A shiny new year and a shiny new Spirax notebook from the stationery cupboard hinting at the promise of fresh stories and new ideas.
But as I open the notebook, I am mystified as always by the advertisement inside of an attractive couple in their early 20s. She, red-lipped dark-haired beauty in funky jeans and grandma-ish cream crochet top (I know!!!) leans against some lockers, holding, yes, a black Spirax notebook.
He, scruffy cute leans into her, his hand on the locker above her head, his look suggesting they get together after class to “study” or she move out of the freaking way so he can grab his history textbooks.
As an ad it is perplexing. She is obviously more into her notebook than him, coyly avoiding his gaze. Is Spirax suggesting the empty back of a black notebook is infinitely more interesting than cute scruffy boy? Or that having such a notebook will attract the affections of the right type of boy (bookish, intellectual, and ahem, “sensitive”)?
Next to the photo is “Did you know?” and some dry facts. Did YOU know, for example, that Esselte (the makers of Spirax) annually sells enough suspension files to store 200 billion pages of information? However, nowhere is there mention of excellent pickup lines and moves relating to stationery.
My suggestions would include: “Hey, that’s a good-looking pen, mind if I write your number with it?” Stealing is not something I usually condone, but “accidentally” picking up that cute classmate’s notebook instead of your own after class and returning it the next day covered in original poetry is smooth (“I love the way your eyes light up when we discuss Proust/ Don’t break my heart and make me last”).
Proust and last don’t quite rhyme but we’ll give the poor lad or lass marks for trying. And if you think that this entry is just advertorial for Spirax, don’t. Newspapers around the world have done a fine job of compiling the “best” and “worst” moments of 2008.
But what about those plain “perplexing” moments, like every time I warily opened my notebook to the strange Spirax ad?
Or why in every story about women in power the vaguely sexual headline “Women on top” is used?
Or how in December more than 130,000 inflatable breasts were lost at sea? Men’s magazine Ralph was planning to include the boobs as a free gift with its January issue. One wonders whether fish and sharks out happily swimming and chancing upon the breasts tried to eat them (breastfast…get it?).
Or whether actress Vanessa Hudgens who plays wholesome and brainy Gabriella in the High School Musical movies has any other “look” other than “sweetly adoring” of her on and off-screen sweetheart Troy, played by Zac Efron? I picked up “sad” in the third installment but I would have been sad too if I only got to kiss my boyfriend – properly, not just pecks on the cheek – once in the whole movie.
I am ashamed to say it was these questions that preoccupied me in 2008. No doubt there will be more this year. Perplexing New Year.
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