When horses urge towel re-use, I listen.

So far at this year's SXSW music festival, no plea has found firmer purchase with me than these horses' request that I reuse my towels.

Normally I find signs like this one -- now standard in hotel bathrooms -- to be grating. "Do whatever will make you most comfortable. Just know that when you make us replace your towels, you're killing Earth," seems to be the message. Blatantly missing is any acknowledgment that if I choose to reuse my towels, I'm saving my hotel save on laundry costs. It feels quite disingenuous, IMO. And it usually results in my using a different towel on each limb -- one for each arm, each leg, hair, penis, etc. I'll use a large towel to clean my eyeglasses, then put it in the trash can, so as to leave no doubt about whether I intend to reuse it.

This sign, though, found in our Austin Holiday Inn Express's bathroom, has an altogether different effect on me, though. You can easily argue that it's self-serving for a hotel to discourage use of its laundry services. But these horses? What the hell do they stand to gain from your towel reuse? Only one thing: the continued sanctity of the forest where they live, the field where they nibble wild grass & clover, the cave where they take their mistress, the stream where they guzzle and launder their towels, the path where they trot, and the air through which they toss their mane. When a horse asks you to please reuse your towels, it's tough to turn him down. It's tough to keep wiping your butt with the big bath towels; instead, maybe you wipe your butt with a hand towel -- more than sufficient.

Anyway, at least for now -- at this hotel, for the next couple of days -- I intend to minimize the amount of towel laundry I require. I'm not doing it for the Holiday Inn Express. No, I'm doing it for the horse on the far left -- Visconti.