I am participating in J-Walk‘s Five Pointless Questions game. Today, I answer the five questions John asked me on his blog, and I will create five questions for anyone who would like to carry on the tradition with a link from my site. If you’d like to play, just e-mail me, and thanks for playing!
1. Lather, rinse? Or lather, rinse, repeat?
I’ve often wondered about the origin of these strange instructions to wash my hair twice. Who started this nonsense, and why do all the shampoo manufacturers in the world continue to repeat it mindlessly like a mantra? I mean, does anyone anywhere actually lather up for a second cycle? Is copywriting dead?
Maybe I’ll create a new shampoo called Single-atherinse™ with the tag line “Shampoo that gets your hair clean the 1st time!”
On a related note – what’s the deal with “healthier looking hair?” I’m pretty sure someone must have sued a shampoo company for claiming their product actually made your hair ‘healthier,’ which is impossible, since hair is dead, so they added the word “looking” for compliance.
But perhaps the ultimate answer to this insightful question can be found by meditating on the deeper meanings of this song from Friends (there’s a sound clip on the linked page):
In the Shower, by Phoebe Buffet
I’m in the shower and I’m writing a song
Stop me if you’ve heard it
My skin is soapy and my hair is wet
And tegrin spelled backward is nirget
Lather, rinse, repeat
Lather, rinse, repeat
Lather, rinse, repeat
( pause )
As needed
2. So how was your day?
That depends… which one? Seriously, though, after I had a gentle massage and breakfast in bed, my butler brought me my freshly-ironed newpaper folded open to the comics page, and briefed me on the rest of my staff’s activities for the day. Then, as my team of personal fashion consultants were dressing me for the day’s adventures, I woke up, went to work, and stayed till about 8:00 pm finishing up a project that got behind due to obsessive blog surfing.
3. What happens when night falls? When day breaks?
Being a night-owl, I’m not real up on what happens at daybreak, because “the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” It doesn’t surprise me too much that so many days go poorly for people when they break them right up front like that.
Last night, as the sun went down, just as my wife and daughter pulled into our driveway, there were 3 or 4 bats doing arial stunt-dives all over our back yard across the backdrop of a beautiful sunset and a tree in silhouette, and we all sat there watching like it was a drive-in movie.
4. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
I’ve had enough bad jobs that this is kinda like multiple-choice:
a) Diggerman’s Grunt
This is what they call the guy who uses a shovel to keep the dirt from falling back into the hole the auger on a digger truck makes for an electric power pole (when you work for the electric company they make fun of you if you call it a “telephone pole”). After you raise the pole (hee-hee), you get to put the dirt back in. I can still hear the crew foreman, whose name was, I swear to god, Butch, yelling “Stooooo-pid Grunt!”
b) Kentucky Fried Chicken cook.
This was back in the days when they started with whole cut-up frying chickens, and each cooker had a wire rack that held two whole chickens’ worth of parts. Nowadays, they just have big bags of frozen parts sorted separately into bags of legs, bags of breasts, etc. I know this because I asked for my favorite piece, which we used to call a ‘back’ – you know, that piece with a crumbly bit of white meat that’s attached to the ribs? – and they had no idea what I was talking about. We thought through it together, though, and came up with the theory that this is where ‘tender chicken strips’ come from. So then I thought, “COOL! I’ll just order a bunch of strips,” but “Damn!” they only come in extra-crispy, and I only like original. Life’s unfair.
Not a bad job though, if you enjoy getting burned by hot oil while covered in grease, flour, and chicken blood.
c) Janitor at a K-Mart
You have not lived until you’ve swept and mopped a 40,000 square foot tile floor. And waxed. And buffed. By the way, the ladies’ restroom was always a lot messier than the mens. Go figure.
d) Jewelry Salesman
This could have been a really easy, really cool job, but I’m just no good at selling things nobody needs at prices that don’t make sense to people who can’t afford them while earning less than I’m worth.
5. Describe the most recent food-related accident that you’ve been involved in.
I narrowly avoided a serious accident last night while I was stuffing peppers for dinner. My lovely wife does not like spicy foods you see, and these were not intended to be spicy, but I accidentally used some ridiculous ‘taco flavored’ grated cheese that we’d bought by mistake thinking it was a regular cheddar-jack mix. Luckily, the effect was subtle enough that my wife declared that it was the perfect touch. And here I thought it was the portabella mushrooms.
So the most recent food-related accident was that I actually spilled a cup full of milk all over the kitchen, and our daughter actually cried over it. I didn’t tell her that there’s no use crying over spilt milk, because it was the last milk we had in the house and she’d just asked for some milk, and there it was all over the floor. I did not cry.