All Washed Up

This washing machine was lying on its side in the dark in a dingy cavern under the stonework of an overhead railroad line supporting structure when I found it on a walk through Paris in July, 1986. I am generally against staging photographs in any way, shape or form, but in this instance I couldn't resist dragging this poor outcast out of the dark where it had been hiding for who knows how long back to the stone arch doorway where there was enough light to photograph it.

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Washing machines were one of the great labor-saving devices that allowed modern man to free up more time to devote to other pursuits, like killing each other off as brutally as possible, or like inventing mint-flavored Milky Way bars... seriously folks, three quarters of what we are surrounded with is totally superfluous, and people may finally be starting to realize that, and have stopped buying cars and gasoline in such huge quantities, for example. I mean, does anybody absolutely have to have a Hummer to drive??? Of all the idiot symbols of man's gluttony, that may be high on the list. The only problem with this is that millions upon millions of peoples jobs depend on all those superfluous industries like manufacturing Hummers and other such nonsense.

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Well get down on your knees and pray to the Washing Machine Deity pictured here, that your job isn't the next one to go ! And when the "spin" cycle starts, you can get thoroughly hypnotized staring into the depths of the Washing Machine's soul... there may be something there, maybe an entirely new religion could be founded with the Washing Machine as a sacred entity ?!? The "rinse" cycle could be equated to the baptism ritual, the "wash" cycle with spiritual cleansing... and spin, well, just need some good Public Relations Marketing managers to come along and put a good spin on it all. Seriously, if Scientology was able to turn into a multi-billion dollar enterprise owning entire small cities, and the Mormons are the fastest growing religion on Earth, based on some tin plates found on a hillside telling of lost tribes, well think how far we could go with the Washing Machine God ?!? There's already one in nearly every house on the planet, nevermind that many people don't live in houses and have precious few clothes to wash... Washing machines may be almost as ubiquitous as Gideon's Bible.