On Soap, and its Appropriate Uses

A facebook friend of mine recently posted a comment regarding the complexities of soap usage in the shower.  I'd never considered the ramifications before, but it got me to thinking.  If you've read any of my previous blogs, you'll know that the idea of me thinking is not necessarily going to lead to logical conclusions, but I think this time I've come upon something big.

So here we go.

Most of us, I presume, use the same bar of soap for all of our body parts, including the two most important, the bum and the face.  Question:  what happens to the, uh, "substances" that we wash off between body parts?  Stands to reason that some of it stays on the soap, no?

Think about this:  say you wash your bum, and then your face.  Or you do it in reverse order, and then use the same soap next time you bathe.  No matter what order you use, eventually you will expose your face to these substances.  But not if you use my simple but elegant solution.

Buy two bars of soap.  Put one on a higher shelf and the other on a lower one.  It doesn't matter which one you use for which body part, just so long as you don't confuse the two. 

Simple.  Elegant.

But, you whine, I don't live alone, and my significant other doesn't share my neuroses.  Or perhaps he or she is passive-aggressive, and may well mix them up on purpose for the private satisfaction of knowing you washed your face with your bum soap just before that big meeting with your boss.  If he or she won't kiss you on the way out the door, they're busted!  But I have a solution for that, too.

Color coding!

Buy two bars of soap, one white and one brown, or whatever combination pleases you, just so long as, again, you don't confuse the two.  I suggest the use of brown for one of them though, just for the potential psychological effect.

So - white for face, brown for bum.  You can encourage your significant other to get with your program by not washing the brown soap after use and thereby, perhaps, leaving visible evidence of it's previous use.  In the end, even a passive-aggressive will work out that they are only hurting their own hygiene by messing with your system.

But what if your partner is passive-aggressive, and also very sneaky?  What if they hide color coded bars of soap for their own use, and use your face soap for parts you hadn't intended?  Well, in this case, you're screwed.  There is no way, short of bathing elsewhere, or perhaps escalating an all-out soap war, that you can avoid the possibility of bumface.

For myself, I'm ashamed to admit that previously, I've been a one-bar man.  It always seemed to me that washing the soap (Dove, if you must know) between body parts was sufficient to ensure maximum cleanliness, but now I'm not so sure.  You've noticed how hard it is to get a hair off of your soap?  Well...

So that's it.  Join the revolution.  Go out, right now, and stock up on multi-colored soap.  With your help, we can all help stamp out the scourge of bumface.

Happy washing!

A Poem to Kickstart your Depression

So I wrote this yesterday.  I must admit I've been listening to Leonard Cohen a lot lately, so the blame falls to him.

I stole the phrase "dark corners of the mind" from a friend - she knows who she is.

Cornered
There I am again, my friend, in the Dark Corners of the mind
I watch from high above the fray to see there what I'll find
The God I understand has told me there's a Way, and it is grand
But the Dark Corners whisper, loudly, come down and take my hand.

There's decay and filth and nakedness down there among the dust
I watch myself from up above as promise turns to rust
I have no love, I have no pride, I deal out hurt in kind
Down there with all the putrid things in the Dark Corners of the mind.

Fun, huh?