For office bathroom literature, I highly recommend Aaron Karo (especially during non-football months of the year, when Tuesday Morning Quarterback can keep you in there for at least 45 min). The most recent issue got me thinking about why the hell I wear nice clothes when I'm getting on an airplane. He wonders who these people are and why... I attempted an honest answer.
Karo -
though i have never responded to you before, i feel compelled to explain why i wear nice clothes on a plane. and it is simply because i don't know how to fold clothes like the chicks at the Gap so that when i put stuff in my luggage, it doesn't come out all wrinkled. my faulty logic says that if i wear the things i don't want to get wrinkled (like a sports coat that i'll wear only for the first 10 minutes of whatever function or conference i'm going to), they'll be ok. the problem is that sitting on a plane for any time over 1.5 hrs, your shit gets wrinkled. why? because you can't sit in an airplane with a sports coat on w/o it getting wrinkled, yet everytime this is my approach. so you take it off, try and drape it over your legs, get frustrated and uncomfortable, and finally wad it up and rest your feet on it under the seat in front of you. they have little compartments for first class sports-coat-wearers, but you have to smile in an extra how-YOU-doin' nice way to the stewardess to get her to take your coat and put it with those - try doing that with your fiancee sitting next to you (who, i might add, should be totally supportive of this brief flirtation, because we get off the plane, go to her parents and she's pissed because my sports coat is wrinkled and smells like feet). fuck you? fuck me too.
He responds:
in other words, you're fucked either way. my parents got me luggage for my birthday once (i know....) but it has a little compartment where you can throw your shirts and and shit in and they stay pretty wrinkle free... of course, i don't really "dress up" that much anymore... but you know... they (sic) whole thing pretty much sucks!!
K
The moral of the story? It's cool when people write back to you. I have friends who don't get back to me for 3 days. I plan to approach that subject soon, but no one gets back to me.