Nowhere does our bountiful freedom of consumer choice shine brighter than in the world of wall calendars, where a person's interests, hobbies, and sometimes entire life can be summed up in a dozen images. Calendars' uniform boxes and numbers can make humans feel like part of a huge and scary world, but the seemingly innumerable varieties of images placed above those boxes and numbers can be calming in the way they suggest that each soul is unique and has purpose, even if that purpose is to ogle women holding heavy machinery. What calendar will best sum up the year to come? The Onion A.V. Club presents some of 2005's more colorful choices.
Women With Power Tools
The calendar format has long been a place to indulge, and in many cases combine, fantasies. The preponderance of chicks-on-muscle-cars calendars is one-upped this year by the completely incongruous and ostentatiously unsexy Women With Power Tools calendar, which features hydraulically enhanced models playing with big machines while failing to wear appropriate safety gear.
Feel-good packaging copy: No words, just a simulated heart monitor. Beep beep.
Target market: Ironic gag-gift purchasers, hopefully.
Likely actual purchaser: Dudes unwilling to make a choice between silicone-filled sacs and chainsaws. (And why should they have to?)
Instills feelings of: Dread that Darwin might have been wrong.
Will make a cubicle feel: Like Cooter's garage.
Based on this purchase, 2005 will bring the owner: Beer goggles.
Cockpit: The Inside Story Of WWII Aircraft
These calendar manufacturers must be privy to some interesting demographic information. Why else would they give over an entire year to the cockpits of World War II planes? Not only that, each cockpit receives a careful guide to its workings, which cuts into the useful part of the calendar to show where the cowl-flap control is located.
Feel-good packaging copy: "…the ear-shattering noise and freezing temperatures were taken in stride…"
Target market: WWII pilots looking to relive the scariest moments of their lives.
Likely actual purchaser: Hawks who want to remember the last war that everybody liked.
Instills feelings of: Claustrophobia, confusion.
Will make a cubicle feel: Like a cockpit. Duh.
Based on this purchase, 2005 will bring the owner: A fascinating string of technical manuals.
Teddy Bears
It's tough to argue with the cuteness of teddy bears… until they open their mouths, at which point they become scary. Fortunately, most of the bears in this calendar know better: They simply sit quietly for family bear portraits, or throw snowballs, or dress up for Christmas. But that crazy April bear, popping a wheelie with mouth agape–make him stop!
Feel-good packaging copy: "The publisher has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all calendar information."
Target market: People who own 100 or more teddy bears.
Likely actual purchaser: Same.
Instills feelings of: Saccharine overload.
Will make a cubicle feel: Like a safe haven that the mean manager's mean words can't violate.
Twisted Whiskers
Dogs and cats are the air and water of the calendar world: Entire shelves are given over to various breeds and all manner of cuteness. The Twisted Whiskers calendar, which takes cartoon cats and dogs and adds huge, super-creepy eyes (clearly swiped from painter Margaret Keane), may turn this segment of the calendar market on its head.
Feel-good packaging copy: "…because life can be ruff."
Target market: "Quirky" homemakers.
Likely actual purchaser: Demented toddlers and edgy secretaries.
Instills feelings of: Slowly creeping unease.
Will make a cubicle feel: Even less like home than before.
Based on this purchase, 2005 will bring the owner: Paranoid episodes involving other people's pets.
Anne Geddes & Celine Dion: Miracle, A Celebration Of New Life
A pair of simultaneously revered and reviled artists team up for the egotistically titled Miracle: Anne Geddes, photographer of baby/animal/ plant-life combos, and Celine Dion, zenith of pop pomposity, taste great together, assuming that cloying horror suits the palate.
Feel-good packaging copy: "…an unprecedented professional collaboration."
Target market: Art aficionados.
Likely actual purchaser: The infertile.
Instills feelings of: Fear (for the babies) and contempt (for Dion).
Will make a cubicle feel: Conflicted.
Based on this purchase, 2005 will bring the owner: Unmet aspirations and/or crushed dreams.
Precious Portraits
Little kids may say and do the darnedest things, but they never spontaneously dress up in old-timey clothes and reenact a pure and beautiful American past. So Precious Portraits is all about fantasy, with its gently colored black-and-whites of little six-year-old Dicks and Janes getting precocious.
Feel-good packaging copy: None. These staged and doctored photos speak for themselves.
Target market: The longingly childless.
Likely actual purchaser: Rarely visited grandparents.
Instills feelings of: Nostalgia for a time that never was.
Will make a cubicle feel: Like a Technicolor wonderland.
Based on this purchase, 2005 will bring the owner: Divorce and/or death.
God Bless America 2004
For some reason still available in December of 2004, the God Bless America 2004 calendar could provide some nationalistic comfort, but will prove of little use otherwise. But who thinks about days of the week when their eyes are being yanked toward the beauty of a little kid waving a flag or a strangely framed photo of the Capitol Building? And how about this: America is apparently no longer pretending the World Trade Center didn't exist, by cropping its image out of all media: It's prominently featured in the September photo.
Feel-good packaging copy: No words, just pictures and feelings.
Target market: Red states.
Likely actual purchaser: Someone who doesn't notice the date.
Instills feelings of: Soaring pride and nagging shame.
Will make a cubicle feel: The power of freedom.
Based on this purchase, 2005 will bring the owner: Confusion, as he or she insists that the 14th falls on a Thursday, when in fact it does not.