Which I guess is not quite as effective a sales pitch.

Certainly, a picture is forming of my fellow viewers: hairy people with memory loss problems. The MassiveMemory ad has been on about five times, the phone number flashing for minutes at a time. I wonder if they ever sell anything. Either you can remember the number and thus don’t need the product. Or you need it, but haven’t the foggiest who to call.

The weirdest thing is how so many products seem expressly designed for me. The SupaMop is ‘especially for people who want a beautifully clean house without all that scrubbing’. That’s me! I wonder how they knew. Meanwhile, the ChestFlexer is ‘specifically designed for those who want to achieve the perfect body’. That sentiment is entirely mine. Frankly, it’s spooky. All those who wish to achieve only moderately OK bodies, while they scrub away at their filthy surfaces, can step aside.

I start thinking about my credit card. I could make the call NOW NOW NOW. But—even without the help of MassiveMemory—thoughts of past purchases come floating back. Thoughts of products such as the FireMaker—a metal box into which one pressed wet newspaper thus producing compressed-paper bricks which were guaranteed to ‘produce fuel for your fire which will save $$$ on electrical heaters’. I remember placing that order. I remember the excitement of making my first bricks. And I remember the way they stayed wet for weeks—finally forcing me to dry each brick, prior to use, in front of a blazing electrical heater, at the cost of a huge number of $$$ on my electricity bill.

I make myself yet another cup of coffee and arrive back just in time to see a new offer from Danoz Direct. It is for an electronic letter opener which takes all the effort out of opening letters. As with the automatic prawn sheller, I suddenly realise the terrible inadequacy of my own fingers. ‘Don’t you just hate tearing important documents as you struggle to open envelopes!’ says the Danoz pitch, and straightaway I know what they mean. How often have I arrived home only to begin a half-hour tussle with the Telstra bill, a tussle which leaves the bill in shreds and me in tears, sobbing at the breakfast bar?

‘Now,’ continues Danoz, ‘thanks to the Electronic Letter Opener, your envelopes will virtually open themselves.’ I consider buying the product but am left wondering what I will do when the envelope arrives and I have no envelope opener with which to open the envelope containing the envelope opener. It’s a moment of existential angst that leaves me quite dissatisfied with late-night commercial TV.

In a fit of pique, I switch to the dying moments of SBS and immediately fall into a deep slumber. When I awake I discover I am naked, forty kilos heavier, and can speak Slovenian. Now that’s what I call high-impact television.

Hairy scary

‘Don’t come near me with that thing,’ says Jocasta, from her side of the bed. ‘You look like a sleazy creep. It’s like a dead slug, just sitting there on your face. It makes you look disgusting.’

It’s true the moustache doesn’t suit me. For a start, it has somehow made my nose grow bigger. ‘How is that possible?’ I ask Jocasta, but she refuses to look, preferring to engage with a magazine photo essay on the actor Viggo Mortensen.

On a beach holiday, the normal order must be overturned. Women who usually don’t give a damn about bikini waxing and nail polish are suddenly mad for it.