Bathroom Monologue: Publishing the Laundry List

A laundry list is a seldom-appreciated term.

“A laundry list of complaints.”

“A laundry list of political changes.”

“A laundry list of Hollywood celebrities.”

This is some laundry. People often mistake it as synonymous with the “grocery list.” That you make on the back of an envelope, adding beef and celery along with Snickers and ant repellant. Anything can go on a damned grocery list. You expand the thing as you march through the store. Nobody writes, “Four packs of diet cherry soda” on their grocery list at the start of the day.

Nobody writes “Four packs of diet cherry soda” on the laundry list at all. Most people don’t even write one. You just dump your fetid clothing into the machine and pray your white boxers don’t get tie-dyed again.

The few keepers of a laundry list are elegant souls. They have so little money and resources that they triage what they can afford to rid of its ass-smell this week.

2x thongs

2x socks

2x button downs

1x khakis

Sniff your blue khakis one more time.

2x khakis

That is a list that works in an extreme economy. A laundry list of criminal charges doesn’t have money laundering and parking in front of hydrants on it. No, that one is only for the baby you sodomized and the bank you blew up. Can we add the time you threatened a nun at gunpoint? This isn’t the grocery list of offenses. You can’t just throw a checkout-aisle felony-flavored Snickers onto the laundry list. This list affords only the bare necessities of your depravity.

So the next time you hear about a “laundry list of Hollywood celebrities” while Ashton Kutcher is on screen, be skeptical. Somebody probably isn’t doing their own washing.