Showering: the Final Frontier. But first, some acerbic and pointless commentaries on people who care more about the Earth than I do.

A few years ago I was flipping through a pompous eco-concious magazine where people who thought they were better than all us gas-guzzling Gaia killers could write in about the ways in which they were being nicer to the Earth than we were*.

First, I came across a letter from a misinformed do-gooder who suggested that if we could all turn off our engines for the 5 minutes it takes to roll through a fast-food drive-thru, the earth could breathe easier. He included a diagram of a gigantic ramp (patent pending. No seriously) that began at the order station, at which point the drivers would shut off their engines and roll on down the line to collect their grease-laden treats.

The problem with this being that it is likely you'd be burning more gas restarting your engine at the end of the line than you'd be saving by rolling through the drive-thru. Other problem being that fast food chains are one of the many culprits of the ecopocalypse anyway. If he'd sent in a diagram of a laser beam programmed to destroy fast-food chains and fast-food chains only (patent pending), I would have been liable to respect him more. Also it would have been a nice thing to photocopy and paste to my bedroom wall, and then I could have felt like I was being eco-conscious too!

Next, I came across a letter from someone who said her family was trying to conserve water by 'showering' using a bucket and ladle. She claimed she wanted to write in to inspire us all to do the same, but I knew that the bitch was really just trying to overshadow us with her more impressive eco-conscious action-plans. The suggestion water-conservation websites give out to concerned individuals is to shower shorter, and maybe less often. And here this woman cared enough to stop showering completely. I also knew that this woman was probably bald, or at least had a very thin head of hair. No way would I be able to sufficiently wash my full and glorious mane with a dinky ladlefull of water.

The years passed, I graduated from highschool, embarked on an unemployable yet fascinating and highly informative path of educational studies, and then, one day, I found myself crouching in the bathtub with an icecream pail, an old margarine container, and a bottle of Vegan 96% Organic!! Shampoo. Guess how much water the average 7-minute shower uses? 35 gallons. Guess how much water is actually needed to fully cleanse a 5-foot-6, 150-pound woman with a very full head of shoulder-length hair? Less than a gallon. Oh yes, people, I've become One of Them.


*Okay,maybe it was just an old copy of AdBusters. And maybe they were actually trying to convince us that average people really can make a difference! But I preferred to read it as a thinly veiled attempt at a senseless world-wide guilt-trip.