+1 for KA Stand Mixer fans. From making your own pasta and ground beef to whipping creamy mash potatoes, those things are awesome.

Same here. KA stand mixers are a de rigeur status item / badge that says "Hey, we've attained a certain socioeconomic status but we're not flashy about it! We just wanna make some pizza dough."

I'm a victim of this cult myself, and like everybody else I know who has one, ours gets used probably three or four times per year, max. It's such a cumbersome appliance to deal with that most of the time, I just use a fork and mixing bowl.

edit : also the noise is awful -- can't use it after bedtime unless I wanna wake the bambino

I mean, now that http://blender.org has an audio editor built into the video sequencer...

Man, I didn't think that at all but now I wish it was! Would love to read some in depth articles about these kinds of social clubs and the societies they create