shampoo

hi there

when one hears the word, or indeed phrase, shampoo, one is immediately drawn to thoughts of that 1970s film featuring, amongst others but predominantly, Warren Beatty. if interested, the trailer for that film is found over here for your viewing pleasure.

if your thoughts are not drawn to that, you have no intention of clicking on the trailer and yet for some reason you want to know what it is, here you go. one of them film producers out of Jerry and Don (the one that died, or the one that died first if this is read some time into the future (rather than the past?) i think), the chaps that make those films where things go "bang" and "wooosh" a lot, made a big deal of how they were a hairdresser once, and how they got loads of sex and how they were dead good at it. sex, that is, not hairdressing. so fragile and insecure were they about this assertion that they felt obliged to make a film of it all. for this they cast Warren Beatty as the hairdresser who was dead good at sex and had lots of it. Mr Beatty in his off-screen persona is known as a gent that very much likes sexual encounters, so he probably signed up to do a bit of advertising and that, letting the ladies know that he likes it and he is dead good at it.

the film is, actually, a lot better than i have described it there. it contains in it one of the most exceptional and brilliant uses & mixes of music i have heard in a film. i cannot find the specific scene on the net, but it is the one where he's running around at some sort of (presumably sex related) party and Manic Depression by Jimi Hendrix and his Experience is playing. worth getting the DVD for that scene alone, i advise you.

anyway, this post is not about the film Shampoo, but rather actual shampoo. i thought i would give you my insights and observations into the stuff. so if you don't want my insights and observations, now is probably a very good time to go back to google (or yahoo, if you are old school) and search for Warren Beatty, shampoo and dead good at sex once more, see if you find what you seek.

before i discuss my insights and observations, we must of course understand what shampoo is, what's important and what to look for. so here is my guide along those lines.

Essential Oils

oil is a pretty important thing to modern life. practically everything we do and use is reliant, to varying degrees, on a version of oil. "essential" is a bit misleading, then, for it presumes that there is such a thing as a non-essential oil in the world.

when a shampoo contains the phrase or selling point of "essential oils" in the advert or on the bottle, then, what it basically means is "these are the oils that will clean your hair and make it all shiny, as opposed to knacking it or making you a toxic fire risk".

people marketing things with the word "essential" is, believe it or not, the lasting, or at least certainly the most enduring, legacy of the World Cup they had in Italy, 1990. that big Italian fella with the beard, whose name escapes me for the moment, did the song for it and that, and everyone all of a sudden wanted a copy of it. this led to the release of a CD called The Essential Pavarotti, containing the song he did for the World Cup and a few other things so that people could dabble a bit with the realm of opera, or whatever the hell kind of music it is he does. tenor music, maybe.

oh yeah, you people get upset when i do not include pictures, so here are some essential oils.

anyway, right, they released the CD as "essential" to underline the importance of the music on it, and indeed to say "if you really must have that piece of music just because it featured in relation to that vile, lower class sporting thing, here you go you peasants". the latter, of course, underlining the upper-class, elitist ways of operatic (or whatever it is) music that him and his mates did. for a while, when Pavarotti and that other one, him off of Spain, got popular, there was a brief trend for the kids to walk around with t-shirts that had the slogan on them "you don't have to be a pretentious, upper-class, sniveling quite possibly right wing toss to pretend you like opera, but it helps if you are either that or at least partially homosexual". it was brief mostly, if i recall, due to the printing costs and size of the t-shirts required.

anyway, in shampoo, if the bottle you are considering buying and using says it has oils in it, make sure that it says they are "essential" and not, for example, "regular" or, unless you are particularly brave, "random".

it was probably all this "essential" nonsense that really upset a young Brett Anderson out of Suede. he no doubt saw those that followed the trend of "essential" as being plastic people, thus him writing so many songs over the last 20 years that refer to plastic people. when he isn't doing songs about other things, or indeed having prolific sex.


