Well, the unmentionables drawer was getting a bit low, so today was laundry day chez Marn.

Some diaries talk about seething sexual orgies, or unspeakably hot couplings featuring offbeat sexual paraphenalia. Me, I share the magic that is laundry day.

I can always tell how long it's been since I last buzzed through the dirty duds by counting my underwear. The axiom new day, new underwear was pounded into my head by a mother who feared that one day I would end up at the hospital after some near fatal accident wearing crunchy undies.

Oh, the shame, the horror! I mean, I can see it now ... Marn is turned into road pizza by some irate mini-van driver, lying in a hospital bed wrapped head to toe in bandages like some kind of modern mummy ... and the first thing the doctor sees on the chart is:

"She was wearing crunchy undies."

Yep, I'm guessing that's a major obsession in hospitals, the condition of accident victims' underwear.

Somehow guys don't seem to have been fed the same message. As far as I can tell, Paul's underwear changes are governed by a complex algorithm known only to men, passed on from father to son, hidden from the world of women.

I used to think this was just Paul, but now I know I'm not alone in this. My girlfriends tell me their partners also toss varying quantities of underwear into the hamper each week. Clearly, men are free thinkers when it comes to the topic of underwear renewal.

Another common trait shared by the tripods is their inability to toss out old underwear. What IS that about? I mean, I've seen Paul in underwear that is so frayed and rippy that only some magic at the molecular level is holding it together.

And forget about throwing it away in the garbage--you want to get rid of a guy's old underwear, you gotta burn it while chanting the witches' speech from Macbeth. Throw it in the garbage, and he'll only rescue it.

Don't ask me how I know that, I just do, 'kay?

Now I'm going to ride off madly in all directions on a completey unrelated tangent.

It strikes me that perhaps one or two non-Canadians stumble upon this diary, and so in the spirit of international understanding I will occasionally share little nuggets about what it means to be Canadian.

For instance, if you study my laundry, you'll note I have plaid sheets. The picture didn't show it well, but they are plaid. We keep them for medicinal purposes, eh.

Canadians HAVE to have plaid against their skin at least eight hours a week. Really. It's absolutely true.

You heard about the human genome mapping project, right? Well, Canadian researchers working on the project found that Canadians have a plaid gene. Really. It's a fact. And if we don't have enough plaid in our lives we ... well, it's ugly, and we really don't need to go there.

Our Canadian constitution promises peace, order, good government and plaid. Even the titans of multi-national big business have had to bow to the Canadian reality, and this is the typical dress code for men on casual Fridays in my country. (The fiddle is optional, of course, but ALL the stylin' guys accessorize with a fiddle.)

 You doubt me? Hey study the graphic here at the top of CF188's page, another Canadian diary. That's him in the upper left there at the top, in silhouette with his fiddle.

Oh ye of little faith, eh.

So what have you learned today?

1) My life is so dull I am forced to write about laundry, and

2) This entry's Know Canada Better Fact of the Day is: The genome mapping project has proven Canadians have a plaid gene.

We are an unusual people, eh.