An excerpt on my underwear

If I was a OneDerWear wearer, I would have never created such a strong bond with my favorite pair of underwear. Here is a passage on them in my sample chapter on Bangladesh:

Multi-colored Christmas ornaments are printed on the boxers and the phrase “Jingle These” runs around the waist band. Eighty-three percent of people in Bangladesh are Muslim so Christmas isn’t celebrated, but its products are exported.

If you look closely, MADE IN BANGLADESH can still be read on the faded tag. I got the underwear as a gift years ago and, ever since, they’ve maintained a regular place in my underwear rotation regardless of the time of year or holiday season.

I wore them my freshman year of college when I rolled out of my dorm bed to bark at my roommates who were having an overly raucous game of Madden football at 3:00 a.m. It’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re wearing Christmas underwear in April.

I wore them when I took the GRE. I remember because they were on backwards, which I took to be a bad omen of my performance on the test. After all, how can you expect to get a score that will impress grad schools when you can’t even put your underwear on properly?

OneDerWear disposable underwear

Some people just don’t have any sentimental attachment to their underwear. These are the sort of people that would actually wear OneDerWear disposable underwear.

Google ads are often ridiculous. If I could choose, I would disable them, but the BootsnAll gang has gotta make some money some how and I’m cool with that. Anyhow, I was checking the site yesterday and glanced at the auto-generated ads. That’s where I first heard about OneDerWear.

Here’s some marketing mumbo jumbo:

OneDerWear is an ultra-light disposable underwear created for traveling. Designed to provide the utmost comfort and convenience, OneDerWear disposable underwear is 100% cotton and ideally packaged for maximum space efficiency. Each package contains five compact pairs of individually wrapped disposable underwear that can fit in the palm of your hand. With OneDerWear, you simply wear and toss! By the end of your trip, you’ll be surprised to find plenty of luggage space for gifts and souvenirs.

I have considered the space efficiency of my underwear while packing for a long trip, but only in the quantity I take. I’ve never thought to myself, “Boy, if only there was underwear that would fit in the palm of my hand.” Let’s say I was going on a trip for 10 days. Normally, I would take three or four pair of underwear and wash them as I go. But if you decided OneDerWear was for you, you’d have to take ten pairs or more. It wouldn’t be until day six or seven that you were carrying as little underwear as me.

How comfortable can OneDerWear be? Sure they fit in the palm of your hand, but do they ride up your crack?

From the site’s “USAGE” section:

Exercising
After an extensive workout at the gym, do you really want to put on your sweaty underwear after showering? Just throw some OneDerWear in your gym bag, and you will never have to wear sweaty underwear again!

Or you could actually take a pair of clean underwear in that gym bag you’re carrying around!

Camping/Adventure Traveling
OneDerWear disposable undergarment products are perfect for camping because you don’t have to use limited backpack space with re-packing dirty underwear (peeeewww!). With OneDerWear, you can just Wear and Toss! Also, OneDerWear is friendly to the environment.

How in the world is wearing a pair of underwear once and then tossing them into the woods environmentally friendly? The saying goes, “Take only pictures, leave only footprints,” not, “…leave only footprints and OneDerWear.”

Also, who is the marketing genius that wrote, “…re-packing dirty underwear (peeeewww!)”?

Government Use
OneDerWear is also great for troops whose military stay requires them to reside in areas where access to washing facilities may be inconvenient or impossible. With OneDerWear there is no need to wash! Just Wear and Toss!

“Sir, we’re under attack!”

“How did they ever find us, private?”

“Sir, I think they may have followed our trail of OneDerWear.”

“Aggghhhhh! OneDerWEARRRRR!….I’m hit private.”

“Sir, you’ll be fine.”

“I’m dying. Tell my wife I love her. If you look in my duffel, you’ll find a few souvenirs I picked up for her. Please, give them to her. I had a little extra space thanks to OneDerWear. And they seemed like such a good idea at the…..”

College Students
With the busy schedule of college students, who has time to wash clothes. OneDerWear disposable undergarment products are great for college students and their busy lifestyles.

I’ve never had more free-time than when I was in college.

I OneDerWear they came up with such a dumb idea?

Hands of Labor

These are the hands that make our blue jeans, underwear, flip flops, and about everything else we wear or use. I suppose today is a good day to thank them for their work.

Thoughts on my WV interview

First off, if you haven’t listened to my interview, you stink.

Now that we have that out of the way…my thoughts on the interview:

The interview lasted about 40 minutes and they cut it to about six, which I’m fine with. It’s not like it’s the Kelsey Show or anything.

They did a great job making me not sound like an idiot.

I would believe anything that Peggy, the host, tells me – there’s just something about her voice. So, by association you should believe everything I tell you.

The interview was the most difficult one of the three because the connection was so bad. There was a major delay and it was hard to banter back and forth with Peggy. Editing took care of this awkwardness.

They had to cut parts on Fantasy Kingdom and my perceived interest in women’s panties.

The next one about my all-American Cambodian blue jeans should air in about a month.

World Vision Report interview - Part 1

My first interview (1 of 3) with the World Vision Report’s Peggy Wehmeyer airs this week. I discuss the origin of the quest, searching for the factory that made my t-shirt in Honduras and the one that made my underwear in Bangladesh.

