Tomatos, laundry, and Victoria's Secret.

First of all, if you're not already reading the writings of Sarah D. Bunting at Tomato Nation, you must be a very boring person indeed. Should you ever find yourself with nothing to do (or should you find yourself with so much to do that the only option you have is to procrastinate), you can lose yourself in the Ketchup Archives of Sars' witty observations of society and pop culture.

A few years ago, she wrote a zany little piece on laundry, which you should really go read: here. Go on, I'll wait. Really.

Funny, huh?

What's funnier is that I know exactly how she feels, Jimmy Hoffa notwithstanding. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you clearly did not go read that essay when I told you to. Go!)

College prepares you for a lot of things in life, but regular laundering is not one of them. When you're in college, laundry rooms are dark, dirty, cold, and far away. The laundry machines cost money, and I don't care how broke you are, nobody asks for a laundry card for Christmas. So when you suddenly find your underwear drawer empty, it is often easier to just buy new underwear, rather than undertake the tedious task of laundry. This is why I have 43 pairs of underwear.

This undergraduate logic makes for some bad habits later in life, because once you graduate from college and move into your own apartment, your new place will probably still have a dark, dirty, far-away laundry room with machines that cost money. And you still will not want to do laundry any more than is absolutely necessary to keep from being arrested for indecent exposure. Or indecent odor. Or both. This point may be moot if, after college, you moved back in with your parents and your mother still does you laundry, in which case you have bigger problems than this.

Perhaps if college dormitories and independent apartment complexes would not insist on charging us $20.00 everytime we need clean clothes, we might not be so eager to go out and buy $10.00 worth of new underwear just to avoid the whole headache. I practically own stock in Victoria's Secret.

On the upside, laundry gives me an excellent excuse to visit my parents.

And hey, while you're getting Ketchup all over yourself at the Tomato Nation archives, make sure you read Sars' heartbreaking account of her experience in New York on Sept. 11, 2001: For Thou Art With Us. Nobody can be a comedian all the time.