The Second Coming of the Napisan Man

There’s been a fair bit of to-do around the country lately concerning electricity costs. In most states they’ve jumped up, primarily because the power companies have been holding back on infrastructure related price rises until they could blame the new federal carbon tax – after all, why increase everyone’s bill by $75 a year and have no-one to divorce responsibility onto when you can increase them by $85 and say it’s all the fault of Ju-Liar Gillard and her evil compact with the Greens?

In any case, prices have risen and as a consequence the state government here in WA has been a running a series of ads in which an impossibly well groomed young family lecture the audience about all the things they’ve been doing to reduce their power bill. Most of these are common sense – turn appliances off standby, don’t leave the TV running if you’re not actually watching it, grow your marijuana in the backyard instead of under lights in your roof cavity, that sort of thing – but one of them left me absolutely gobsmacked.

The impossibly well groomed mother is loading clothes into the washing machine and turns to the camera saying “Instead of running three loads of washing a day, I wait till the end and just run one big load”…

Ahem.

THREE FREAKING LOADS OF WASHING A DAY!?!?

What human being needs to do three loads of washing a day!? Someone who shares their home with incontinent farm animals? A family who rent their loungeroom out for Haliburton fracking operations? A cult who await the second coming of the Napisan Man? What kind of insanity is this?!

Now, I accept that a family, particularly a family with small children, will generate more dirty clothes than a single guy like myself, but I only need to do two loads of washing a week. A circumstance where I’d need to fire up the washing machine on a daily basis – let alone on a tri-daily basis – is to me like something out of a Chuck Palahniuk novel. Seriously, if you’re creating a full load of dirty clothes on a daily basis, and need them washed on a daily basis, you need to see some kind of endocrinologist (or possibly you need more clothes).

If everyone in western society is running their washing machine at these levels, it’s no wonder we’re running out of fresh water.

Your clothes will be fine in the washing basket for a few days people. Seriously.