Balance

balance is one of the most amazingly complex, difficult and irrelevant things in the world, and yet it is so simple and pertains to most things. there, see how i balanced that sentence out? good.

balance means different things all over the place, however. in Star Wars, for instance, balance means that if you are a jedi, you say to another jedi (usually either a puppet or a token black actor cast to shut the unions up) "well, there are two of them, and hundreds of us. let us kill them to bring balance to the force, the universe and beyond. then we can just sit on class rocks and meditate".

most, of course, associate balance with justice and the legal system. actually this is wrong, as you should really mostly associate balance with trapeze artists, tightrope walkers and unicycle enthusiasts. those three would be proper f****d if it were not for balance; you can kind of get away without it in other things.

but, for the sake of bowing to the masses, let's try and establish just what "balance" in the world of justice is. tricky to achieve, in short. in long. let us take an entirely random and hypothetical incident. let's say, as preposterous as this idea might be, that two people were alone in a house. one of them, an athlete perhaps, decided to shoot the other, oh, through a bathroom door or something. they called the police and confirmed that they had done it, announcing that the sight of a ladder had spooked them into thinking the person in the bathroom was not the only other person in the house but instead an intruder.

you would presume that "balancing" that would be easy. alas, no. justice has to balance that the, for want of a better term, shooter, has an awful lot of money (probably) and some very clever lawyers. this balances with the fact that the prosecutors, who have an imbalance of evidence in their favour, are total f*****g idiots and have opted to charge the shooter with all sorts of outlandish conspiracy-like premeditated and planned crimes in regards of the shooting (or, if you like, murder); ones they cannot possibly prove and thus might allow the shooter (it's Academy Awards soon, so if you want to call him Oscar go right ahead) to go free. also, justice has to balance other factors, like maybe the police officer who went to have a look at it all decided to take the bullet-hole populated door home with him for his family and friends to have a quick gander at.

as you can see, balance is not so easy. but in shampoo, it is a big deal. a very, very big deal. please let me illustrate what can go spectacularly right and horrifically wrong with balance in the world of shampoo. to do this, i will tell you a tale of two people called Ron.

the first is Ron "the hedgehog" Jeremy. this Ron was always careful to use shampoo that said "for balanced hair" on the bottle.

it is interesting, isn't it, that Ron Jeremy used shampoo that offered balanced hair, and that Ron has had a successful career in the adult film industry for over 40 years. he has even been in one or two "normal" films.

the second Ron is of course, and i am sure you guessed this anyway when i mentioned the name Ron, one of the most famous Rons in the world. yes, that's right, Jim Bowen.

Jim Bowen, in all likelihood, didn't really care if the shampoo he used offered "balance" or not. Jim Bowen is the type of guy who would consider any offering of balance, or essential oils for that matter, as a sign that the shampoo was "fancy, expensive foreign muck" and would have refused to use it, opting instead for something more aligned to his working class origins; origins that he is rightly proud of.

Jim Bowen probably didn't go out of his way to use shampoo that offered balanced hair. Jim Bowen didn't have a successful career for decades in the world of adult films. Jim Bowen carved out a career hosting a shown on which tramps, people living in caravans and the occasional solicitor or real estate agent threw darts at a board in the hope of winning a speedboat or a dinner service set.

the conclusion here, then, is that if a bottle of shampoo has a note on it that says "for balanced hair", you should probably not be wary of it. if for some reason the bottle said "please note that this shampoo will not balance your hair", well, as Mr Blonde said in Reservoir Dogs, they pressed the alarm, they knew the risks.

ph / pH content / factor / level

super duper important. i don't know what it is, but i am sure i saw it on a bottle once, and it was probably a shampoo bottle.

to know if a shampoo has the right level of ph (or pH) in it, you have to understand how the number is indicated. if it's as an overall percentage of content, then it will be a number between 1 and 100, although it could also be 0 i guess. although i am unsure that "has 0% pH in it" is something you would see on shampoo.

if it's a regular number, then it could be any, really. my mate Fraser would, under those circumstances, only buy a bottle of shampoo that featured 1000 pH on/in it.

actually isn't ph / pH something to do with acidity and that? maybe it was on a bottle of chlorine i saw it, not shampoo. well, if you see a bottle of shampoo and and it has a ph or pH factor or number on it, you now know what you are looking at.

