Meet Paul. Paul is a white male with rock-hard thighs, a high, taut rear, and abs you could grate cheese off of. He’s also a smartphone charger—specifically, the sexiest smartphone charger on the planet. (Video NSFW, assuming your boss isn’t a fan of girl-on-mannequin lovin’).
Paul is the brainchild of Justin Crowe, an artist and designer from Taos, New Mexico. He’s a 34-inch, fully functional smart phone charger made of silicon molds, foam, and plastic coating. He has a USB slot on his groin for easy access, as well as a cord in his rear that “can be pushed back into his bum for a clean look.” (There is a GIF of this happening, which I advise you not to watch if you’re on a long commute and kind of have to poop).
Even though Paul is fully functional and can actually charge your phone, it’s obviously not intended as a mass-market product (though it’d totally sell like hotcakes in the Skymall catalogue). Its value lies less in its utility, and more in its function as an art object. Crowe writes that Paul is intended as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the interplay between tech and sex, and how our intimate relationships with our smart devices are slowly blurring the boundaries between the two.
“Social networking as we know it is approaching its teenage years and, like a human teenager, the current state of this Digital Age phenomenon looks a lot like puberty – awkward, emotional, and decadent,” Crowe writes on the Kickstarter page for Paul.
“Paul is a sarcastic piece made in response to the current popular trends in social and mobile technologies. It is a functional iPhone charger design object that explores modern technology’s affect on human sexuality.”
Assuming Paul is legit, it’s a clever idea, not to mention a great conversation piece, but we do have one minor request for Paul’s creator: might we suggest that he make Paul more anatomically correct? You can’t exactly be the sexiest smart phone charger in the world when you’re rocking the Ken-doll treatment, if you catch my drift.
H/T Kickstarter | Photo via Justin Paul Crowe/Paul