Go here to find the time and date a station in your area airs the WV report

OR

Listen to it online now

8/9 Child labor in the bizarro world of Bangladesh

How complex can human rights and labor issues be? Consider this…

A good argument can be made that factories who employee children are the humanitarians and the westerners who call for an end to child labor are actually harming the children.

Personally, I wouldn’t argue this. I would say that both parties are being unrealistic and stubborn. But the important thing to understand is that in Bangladesh/garment industry/the globalized world, what’s bad might be good and what’s good might be bad. Kinda. Maybe.

I’m writing a scene on the labor industry in Bangladesh today and came across this interesting article on Bangladeshrights.net that hashes over some of the complexities. Note, that Bangladeshrights.net has not been updated since February of 2006. Maybe they just threw their hands in the air and gave up.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Child workers are popular with factory owners. ‘Ten-to twelve-year-olds are the best,’ says Farooq, the manager of Sabeena’s factory. ‘They are easier to control, not interested in men or movies, and obedient.’ He forgets to mention that they are not unionised and that they agree to work for 500 taka ($12) per month when the minimum legal wage for a helper is 930 taka. Owners see Tom Harkin as a well-meaning soul with little clue about the realities of garment workers’ lives. ‘As a student, I too hailed the Bill,’ says Sohel, the production manager at Captex Garments. ‘I was happy that someone was fighting for children’s rights. But now that I work in a factory and have to turn away these children who need jobs, I see things differently. Sometimes I take risks and, if a child is really in a bad way, I let them work, but it is dangerous.’

The notion that a garment employer might be helping children by allowing them to work may seem very strange to people in the West. But in a country where the majority of people live in villages where children work in the home and the fields as part of growing up, there are no romantic notions of childhood as an age of innocence. Though children are cared for, childhood is seen as a period for learning employable skills. Children have always helped out with family duties. When this evolves into a paid job in the city neither children nor their families see it as anything unusual. In poor families it is simply understood that everyone has to work.

Where am I wearing? highlights

Here are all of the audio slideshows and “Made In” summaries in order:

The Quest

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Made in Bangladesh - My underwear

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Made in Cambodia - My all-American Cambodian blue jeans

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Made in China - because going barefoot sucks

91 of 4,000

I cranked out 4,000 words today on the Bangladesh chapter. Here’s 91 of them…

Three men wearing pink frocks are examining my “Jingle These” underwear. I mean really examining them. They pull them, stretch them, rub the fabric between their fingers, examine seams, hold them up to the light, pretty much everything but smelling them.

I packed light for this trip and the boxers still hold a place in my underwear rotation. As I watch the examination take place, I try and think of when I wore them last and if I had washed them since. I never expected them to come under such scrutiny.

Part 1: Dateline hidden cameras in Bangladeshi factories

Thoughts on PART 1 of Datelines “Hidden costs” report:

First let me say, shows like this get those guys with the deep Voices and anything they say is way too overdramatic. Not that the situation in Bangladesh isn’t dramatic, because it is. But when the voice says, “barely surviving” you expect someone to drop dead from hunger immediately.

-Nobody loves management. I don’t care if you work for a fortune 500 company or if you sew crotch flaps on boxers, you don’t use the word “love” to describe your feelings for your bosses.

-One worker says that she has to ask her supervisors permission to go to the bathroom. Is this different than any other factory line anywhere in the world?

-I didn’t see any child labor in the garment factories, but I did see it in the textile factories where many of the garment factories purchase their material. And as I have said before, many children in Bangladesh work hard whether it is begging, helping a blacksmith, or collecting plastic bottles. It would be interesting to see what the children who would have been working in the garment industry are doing. I bet it’s not pretty.

-I also created a fictitious company – Touron Attire. I was shopping for underwear.

-The factory owner says that his workers make $2/hour. I really think something got lost in translation here. That’s about like me saying that I get paid $100,000/word I write.

Overall, I think this report is pretty accurate portrayal of the situation so far. Now watch PART 2.

WAIW? to hit the airwaves

I taped my second interview for the World Vision Report on Wednesday. The first covered the premise of my quest and my experiences in Honduras and Bangladesh. Wednesday’s just covered Cambodia.

When I look back at all of the interviews I’ve given over the years….wait, these were my first two. Anyhow, I think they went well, but I don’t have anything to compare them to. At the end of both interviews, I felt like I should have mentioned something that I didn’t get a chance to work in:

I should have told Peggy, the host, that the most surprising thing about Cambodia was getting a shoulder massage at the urinal. Or when she asked me what else I’ve been up to I should have told her about visiting the dump and playing Frisbee with the kids who collect plastic for 25-cents/day.

So on and so on…

In hindsight, some things, like the dump, I probably should have mentioned and, other things, like the urinal massage, I was wise not to bring up. All-in-all I think I do well enough for the professional producers and editors to make me sound semi-intelligent. Of course, I haven’t heard the final cut yet.

There hasn’t been a date set for the first interview to air, but you can be sure that I will keep you posted. The 3 interviews (I have one more left to do on China), once started, will air over a 3-month period, mirroring my trip.

I’m looking forward to hearing them. You should too. How often do you get to hear a guy that sounds like Joe Dirt talk about his Bangladeshi boxers?

Not often enough, my friends. Not often enough.

— Here’s a link to my first ever radio contribution for the World Vision Report’s Reporter’s Notebook. In this one, Joe Dirt (ME) talks about playing soccer in Honduras.