Boogeymen, we are told, are not keen on clean socks. Given all that we know about B. Ndbagensis, this hardly comes as a surprise. The clean sock is only a sock-to-be; until it's been worn, it's merely a piece of green cloth that approximates the shape of the foot. Form may follow function, Ndbag tells us, but that's only half the story. When we see the Modernist movement of architecture critiqued in this way, we're forcibly reminded of the hamper and its chaotic contents. It's not the shape of the hamper that matters, we're told, nor even the amount it contains. It's the quality of the contents; if the hamper contains nothing but new socks, it might as well be a cardboard box. And if the socks are folded neatly, they might as well be in a chest of drawers.
But there's more to it than that, of course.
As we recall that the sock represents the self, the true import of its cleanliness becomes clear.
First of all, though, we should be careful to note that there's a difference between a clean sock and a new sock. Ndbag conflates the two, in a masterful display that forces us to ponder on those differences. A new sock -- a tabula rasa, if you will -- can be worn by anyone. Although superficially similar to a sock that's merely clean, it still possesses a plasticity that'll allow it to fit any foot. The tabula rasa is filled by its wearer as time goes by, and eventually will conform naturally to the contours of the foot.
The clean sock, on the other hand, is already prejudiced towards a particular foot, and putting it on someone else will result in unsightly creases and a general lack of perfect fit. But while it has the prejudices, it possesses none of the dirt (or 'experience') that a sock should naturally have, and we're left with a sock that believes that aliens built the pyramids, or that Uranus has an effect on the hair colour of the stranger you're going to meet later that day.
If we look in our own hamper, we never want to find socks that are new (or, worse, just clean); though nominally members of the genus Sock, they're unworthy of consideration. They know nothing of the moon landings except what some guy down the pub told them. They memorised the figure of 86% when told how many statistics are made up on the spot. The clean sock is the worst barrier to the advancement of human knowledge that exists today; socks truly should not be counted until they've been worn.
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