White people are at it again
Today, as has been noted elsewhere, George Bush spent tens of millions of dollars celebrating himself. By contrast, I went to do my laundry. I always do my laundry myself, even though everyone I know sends out their laundry to be done by others. That seems absurd to me, when it is so easy to do your own laundry. In fact, there are machines that are designed to do laundry for you (as I have recently explained) and I use them without hesitation. In fact, these are the same machines used by the people who you hire to do your laundry. While the machines work, I read a book, which is a nice thing to do. What’s the big deal? The whole thing cost me just $5.75 on a cold afternoon.
I plan my trips to the laundromat on weekday afternoons when it is likely to be abandoned. The only difficulty in doing laundry is the mixture of political jockeying and blind luck necessary to find an available dryer at the precise moment your clothes are done in the washer. This is never possible in a laundromat that is even one-third full because there are always (by what algorithm?) far fewer dryers than washers, and more of them are broken. I work my own hours, so once every few months I take off an afternoon and do my laundry on my own terms.
I entered the laundromat this afternoon and immediately a woman said to me, “Don’t do your laundry here. They ripped off my clothes.” I liked the silliness of her poorly-constructed double entendre. She was standing at the little counter with a lot of makeup on, attempting to terrorize the unflappable staff. I said to her, “It’s all right, I’m doing my laundry myself,” because apparently I feel that is something everyone needs to know about me. I went on to do my laundry. During this time she ranted at the staff for a while longer, saying, for example, “You people don’t even speak English!” in her heavy foreign accent. Compassion was not happening at the laundromat. Anyway, I did my laundry and no one ripped it off me. I even got dryers that were able to produce hot air, which is a bonus.
Tonight a local college radio station was celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Bob Dylan’s album Blood on the Tracks in a most mysterious way: by inviting a lot of mediocre contemporary artists to play all of its tracks in order using generally the original arrangements. I thought that was really boring. I really like the record Blood on the Tracks, which is why I own a copy of it. If I wanted to hear these people, I’d buy their records, but I didn’t, did I?
And if I wanted to hire a bunch of people to make a mockery of something great, I wouldn’t call it a celebration. Whether we’re talking about Blood on the Tracks or the office of the Presidency. Oh, my people, my people!
However, I am pretty happy that so far this month, each of my posts has mentioned Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, or both. And every one of those words rang true, and glowed like burning coal.
by Jack, January 20, 2005 11:59 PM | More from The Damned Human Race
Within the Chronology
« I'm Your Recent Future Positions | Home | The brains I got will stuff your bust out »
Leave a comment