The Price Of The Shampoo

easily, and by some distance, the greatest single consideration you, i or anyone else should give to which shampoo to get. well, not everyone else really. if you are Nicole Kidman, right, living in a flash, swanky apartment thing which overlooks Sydney Harbour but all the same would be luxurious and opulent if it was located in the richer areas of New York, cost really isn't a factor for shampoo. when Ms Kidman wants new shampoo, right, she probably instructs her PA to tell their PA to get in touch with her people that do the shopping and that to instruct the person responsible for buying shampoo (or the person who buys soap if the shampoo buyer she hires is on holiday, with the leave granted through the generosity of her excellency, Ms Kidman) to go and purchase shampoo at once, sparing no expense at all and purchasing only the finest, most outstanding shampoo mankind has yet created. even if it costs more that the average space programme.

when you are, for instance, Lee, right, looking for meaningful employment and subsequently working on a budget, you are not really in a position to do that. even if you have been to Sydney, but not lived in an apartment there. with no people to instruct, or grant holidays too, i kind of have to go and buy it myself, and within reasonable means.

which is how, and yes this is now getting to the point of the blog post, i came to own this bottle of supermarket-branded shampoo.

i needed some, right, and after a cursory glance at all of the factors above (barring, possibly, that whole ph / pH thing), i sought out the cheapest they had. this impressive looking and reasonably sized bottle was a mere 89p (about R16.45, friends and family in SA), so it won the battle of "which shampoo am i going to buy".

i did actually want some Timotei with lemon in it, like what Jason Donovan uses (or used, at least), but i could not spot it. even if that cost considerably more i would have got it, for a long term ambition of mine is to live the Jason Donovan lifestyle. as far as other long term ambitions go, for 30 years now i have deliberated over getting the Frankie Goes To Hollywood logo tattooed on my arm, like what Paul Rutherford had. i think he has had his covered up now, though.

so, a review of this shampoo is pretty much what the rest of this blog post is all about. here, to make that all better, is another picture of the bottle. yes, that's Commodore 64 mode with scan lines on.

what are, you may well ask in the hopes that this will end the post quickly, my general thoughts on this shampoo. "not very good" would be one of them. "rubbish" would be another. although that last one is not fair - it is better, for example, than shampoo that i tried to make myself.

you have seen the bottle, but you probably want to see what the actual shampoo inside looks like. well, it was not an easy thing to get a picture of, and it isn't pretty. you have been warned, then, before you look at the next picture.

so don't look if you think it might upset you.

yes, a sort of murky, brownish, glue-like liquidy trickle of stuff that belies the green bottle it is presented in. misleading? no, not at all. it does not, after all, say "this has green shampoo" in it, that's just an assumption one could dangerously make from the bottle being green.

let me think of the best way to describe this shampoo, one that when i first saw it i was quite reluctant to put anywhere near my hair. basically, if a liquid like this was coming out of the arse of your car, no lesser person that an assistant to the undersecretary to the regional representative of the local (municipal, if you like) road and traffic regulation office would direct someone to visit you at your premises and say "get that piece of sh!t off the road now, actually no, we are taking it right this minute and scrapping it".

to go a little bit more delicate than that, if a liquid like this is coming out of your own arse, rather than that of your car, i would suggest you need to stand up, place a discarded newspaper on the seat you were using and head off in the general direction of a medical practitioner who could, within the laws of the land and in terms of their qualification to do so, prescribe you some arse pills to get it fixed.

here is a video for you, you people like videos don't you.

and here is an image of the shampoo once again, only this time, in order to give "balance" and the stuff a fighting chance, it presented in the mode of Commodore 64 with the scan lines on (i think)

no, it isn't getting any better when i take a picture of it like that.

i am having a hard time, right, understanding how a liquid like this, even at its most modest of pricing, could be released. i mean, they do all them controversial tests on monkeys and rabbits to check that this stuff is OK, and this is what they declare as fine for us humans to use? i am pretty much down on the side of those that say scientists should not be allowed to do them tests then, as they are, in my experience, not really working.

does this shampoo, as unpleasant as it may look, at the least do the job? it is possible, i suppose. not everything that is good for you or is excellent at doing the job it is intended for always looks excellent, mindful of my reference to Mr Jeremy earlier.

i cannot tell myself if this does balance and that. my hair feels relatively clean after i have used it. at first. here is a selfie taken a few hours after using it; you decide.

a bit of an avant-garde selfie there for you, really. not sure if it has quite taken the picture in such a way that lets you decide if my hair is clean or in balance, really. so here is one of them close-up type of pictures for a better look.

