There Are No Secrets Anymore
by Mad Dog
It's amazing what people can deduce about you without having
ever met you. A few years ago I moved into an apartment that had two rope nooses on the
wall about six feet off the floor. At the risk of sounding naive, I have to admit that I
thought these were primitive macramé flowerpot holders. Silly me. As I looked I realized
they were the perfect height for an adult to stand against the wall with arms
outstretched. That's right, they were rope wrist bindings. The apartment would have made a
great dungeon had it not been on the third floor.
That got me to wondering just who had been living there and
how they spent their leisure hours. Whoever they were they obviously lead a simpler life
than the people who had occupied a house I moved into a few years earlierthey left
behind stacks of religious tracts, faded plastic flowers stolen from a nearby cemetery, a
lone crutch, and a pile of porno magazines. Who lived there before me? A crippled nun from
the Perverted Little Sisters Of To Hell With The Seventh Commandment?
Nowadays everyones worried about Internet privacy,
including how horrible it is that they can figure out your personal preferences and tailor
ads to suit your interests. I wouldnt worry too much about this if I were you.
Unless theyve changed it recently, if you go to the Hotbot search engine
(www.hotbot.com) and type in "sex toys" youll get a list of sites that
sell these devices while a big Toys R Us ad banner flashes on the top of the page. Gee, I
guess Im still a Toys R Us kid after all.
If you really want to know the most intimate details of
someones life, forget the high tech web and get a job in a grocery store. Checkers
know everything there is to know about you. They know you buy fresh fruit, pre-cut lettuce
in a bag, extra-firm tofu, and Little Debbie Crisco-filled Polyester Sponge Cakes by the
case. They know your bowels aren't regular, your ears have more wax than a candle factory,
and even though you swear the Preparation H isn't for you, they know your hemorrhoids are
acting up again. It's enough to make you hire someone to do your shopping for you.
Then theres your letter carrier. Neither rain nor snow
nor dark of night will keep them from discovering that you renewed your subscription to
Outlaw Biker Babes, that your telephone service is about to be disconnected, and that the
plain brown envelope with the Colorado return address is hiding the latest catalog from
Mistress Bridgets House of Pain and Kosher Delicatessen.
It wouldn't be so bad if that was it, but even your pizza
delivery person knows deep dark secrets about you. I'm not making this up. Each year
Domino's Pizza compiles statistics about the people who order from them. They claim that
if you're a man in a muscle shirt you're three times as likely to order a pepperoni pizza;
if you have a pierced nose, lip, or eyebrow you're probably going to want a vegetarian
topping; and if you have wind chimes on your porch you're four times as likely to have
ordered olives on your pizza. It's enough to make you call Little Caesars.
Maybe its me. Most people seem to like having other
people know their innermost secrets. How else to explain the never-ending stream of guests
who spill their guts on talk shows, or HBOs Taxi Stories, where people actually have
sex in the back seat of the cab, tell the driver theyre on their way to kill their
boyfriend, and explain that theyre transsexual but his/her boyfriend doesnt
know it, then sign a release form letting it be broadcast all over the planet? "Guess
what, honey! Im going to be on TV!"
Then theres Love Connection, which features people who
not only have to rely on a TV show to get them a date, but also have this insatiable need
to go on national television and tell the country what a horrible time they had. Don't get
me wrong, I like "Love Connection". Like the wedding pages of the newspaper, it
gives me a chance to see what I've been missing.
But while "Love Connection" serves a very useful
purpose, it's not nearly as effective as the Japanese TV show "Wedding Bells".
This, in case you haven't been watching television in Osaka lately, is the modern version
of Japanese matchmaking, wherein 10 men and 10 women broadcast intimate details of their
personal lives in the hope that one of the others will take pity and ask them out on a
date. That, of course, is no different than going to any bar in the United States, except
that on Japanese TV they don't drink shooters with names like Anal Sex on the Beach With
Dogs. Interestingly, the most popular segments of the show are those that focus on
divorced people, who confess to what broke up their marriage, be it adultery, attempted
murder, or an unchecked craving for Cheez Wiz sushi.
The shows very popular. Each week over 500 people ask to
be on it. At least 14 couples who met on the show have become engaged while more than 16
have been married. Interestingly, none of them have moved into apartments that had wrist
bindings on the wall. That makes me really wonder what the people living in that
apartment before me were like.