Next to godliness.

Back in the eighties, Safeguard soap was advertised as being "the smallest soap in the house." Everyone will prefer Safeguard to whatever else you have! Buy more Safeguard! Everyone uses it! Safeguard is the smallest soap in the house!

Not anymore.

This 25-ounce bottle is the largest dispensing bottle of hand soap I've ever seen for the home consumer. The local supermarket had a bunch of them. Of course I got one. We haven't run out of hand soap during the current Chinese Death Virus crisis, but the store's liquid-soap shelves have often been bare, and we were prepared to use body wash or -- gasp! -- bars of soap if need be.

Unfortunately I did not realize that Safeguard is owned by Procter & Gamble, also known as Political & Correctness, the company that insults average American men and made me stop buying Gillette. They make a billion products; it's hard to avoid them all. And I will give them points for sending out soap to the soap-hungry millions. But at six bucks for this bottle, it was hardly out of the goodness of their blackened little hearts.

But: Is this a sign that things might be getting back to normal on the supply side? Not sure. Weird things going on. Have not had a good potato in months. Paper products are back, though. And I got a bottle of Lysol Laundry Sanitizer in the warehouse store. (Lysol Laundry Sanitizer does not claim to destroy or deactivate viruses, which are pretty much done in by the laundry process anyway; it does, however, kill bacteria, and when you have two large dogs that constantly need toweling off in wet weather, and a large occasionally sweaty male in the house [me], you know that some loads need germ-killing.)

Here is the big news, though: While I was in the warehouse store, an announcement came over the PA that Clorox Disinfecting Wipes were limited to one to a customer (one being a pack of five). It took a moment for that to sink in. Disinfecting wipes have been missing for months! Karen Townsend of Hot Air explained why:

It turns out that the supply chain is stressed because the cleaning wipes are made with polyester spunlace, a material currently in short supply. It is also used to make personal protective equipment like masks, medical gowns, and medical wipes. “That entire supply chain is stressed. … We feel like it’s probably going to take until 2021 before we’re able to meet all the demand that we have,” [Clorox CEO Benno Dorer] said. Though in May Dorer predicted that store shelves would be restocked by the summer, that has not materialized.

I did not get my one-to-a-customer wipes, though; I was already checking out. I had been down the aisle where they usually are kept, but they must have had them in some special spot. We still  have some at home anyway.

Soap, antibacterial detergent, antiseptic wipes -- in some ways, it seems like a little normalcy may be creeping back in our lives.

Or maybe not. The flagrant stupidity in our culture is still be enacted with violence and looting in our streets, with governors who won't govern, prosecutors who won't prosecute, and mayors who may or may not be brain dead. God knows how all that is going to end.