gutter. The Handler is coated entirely with "silver nano particles," a natural anti-bacterial substance that you find in germ-fighting keyboards and mice (like this one).

Naturally, The Handler's design presents some problems. You can't turn a doorknob with it. You can only seriously use it with anything you can operate with one finger, unless you want to be the guy standing there in front of the door, refusing to go in because you can't quite get a grip on the knob with a little hook you keep in your pocket.

I haven't quite lost enough of my mental faculties to actually carry The Handler with me on a daily basis, but I'll definitely keep it around in case I know I'm headed somewhere particularly nasty: An outdoor concert lined with Port-a-Potties, Burning Man, my kids' bedrooms.

Still, I know a few OCD-stricken people who might carry The Handler all the time. One in each pocket, actually. Why fight it? $11 is much cheaper than an hour of therapy.