(Photograph copyright 2009, all rights reserved)
Happy Monday! No? Not happy Monday?
All right. We'll let that go. I'm finding it a happy Monday because after five days of the head cold that has been tearing its way through everyone I've seen or spoken to in the last ten days, I can almost breathe again. Almost. Not quite...
So. The Great Imponderable of the day is one that I KNOW has a real, concrete answer. It's going to take someone who knows someone who knows someone to get that answer, but I have faith. Plus everyone's heard the question, many have posed it themselves and I've yet to hear an answer that makes any sense yet.
I do not shy from the difficult questions! I LIVE for the difficult questions! So here you are.
What IS it with the bathtubs in the Cialis ads? Who came up with that brainwave? Did someone find it evocative, or are we meant to be asking the question? If that's the case, why bother with a big mysterious ad campaign for a drug with a very simple reason to exist?
Can you get it? Anyone? Anyone know whose agency came up with it?
I live in hope.
Well, I did find the following Blog that asked the same question:
ReplyDeletehttp://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/01/cialis_whats_with_the_bath_tub.php
While there were many hilarious guesses, some of my favorites including that it works so well that you need to "soak the gonads after hours of drug-induced debauchery" and "...the stuff works so well he is just going to drill right THROUGH his tub", it looks like the initial reason for the bathtubs was thought up by the company Eli Lilly.
Apparently they are meant to represent how long you have to decide to go and have possibly medically risky sex. You even have time to have a creepy bath in your own personal bathtub outdoors!
See, and debauchery is the LAST thing that comes to mind for me at the prospect of bathing outdoors. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that my parents for years thought that camping was a broadening family bonding experience, not to be missed. It was a miserable failure, succeeding only in my determination never to do that again.
ReplyDeleteOf course my mother's version of "camping" involved a 17 foot long trailer equipped with both a propane heater and stove. The water tank could hold enough city drinking water for five people for a full week. There was an indoor toilet which almost never got hooked up to an actual sewer. It was convenient only because one could put a honey bucket under the drain and not have to go to the outhouse at night. Bears, you know.
When I think about sitting in a bathtub outside several things come to mind, none of which are romantic. Here's a list.
1. When are the bugs going to find me? Wet human bodies in the outdoors are prime mosquito and horsefly targets.
2. This water is going to be cold in a millisecond.
3. Then I'll have to race to the cabin (or whatever) and have to wash my feet again, because it's just not possible for them to stay clean on the trek.
4. I hope the fire is lit, because all I'll want to do once I get indoors is cover myself in blankets and huddle by it to warm up. Hypothermia sucks.
Did I mention the fact that I grew up in Central Alberta and most of our camping trips were either northwards or in the mountains?
I feel so deprived. I've yet to see this magical visual poem to Cialis.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think people willingly took baths outside. (I stress willingly, since lots of folks have only that option). I don't take baths indoors, either. Even indoor baths lose their temps too quickly for me. Second is... well, when I'm close to or in **that** much water, I really have to strain not to... Okay, there's a reason I don't swim in pools, a'ight??
Bath time = relaxing. Relaxing = boner. No. Wait. Bath time = virility. No. Wait, I think I got it! Bath tubs are a vessel. Vessels, as we know from "The DaVinci Code", represent the vagina (or uterus, but, go with me here). The water represents a wet vagina. Oh, here comes the boner! And a boner + wet vagina = Cialis! No, damnit!
ReplyDeleteVariation on screwing in a hot tub? Someone at Abelson-Taylor severely overthought that one.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, "tadalafil", Cialis's generic name, is the single best double entendre in the history of scientific nomenclature. Ta-da!
herdthinner - I found the answer to keeping the bathwater warm. Insulate the tub. Seriously. When we redid the bathroom this summer, one of the things I had the guys do was stuff the tub surround with pink insulation. It works beautifully. It's still a stupid tub that's so big you can empty the hot water tank into it and not fill it, but at least it's hot, dammit!
ReplyDeleteSmag - I thought too much hot water rendered things....TOO relaxed if you get my drift.
Hm, I didn't even consider the actual real life implications of the whole bathing outdoors thing. I think I got stuck on the thought someone would have to slip me a horse tranquilizer to do it in the first place. (naked+wet+outdoors= possible surprise photo shoot by strangers)
ReplyDeleteI also wish I had a huge tub like the one Messy is describing! The apartment only has a tiny tub that the equally tiny roommate can really relax in. Damn these long legs!
Oh, you don't want a big tub. Trust me - they're a cubic waste of space and no one ever uses them. My contractor thinks it's hilarious. Everyone just HAS to have a monster bathtub, but most people who have had their bathrooms re-done have never used them.
ReplyDeleteIf I'd had my choice during our renovation, I'd have torn the thing out and put in a linen closet. The only time The Boy and I use it is when we've got colds. Other than that, forget it.
I have been wondering the SAME THING. WHO are these people who had 2 claw-footed bathtubs installed in their backyards?! That commercial has bothered me since it started airing. If I need to be in water to enjoy a sunset, I'll opt for a hot tub or some natural body of water. Imagine the scrubbing you'd have to give each tub before diving in.
ReplyDeleteOk, now THERE'S an image I didn't want. It didn't even occur to me that they'd need to be perpetually scrubbed. Spiders would LOVE to set up shop in empty outdoor bathtubs. Ick. Not to mention the sheer expense of running hot and cold water out from the house.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you do with them in the winter? They'd have to come indoors somewhere because that enamel was never meant to handle big temperature changes....and the pipes might freeze, so you'd have to purge them in the fall....
The more I think about this the LESS sexy the whole idea becomes.
Well, let this be the final nail in the coffin for you: This Cialis ad with the tub sitting outside always reminds me of the old claw foot bathtub we had sitting out by the barn for the cows to drink out of. The inside was covered in thick green algae and occasionally Grampy would have us catch bullfrog polliwogs and put them in it to eat down some of the algae. Every once in a while one of us kids would get brave enough on a hot day and think we were going to take a dunk in the tub. One foot over the side, with that thick slimy algae squirting up between your toes, was enough to change our minds and send us running and squealing from... the Algae Monster!
ReplyDeleteYou're right. That does it. Bleah.
ReplyDeleteWow Messy, that's a good question! I have been wondering about that myself. I think it's meant to be erotic in some ways, suggestive of the bath tubs are on the beach and they show waves (you know like in old movies when the message that the protagonists were having sex was conveyed by images of a storm) but the two probably very cold people in those bath tubs are more likely to provoke head scratching than anything else....
ReplyDelete