DRYERS

I abhor pictures in the middle of formal web articles.

Unless they’re of me, which they never are.

I also get freaked out by backlinks. Whenever I see a backlink in these purported articles I make this old man grumpy noise-growl to signal my distaste.

Backlinks stop me in my tracks because they seem to have ulterior motives. Like that time in Spain when I was not drunkenly but rather quite innocently walking around a piazza or plaza or whatever they call the open area where Beautiful Spanish People Congregate at night, and this stranger invited me to play soccer, er “futbol,” but it turns out he wasn’t really inviting me to play soccer, er, “futbol,” he was distracting me so he could pinch my wallet. Which he did, quite successfully, with relative ease. So that’s my problem. Backlinks make me feel like I’m about to get mugged.

I still had fun in Spain.

Obviously I’m in the minority here as I’ve literally never heard anyone complain about the ominous presence of pictures or backlinks in web articles. Perhaps, speaking to the backlinks, it’s because these particular digital denizens have all the time in the world to click that awkwardly underlined, circa-90’s-Internet-blue-glowing ominous hyperlink and traverse down a wormhole into a completely different realm of supposedly related articles that improve their lives and generally support their journeys toward self-improvement.

I don’t have that kind of time.

And the picture in a web article thing? That’s just plain lazy. A way to avoid adjectives or setting a scene, kind of like developing the habit of creating fake descriptors out of hyphenated words because you can’t be bothered to think and you rationalize it as funny to absolve the guilt you feel from using such a hack move when technically you have a Bachelor of Arts, English Literature, thank you very much, one of the hardest degrees to obtain at any accredited or unaccredited physical or online college/university in Southwest New Mexico State.

But I almost inserted a picture of my dryer in this article.

Do other people in the world use dryers? When I lived in Italy (ok fine I was on a student exchange program, I wanted to say “lived” to impress you) the first thing I did was find the nearest McDonald’s and complain about the distinct absence of dryers.

This resulted in a Beautiful Italian showing me how to hang clothes on a wire, smoke cigarettes, drink red wine, talk about art and Communism, and take a nap. Waking up late in the afternoon (making sure I still had my wallet), I ventured to the wire to find a mysterious force had somehow vaporized the inherent moisture out of my garments.

Fascinating.

The proliferation of United States Dryers domestically rather than internationally implies this kind of European witchcraft is only exported to countries that aren’t True Democracies.

I’m fine with this.

Furthermore, if other people in the world used dryers they’d undoubtedly prefer United States Dryers and we’d have a robust, flashy Dryer Manufacture and Export Industry that would significantly bolster our GDP, and we’d see the main players of this industry frequently grace the covers of  Forbes ,  Inc.  and  International Trade Administration .

My dryer, which I will not show here, has some mysterious digital displays and indicator lights installed on its face. Along with some highly suspect marketing copy. The displays/dials etc. stand out because this dryer is not like the fancy, $50,000.00, chrome-plated, Bluetooth and Tik Tok-enabled 2020 Death Robot Dryer that ominously glows in 72 different flavors of neon you likely have and can’t stop talking about and keep showing your friends every time you have them over for Sous Vide-whatever but secretly they’re sick of hearing you talk about how great your dryer and kids are.

No, my dryer is Classic, circa the most coveted year of dryer manufactory, 1997.

So when I see something from 1997 with a bunch of digital displays and indicator lights on it I’m skeptical because I know for a fact that these things did not exist on any other products of any kind during that time.

I’m particularly suspect of the “Moisture Monitor” indicator light. It glows red, is vertically oval in shape, with “Moisture Monitor” written as the headline, and “more” above “less” written as the indicator/left-side copy. When I turn on the dryer the light glows in such a way that it hits both the “more” and “less” copy indicators simultaneously, which at first makes sense as it implies the demon that lives inside recognizes I’ve put wet clothes in there…but after the device nearly completes its 5-hour, 10000 watt drying cycle, that light still  glows equally around “more” and “less.”

It’s a fake. Between episodes of X-Files some marketing guy told the product engineer to put a “Moisture Monitor” light on this thing so they could charge an extra…hmmm…

… retailvalueofcirca1997dryerintodaysdollarsplusinflation…  …$10,000.00!

The same logic likely applies to the aforementioned highly suspect evil marketing copy, which advertises:

“Oversize Capacity Plus”

“Quiet Plus”

“Heavy Duty Intellidry Control.”

Come on. Intellidry? That’s not even a word! At best that’s like me calling myself a Creative Director or Vice President of Marketing on my LinkedIn (don’t look at my LinkedIn). I don’t even know what a Creative Director does , let alone remotely fathom the inherent complexities any genius worthy of earning the title “Vice President” in any industry for however brief a period must navigate to deservedly bathe in the admiration of their peers and constantly receive quarterly bonuses immediately after laying off junior staff because sorry we just didn’t hit our arbitrary projections. But I got mine yo boom.

Ahem. There’s a lesson here, storied, enraptured, brilliant and extremely attractive reader. Look at how the advertising-industrial complex has deviously created your need for several dryers in your home, likely one on each floor. Look at those digital displays and pulsating lights, look at the influential copy for goodness-sake. It’s no accident. What isn’t fake to simply increase your out-of-pocket expense is there to tell you what to do, influence your decisions, and ultimately trick you into buying more dryers .

After all, there’s not a dryer to be found in the rest of the world. They’ve got to sell them somewhere.

Wait. Is there a whole industry for printing copy on appliances? Ovens, washer/dryers, refrigerators? How does that work? Is it a gigantic typewriter at the end of the production line? Does anyone ever mess with it, like sneak a profanity next to your “broil” button? I sure would.

We should look into this. Sounds pretty lucrative.