no, it certainly does not stop my hair from going grey as you can see in the above, but in fairness and with great respect the shampoo makes no claim to do so. it would have been nice if it did it as some sort of hidden, extra bonus, i suppose, but there you go. my (considerably) better half reckons i am going grey in an interesting way, anyway, so i probably would just get knacked for using shampoo that stopped it doing that.

to see if it is all in balance or not i suppose i probably should show a picture of the other side of my head like the above, but let's be honest - i am not interested, and neither are you. here, instead, is a picture of some bacon.

how was the bacon? some of the finest rindless and unsmoked that i have ever had the pleasure of eating, really. it was cooked in an oil that one would deem essential and tasted just fine, thanks.

i suppose an interesting comparison would be to show my hair contrasted against the hair of another. although also it wouldn't, especially as the other person has their own hair, not mine, and i also have no idea what shampoo they use. but here's a picture of me and my dear friend Bamber anyway, in which you can see my hair that was washed with that shampoo.

and since i seem to be off track a bit here, here's a look at my beloved mother-in-law, and indeed by brother-in-law, over on that Skype thing.

back to shampoo, then, but perhaps more importantly, back to selfies taken with the Commodore 64 mode on and the can lines most assuredly lines on.

there is a theory that if you leave your hair unwashed it "washes itself". i am suspicious of this, as how is it that people out there have really bad hair? you know, that oily, sometimes straw-like hair that some people have? if we assume that they didn't wash it then it would be fine, what are they doing to it to get it to look like that? non-essential oils? wrong pH thing?

oh yeah, here's that Commodore 64 pic mentioned above. if my hair looks OK in this picture then i guess the shampoo is sort of doing the job for which it was paid 89p to do.

that's actually a halfway decent picture of me, that one above is. i might use it for a profile picture or similar somewhere. perhaps i should attach it to my CV, see if that helps me in my quest to gain meaningful employment. it's not like i have excessive demands or anything; would just like to do a job to the best of my abilities and get paid for it, that's all. i am generally a simple chap whose ambitions stretch to wanting a quiet, normal life and just getting on with things.

another video, then, for those of you who like videos. you people like videos, do you not.

my friend, or if you like mentor, guru and photoshop king, Martin, has recently come up with some pretty interesting ideas around both shampoo and employment. he reckons that if i just became a pimp i would be in a job that i would probably be happy in, and as i would wear a massive purple hat with a feather in it, the quality and condition of my hair would be quite secondary. also, presumably, i would be expected to cut or stab anyone that "dissed" my hair.

Martin has kindly provided a visual guide as to how many of the elements above would work out.

pretty smart, really. although i suspect in wearing the above i would also be expected to shave the beard down to one of them goatee things, and indeed wear sunglasses all the time. and have a cane, perhaps with "me blade" concealed in the handle, or whatever the right name is for the top part of the cane. unless it was one of them that popped out at the bottom, but even then presumably the button or switch for that would be located at the top.

here is a picture of some food and beverage products, you people like this sort of thing don't you.

another idea i have had, mind, is to invest 11p more than the 89p i spent on the shampoo discussed so far in a different kind of shampoo. a shampoo, you will observe in this picture taken with my other Commodore 64 mode camera, with dithering either on or off i do not recall, that promises that it has lemon in it.

you know, a lot of fuss and that is made about celebrities endorsing and selling things on that twitter business and the like. what's the big deal? as i recall how it went down back in the 80s, on a Saturday morning Jason Donovan revealed, on national television, that he used lemon to wash his hair with. on the Sunday the newspapers carried stories of this. by happy coincidence on the Monday, or not long thereafter, Timotei (or whoever and however you spell it) revealed their exciting new range of shampoo that had lemon in it. and no one got all stroppy and upset.

yes, as point of fact, yes i will first be using the initial, unsatisfactory bottle of shampoo until it is all used up before moving on to this new one. i am, indeed, that cheap, and it isn't all that bad. it would be both wasteful and hateful to throw out a half used bottle of shampoo. but after that i am sticking to shampoo that has lemon in it. or apple, or similar.

so, yeah, i guess the conclusion here is that you should probably only buy shampoo that has lemon (or apple) in it if, like me, you want to wash your hair the way that Jason Donovan does. or did.

i hope this has been of interest or use to someone somewhere!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!