Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Whither Bathing?

I like to be clean. I am happy to be living in a part of the universe where I can be clean. My hair gets greasy. My skin gets dry. I need a bath & cremes & lotions & wraps & powders & expensive gadgets to not be a crumbly, sweaty, smelly thing. & that's just in the morning. By afternoon I need a quick shower & a group of scary Italian men to rub essential oils all over me before the end of the workday. & of course a bath in ice-cold lamb's blood at the end of the night, with a Cuban cigar & a cup of fair-trade tea, to keep me from the night terrors.

It's your average Western Civilization lifestyle, & I am damned lucky to have it. So I don't think it's too presumptuous to celebrate it with a Self Help Radio about it. In fact, I would say it's part & parcel with my other radio shows celebrating the incredible luck I've had being born in the United States. My show about having a very low probability of being the victim of sudden, inexplicable violence was a big hit, as was my show about being very fortunate to not have to worry about diseases in my tap water. Of all my shows on this theme, my least popular one was the one about how buying a hybrid car is the main way I can save the world. Even my equally self-deluded American listeners saw through that shit.

But! We can celebrate being clean! It's certainly something the whole world wants, even if it's impossible for most of them. I think the admonition "Think clean thoughts!" is appropriate here, although we should qualify it - don't make the thoughts themselves clean (as in, not perverted) - but make the thoughts about being clean!

Also, I am working on a way to make listening to Self Help Radio the equivalent of taking a ninety minute shower. Details forthcoming.

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