Ask and you shall receive.

So I make a brief complaint about how current stapler technology is on par with the carrier pigeon and a few days later a box shows up for me at work. Looks kinda like a pipe bomb, so I give it a good shake first. After the all clear, I opened it up.

Inside: A staple-free stapler.

The invoice inside indicated it was sent by a certain staffer at the Hague, so I assume this is the kind of weird contraption that they use to attach papers together in Europe.

Upside: No staples. Thus, you never have the problem of a staple snapping at bending point or crunching up part way through the stack of papers. You never have to yank an errant staple out with a staple puller or pull a broken piece of one out with your teeth.

Downside: The staple-free stapler only punchs a thin piece of the paper out, which you then fold back to hold the paper together. Consequently, it can't really hold them together. That, and you can only do four pages at a time.

Nonetheless, this thing is a pretty nifty gadget that now sits atop my computer tower, looking down on my American stapler. Thanks, Marie. ;o)