Opiniatrety

Too Much Information (Dept. of Laundry)

If you want to read some silly personal stuff, click on the extended entry link. The point of the post is really to link to this Heather Havrilesky strip. I need to figure out how to work more of that in.

[UPDATE: Serendipitiously, just before this linkfest Heather put op one of her rare new blog entries. You can see that she's a big influence on me. At least, that's my excuse. Some philosophy soonish, maybe.]

So while researching the previous post, I discovered this (from a strip about alternatives to dating):

Nothing tells you more about a man than the way he handles his laundry. Does he have a plastic laundry basket (a wee bit anal retentive, no?), a wicker basket (gay?), or a drawstring canvas laundry bag (manly!)?

and discovered to my annoyance that after getting my PhD I went from manly to anal retentive. Here's the thing--the real man doesn't do his laundry so often that it can fit into one laundry bag. And carrying around several laundry bags is protesting your manliness way too much. (Also, the baskets help me sort whites from colors in advance--which is what it takes to be mature enough for a long-term relationship. I think there's something deep about tradeoffs going on here.)

Anyway, my fans will be happy to know that I am back to manly--until the moving company brings my plastic baskets and the rest of my clothes. As Heather says: "There's so much information available here — too much, really."

Posted by Matt Weiner at August 8, 2004 03:54 PM