Stupid steering wheel desk sparks spontaneous web comedy-fest

User images uploaded to the Amazon page for this genius device include massive highway wrecks, a tank in a ditch and a flaming aeroplane.

What has been described as "a spontaneous community comedy festival" is happening on Amazon.com, the great cyber shopping mall, provoked by an advertisement for the Go Office Wheel Mate Steering Wheel Desk.

The comic exuberance is the confluence of citizen activism and entertainment - it could only happen on the net.

The larf-fest has made the New York Times tech section which also, defaulting to the role of the Victorian nanny, warned its readers that a steering-wheel writing platform for a laptop was "dangerous" and "impractical". Duh!

Readers have been imaginatively stimulated to provide spoof reviews of the product - "Easily convert your car into your personal automobile office with the Wheel Mate car desk".

This technological idiocy has all the making of a cult item, like pet rocks. The perpetrators, Cyberguys, say they began as a California computer store with "a good reputation for cool products and cheap prices". To use the jargon, their "killer" product "retails for" $39,99 ($NZ55.00) but you can pick it up at Amazon and "other fine stores" for "just" $24,95.

The plastic platform "attaches to your steering wheel for easy access to a writing and drink storage surface. The Go Office Wheel Mate Steering Wheel Desk is flat for writing and perfect for lunch or a snack".

Official photos show a man's hands fiddling with the keyboard of a laptop on the plastic stand attached to the bottom of a steering wheel. You can't see whether the car is moving. In small print, Cyberguys, which has a proud social responsibility record, warns: "For safety reasons, never use this product while driving." Just take off your hands off the wheel and type.

Readers of the New York Times were alerted by a columnist's blog sent to cellphones before the article actually appeared on paper. (This shows how communal gossip and news blend in a mix of media.) Then the word spread on the web.

Civiven contributors have ecstatically seized the opportunity to amend Cyberguys' marketing spiel and to insert a dagger into commercial Christmas glop.

One writes a description of changing a nappy on the tray during a 1 000km journey. Bob explains that he bought his laptop wheel desk so he could wash his hair on the way to work.

"I wait for a straight stretch of road, put a large bowl on the tray, fill it with water from the milk jug, lather up and rinse. It gives me an extra 15 minutes of sleep in the morning."

One Dr Koob pleads: "Come on, folks, be fair." He reckons that the satirists are cruel because they have never been in "outside sales".

He describes the slow death of salesmen: "A desk like this is a godsend for road warriors who are in their cars eight to 10 hours a day and four of those are spent parking".

In addition to testimony, readers have also supplied to Amazon and Cyberguys photos depicting the triumphs of the tray. Most involve motor cars flaming, airborne, roof sitting and mangled en masse.

One shows a Sherman tank upended in a ditch. Caption: "The army is still perfecting the military model of the tray." Another post has a smoking commercial aircraft a couple of metres off the ground: "Now available in airline edition."

Charitable, some site visitors assume the product is a spoof - evidence of brilliant attention-getting by Cyberguys. It could be some artist's attempt to inject alternative realities into the mundane.

I know you can get a sunshade hood for laptops: for Christmas, I'd like computer monitor windscreen wipers.

- IOL.ZA