Every year around this time I find myself aimlessly searching online for Christmas gift ideas. One of the sites I frequent is a notoriously trendy retailer that epitomizes the mass production of “originality.” I don’t waste my time with their overpriced fashion offerings, but proceed directly to the novelty bonanza that is their “APARTMENT” section. Mundane suburbanites need not enter. My visits to the store’s website are never without internal conflict: On the one hand,…