In my current state of non-inebriated writers block, I am having trouble cranking out the kind of creative, humorous, and morally reprehensible daily updates that I am famous for. So what does one do when confronted by a lack of ideas? While I always have a lack of GOOD ideas, usually other sort of ideas are in abundant supply. You need only scroll down or click on links at the side to really understand this. The idea that I once came up with, concerning writers block was to write about it. Yeah, to actually write about writers block. So this is what I am doing now. I had hoped to leave this card up my sleeve for many many more weeks, but alas, it is flowing out now. I shudder to think about what I might come up with when I have a lack of ideas in the future. I could write about the exciting time I fixed my toilet by making replacement parts out of speaker wire and massacred coat hangers (this really happened, but for ONCE, I will spare the details). So as you see, I tend to ramble on, until and idea (ANY sort of idea) pops into my head, or out my fingers. This will be all to painfully apparent to those who have had verbal conversations with me. NOT only do I have extreme symptoms of writers block (and usually spelling block), but in conversations I have speakers block. This means, like I am doing now with written words, that I talk about anything. Just keep talking Mike, you’ll stumble upon a good idea eventually. This is why such persons as Fiona and Jason have had to suffer through innumerable stories about wild an wacky interac transactions, and other bank card follies that are all to common in life. And finally, my only other option is to pilfer good ideas from someone else. And that, my friends, is what I have ultimately chosen to do today.
So without further adieu – an article by Dave Barry :
Ms. Schuler is concerned about the issue of How Guys Do Laundry. She relates the following anecdote:
“My husband announced one morning that he had discovered the previous night, on the eve of a two-day business trip, that he was out of underwear. Why he told me, I do not know. I never tell HIM when I’M out of underwear. Anyway, he decided to remedy the situation in true guy fashion, by washing exactly three sets of underwear, thus disregarding the bulging hamper full of the rest of his underwear, which, presumably, would wash itself during his absence.”
Ms. Schuler’s letter serves to remind us of the importance of not engaging in sexist stereotyping. We must never make blanket gender-based statements such as: “Men always hog the blanket.” Just because Ms. Schuler’s husband doesn’t do the laundry, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions upon millions of males who DO do the laundry, then hang it out to dry under the three suns of the Planet Xoomar, where they live. Most males here on Earth, however, do not do any more laundry than they absolutely have to. A single-sock load would not be out of the question, for a guy. A guy might well choose to wash ONLY THE REALLY DIRTY PART OF THE SOCK.
At first glance, this behaviour might seem to be reprehensible, but in fact there’s a simple, logical explanation for it: Men are worthless scum.
No, seriously, the explanation is that many men are AFRAID to do laundry, especially laundry belonging to people of other genders, because they (the males) might get into Big Trouble. I know I would. In our household we have a lot of sensitive garments with laundering- instruction tags full of strict instructions. I’m intimidated by these instructions. I developed my laundering skills in college, where I used what laundry scientists call the Pile System, wherein you put your dirty undershorts on the floor until they form a waist-high pile, thus subjecting the bottom shorts to intense heat and pressure that causes them to become, over several months, clean enough to wear if you’re desperate and spray them with Right Guard brand deodorant.
As a married person, I use the Hamper System, which is similar to the Pile System except that the clothes really do get clean, thanks to magical hamper rays.
No, I of course realize that hamperized clothes are cleaned by a person such as my wife, Beth, or Alison Schuler of Albuquerque, N.M. But I also know that Beth follows a complex procedure involving sorting and pre-soaking and 27 different combinations of water temperatures and chemical compounds such as fabric softener, stain remover, fabric hardener, cream rinse, plutonium, etc. Beth wouldn’t LET me do her laundry unless I underwent years of training, because she assumes I’d screw it up and cause our garments to shrink down to cute little Tinkerbell clothes, or transmaterialize in the dryer, similar to what happened to that unfortunate man in the movie “The Fly,” so we’d wind up with, for example, a brassiere that had pant legs.
Beth’s reluctance to let me near the laundry is typical of the vast majority of American women, according to a nationwide survey of several other women I know. A typical reaction came from my research department, Judi Smith, who gave the following statement regarding her husband, Tim, a Ph.D. college professor:
“I don’t trust him to do my laundry at ALL, unless I’ve sorted it first and given him strict instructions before each and every load, because otherwise everything we own would be mauve or gray. … He puts his clothes away damp. He can’t put away anyone else’s clothes, because he can’t fold. I mean, the man can’t fold a TOWEL for God’s sake. Somehow, he can’t get the corners to match up. A HAND towel, even.”
I repeated Judi’s statement to Beth, who emitted the bitter humourless laugh of a woman who has more than once watched her husband turn a basic shirt into a prizewinning origami project.
I’m not defending men here. I’m just saying that a lot of us view ourselves as laundry-impaired, and we’ll probably continue to do so as long as women roll their eyes and shove us away from the washing machine when we’re about to, for example, wash our delicate silks in the same load as our boat cover. So I’m saying to women: Teach us to launder. We are willing to learn, really, just as soon as the playoffs are over. Give us a chance to show what we are capable of. And definitely buy stock in whatever company makes Right Guard.
Hello, its Mike again. Forgive me, I’ll try and withhold my cut and paste mood today. Do we agree with this? Are men complete idiots when doing laundry. I don’t know any singe men who I have ever seen with laundry mangled clothing, or things which were supposed to be white, but somehow made a colour transformation by dark colors having sudsy laundry sex with the light colors, producing hybrids that reek of incompetence. Of course, I don’t know any singe guys either. All I can say is, that I have never personally screwed up clothing in the laundry. I DO, however, have stories of female friends of mine screwing up laundry. Of course, they would never do anything as cliche as to put that one dark red sock in with all those white T-shirts, but there are mishap that Do happen. For example, take a load of all black laundry, consisted of all types of clothing. Add a couple of Kleenexes and Voila – you’ve got some mayhem happening. The fact that I saw this person do this TWICE was even more amusing. Of course, I would never show such amusement visible, for fear of violent repercussions I have seen even worse happenings in the laundry room, but I probably should not discuss them here. The repercussions of that persons vibrant transgression are still, sadly, walking the streets to this this day.