YouTube

     My wife has discovered YouTube.
     I am sure you think, "Yeah, welcome to the party. You're late." That's true, but it fails to take into account that my wife is a Luddite. That she visits YouTube is akin to finding Amish on Facebook.
     She nagged me about the amount of time I spent on my computer. To distract her, last Christmas I bought her an iPad. About a week before Christmas, I brought it home all gift wrapped and presented it to her.
     "What's this?" she asked.
     "Your Christmas gift. Merry Christmas," I said.
     "Oh, goody!" she squealed and tore into it. She's never been one for that open-your-gifts-on-Christmas-morning tradition.
     Once she got her iPad unwrapped, she turned it over and inspected it from all angles. She looked at me and asked, "What is it?"
     "It's an iPad."
     "Oh." She had heard of iPad. Who hasn't? "What's it do?"
     "Whatever you want."
     "How does it work?"
     "I dunno. It's your machine, not mine. If you need help, read the manual."
     At the mention of 'the manual', she gave me that don't-be-stupid look. Husbands out there know what I mean. So I added, "Or you could go to the Apple store and ask one of their geniuses."
     So she did.
     To all appearances, the genius she talked to was the one who went to school in the short bus. When she came home, all she could do with her iPad was take photos and videos. But that was more than enough.
     From Christmas to Saint Valentine's Day, her all-consuming hobby became using the iPad to make videos.
     She never learned to record programs on TV (told ya she's a Luddite), so at first she tried to use her iPad to record the Doctor Oz Show while she was away at work. God be thanked, this failed.
     Next she became a reality TV cinematographer and drafted me to the role of her subject. Everywhere I went, she followed with her iPad. Me at my computer. Me walking to the store. Me shaving. Me on the toilet. Everything I did, she videoed. She found these videos hilarious. Since she still had not cracked the code on how to use email or Facebook, she shared these videos with others by running around the neighborhood forcing friends to watch. Soon the neighbors grew wise, and she ran out of audience.
     (On the bright side, she lost interest in that demon spawn of Oprah Winfrey, Oz. God be thanked again, Oz dropped out of my life.)
     About this time, I considered buying an iPad to use for writing when away from my computer. I knew the keyboard on the iPad's screen would not suit me, so I got an iKeyboard. When it came, my wife videoed me opening the package. Curious little minx that she is, she asked what it was. Rather than tell her, I wrested her raison d'etre from her fists and attached the iKeyboard. I called up the notepad and demonstrated how it worked with the on-screen keyboard.
     That was the last time I used the iKeyboard.
     The iKeyboard became hers. Definitively hers. I did not have an iPad; she did. Ergo, I had no use for the iKeyboard; she did. Ergo, res ipsa loquitur, the iKeyboard belonged to her.
     The iKeyboard phase lasted a long time. For months she wrote notes on her iPad. I don't mean she wrote a book or even a short story. No, she wrote notes. Shopping lists. To-do lists. Honey-do lists. Other lists that are to this day incomprehensible to me.
     In late June, we ate at Carne do Brasil, the churrascaria owned by my friend, Ibo. I saw Michel Telo on a DVD there and downloaded his performances on YouTube when we got home.
     My wife wanted in on this. I told her she needed to connect to the internet to get these videos on her iPad.
     Her: "How do I do that?"
     Me: "I don't know. It's your machine. Go ask the geniuses at the Apple store."
     I inferred from the look on her face that her last dealing with the Apple geniuses had left her with less than a stellar appreciation of their abilities. Instead, she called my internet provider. Over the phone, my ISP talked her through the set-up and internet connection for her iPad. (Seems we have WiFi in home along with the coax cable that runs to my computer.)
     I came home to find her gleefully playing Ai se eu te pego. The next day she downloaded other YouTube videos. She learned to stream American Idol and Britain's Got Talent and other singing videos. She drove me nuts playing one blues singer over and over and over again.
     Then she found the dog videos on YouTube.
     I'm not talking cute puppy videos. No. I'm talking dog-humps-cat videos. Interspecies sexual encounters. (No, I am not going to link you.) She finds these hilarious. ROTFLHAO hilarious.
     I have told her that this is not a big deal. Dogs will hump anything. When I was a kid, we had a neighbor lady who kept a piss-ant furry lapdog. For the better part of a summer, he mistook my left leg for his long lost love. No matter, my wife still watches Dachshunds abusing Persians.
     So for the nonce, my wife amuses herself with perverted YouTube doggie porn. Well, on the bright side, it ain't Oz.

Addendum: Gangnam Style

     Perverted doggie porn is so yesterday.
     My wife found the video Gangnam Style. ROTFL. No, really. She laughed so hard she could not stand up. Then she watched parodies of Gangnam Style. Then videos of people watching the video of Gangnam Style.
     As I lay in bed clicking through the channels, she played Gangnam Style and insisted that I get up and dance to it. Much to my regret, I did. Her response? ROTFL.

     How do I feel about Gangnam Style? Could be worse. Could be Oz.