A carnival of technology

I’m not sure how my address ended up on all of these mailing lists. I suspect Borders had some hand in it; I think I gave them my address as part of signing up for that customer loyalty card that gives me $5 off books once in a while by some algorithm that I’ve never bothered to look up. Whoever’s fault it is, I get some strange mail sometimes. I got issues of Complex for a while, and Car & Driver still shows up once a month and goes straight to the trash. I do own a car and some Outkast CDs, so maybe I do have some connection to these magazines’ audiences, but I don’t have a shortage of bathroom reading material. More recently, I got something from Axe, the deodorant people. They sent me a DVD.

You may be familiar with Axe’s commercials, the Hai Karate of my generation. Their message is that if I use their deodorant spray, women everywhere will throw themselves at me and my life will become a non-stop orgy. It’s all quite crude and seems like a parody of beer commercial stereotypes, and there’s probably a thesis or two in there about the male chauvinist backlash against feminism, but I don’t really care about any of that. Axe sent me a cardboard mailing containing a DVD and a picture of a fake movie poster for A Diary which depicts a sepia-toned couple embracing on a park bench in the rain with a bicycle in the background. It all looks very sappy and sort of French. The DVD itself contains a twenty-two minute movie; the first two minutes or so is a compilation of footage probably taken from educational and industrial films built into an absurd sexual montage. There are bees pollinating flowers, screws being driven in boards, pumping oil rigs and finally explosions and popping wine corks and then the last twenty minutes of the DVD, which is filled with a shot of wood burning in a fireplace. There’s some kind of sweepstakes involving text messages associated with the DVD. I didn’t read very far.

Starting in 1966 WPIX, New York, would broadcast several hours of a fireplace on Christmas Eve. Most New Yorkers don’t have fireplaces, so this yule log program provided the tradition and comfort of the sound and image of a burning wood fire through the magic of television. Our bond with fire is a powerful one, separating man from beast as we barely control this natural fury, fascinating scientists and poets alike. I do have a fireplace, but I never use it. Between Georgia’s weather and the heat radiated up from my neighbors it’s rarely cold enough, and I haven’t figured out a way to arrange my furniture without blocking the fireplace with the TV. I can see the attraction of sitting on the couch on a winter night, huddled in blankets and sipping hot cider while a fire roars away on a television screen. It’s too bad this stupid DVD is so short and has all that bullshit at the beginning.