Zestfully Clean! You're Not Fully Clean

I've got an old advertisement running through my head, "Kansas City, you live in a hard water town! You're not fully clean unless you're Zestfully clean!"

I think I live in a hard water town too. How do you know?

I'm thinking I visited a soft water town a couple times, a couple different ones. I got in the shower and it felt like the water was slime running down me. Like there was something water repellent in the water, no joke. My first thought was that there was something wrong, then it occurred to me that this must be what soft water's like. Very bad.

But could that be the whole story? In that case, since these have been very exceptional, soft water towns are rare. And I don't ever want to live in one. Give me the hard stuff! Hard water, hard lemonade, hard cider, hard coffee. I'd hate to drink soft water coffee if it felt like slime going down my throat. I'd have to leave out the cream just to slow it down.

I'm open to suggestions or explanations as to why those towns' water felt slimy in the shower. I definitely didn't feel Zestfully clean, since I'm sure the water didn't stick to me long enough to do the trick. Water needs to stay on you till you towel it off, not hit the exits at the first sight of skin.

To me it seems like water ought to be water. Leave it alone. Then there'd be no difference. But of course I know things can be altered, like in a lab. You have an evil scientist with a theory that with just a little molecular shaving he can trim the essence of water out, leaving a tiny bit of water and the rest all slimy husk. Then he's hustling the true essence out of the country to some Iron Curtain country that wants to kill us by drought and bad showers.

Sometimes they use their powers for good, like I normally do, although I'm not bold or callous enough to be tampering with people's food and drink. Rice is a food they always seem to be tampering with. Because it takes forever to make rice the old fashioned way. But, again, these scientists -- evil or not -- are in the lab extracting the essence that makes it slow to cook. Then you've got some worthless mush left behind with a weakened husk. It cooks fast but what do you have?

Rice Krispies goes all the way. Rice Krispies is rice in the same way a locust shell you find at the park is a locust. That tiny Snap, Crackle, and Pop they brag about, is a tiny explosion, as the natural elements are reacting against moisture. Too much tampering. It really could happen -- since things have different effects on different scales -- that a terrorist could sculpt a giant Rice Krispie, roll it into a major city, pour milk on it and take out several buildings and countless lives. Then Snap, Crackle, and Pop wouldn't seem so cute.

As good as it tastes -- and marshmallows seem to add a molecular elasticity that make it very delicious -- I prefer the old fashioned rice. But I don't know what you'd have if you tried to cook this worthless rice in soft water. It might come out as dry as what you put in. Or it could be there'd be a complete breakdown of both. A steaming seething pile of powdered rice and water husks in a pan. In which case you should remove from the heat as soon as possible.