My Fellow Inebriates,

It’s pouring rain outside, making the outdoors no place for furry bear with a beanbag ass. I fear water like nothing else. Weighing less than a pound under dry conditions, I manage to shuffle around through willpower and/or my parents’ deranged imaginations. But I manage. Add water and it’s all over.

With some liquid courage in me (an Island Punch actually: rum/orange and pineapple juices/grenadine in a collins glass), I decided to research the washing of “stuffies,” the somewhat pejorative term for me and my cohorts. You see, my friend Violet Purplebunny recently had a washing-machine experience that changed her personality permanently, robbing her of all empathy and converting her from a partial to a complete sociopath. Ever since then I’ve been haunted by questions about the pair of LG machines that lurk in our upstairs closet, and what really goes on in them.

Violet’s people put her in the Maytag because—picture my relief, humans—she does not possess a beanbag ass. Unlike me and lots of my friends, her bum doesn’t crunch when she sits; it’s what we call a foam ass and will dry as fast as your underwear will. Shudder…

My friend Scarybear has the biggest beanbag ass I’ve ever seen. Because of this he will never go in any washing machine, unless he is completely saturated with vomit or feces, and then perhaps his people would opt to dry-clean him. Of course that would add to the brain damage he’s already developed over the years through his violent lifestyle. Just as he lives with that dread, so do I fear the dry-cleaner, although I could probably trust my parents to be too cheap to cough up for it.

Where was I? Let me sharpen up my Island Punch with some green-apple Bacardi. Oh yeah, the machine…

For animals such as myself, the washing machine is our Room 101. I cannot bring myself to fully imagine the agitation, the cold, the hot, the wet, the poisons, the scents. So I did an innocent search for washing info, hoping to find some kind soul with a solution for dirty animals that would not be quite so…final. Instead my horror was reinforced by http://www.mamaslaundrytalk.com/2011/02/07/washing-stuffed-animals/comment-page-1/#comment-4480

And this seemed gentle compared to the following psychotic advice (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061028155228AA00BPE):

“You can wash them in the washer. If they have any stains on them, spray with whatever stain remover you use and then put the stuffed animals in a pillow case and tie a knot in the pillow case and wash on gentle cycle and then throw in the dryer while still in the pillow case and they will come out very clean and fluffy…used this method for years and they come out great….”

Holy shit, people!

Whatever sobriety I entertained a notion of is out the window as I medicate myself back into a calm state with the following:

• 2 oz amaretto
• 1 oz Southern Comfort peach
• 1 oz vodka
• 3 oz sweet-and-sour
• Red Bull

Ahhhh, I feel safer now. But I’d better not spill any on me.