Tag: Good News

Accumulated Knowledge

Advice, House & Home

Background:  I once worked for an ad agency that had among its clients Vidal Sassoon, and from them I learned all the secrets of the trade.  Below is just a sample.

At its most basic level, shampoo is just a detergent.  Like all detergents, it takes away oils and greases.  Unlike your average kitchen dishwashing detergent, however, it’s very “gentle” — which means it has been severely diluted and therefore, on a cost per fluid ounce / milliliter basis, it outpaces Biden-priced gasoline.  This is particularly true if you buy the “premium” brands (e.g. with French names).

Technically, you could use simple bodywash (also expensive) or even a bar soap like Zest to wash your hair, although it’s a little harsh if your hair is normally thin and fragile.  However (and this leads into our sub-topic), what really counts, if you care for your hair at all, is not the detergent you use but the conditioner.

This is way more important than your shampoo, and a good conditioner will make your hair healthier than will some VO5-type budget conditioner — although, as with all things, budget conditioners work extremely well for some people because their hair responds to it better than to others, even expensive ones.

The more aggressive / cheaper your shampoo, the more money you’ll have to spend on conditioner.

So what do I use?  The cheapest shampoo (generally to be found on the bottom shelf at Kroger, with the lowest cost per ounce) and a mid-range conditioner like Pantene Pro-V.  But I have thick, healthy and wavy (not curly) hair, and I never use a blowdryer.  Also, I wash my hair about every other day, and use conditioner once a week only.

YMMV.

Addendum:  if you’re bald or wear your hair in a don’t-care buzz cut, you are obviously disqualified from commenting on this section, in that your opinions are like those of a cave-dwelling hermit about TV shows, or John Kerry about guns.

Political Snigger

Elections, Mocking Furriners

First we had that “right-wing” libertarian (?) winning big in [Don’t Cry For Me] Argentina, and now the Dutch too seem to have come to their senses (and not a moment too soon):

In yet another sign of a global political shift, the right-wing populist Party for Freedom in the Netherlands is projected to win a large plurality. According to exit polling, the PVV will pick up at least 35 seats while the current ruling coalition will combine for 37 losses while only winning 41 seats total. That makes Geert Wilders, the founder of the Party for Freedom, the big winner.

Of course, this has the Left screaming hair-on-fire stuff:

The Netherlands will join an increasingly long list of West European countries (CH, FR, IT, SE) where the radical right has overtaken the mainstream right has the main party of the right.

Never mind that their definition of “radical right” would, in U.S. terms, make Wilders’s party more like centrist Democrats (anyone remember them?) Over Here.  (For those unfamiliar with the terminology:  that would be Switzerland, France, Italy and Sweden [!] who have recently moved to the “right”.)

Anyway, getting back to the Dutchies:

“It’s been enough now. The Netherlands can’t take it anymore. We have to think about our own people first now. Borders closed. Zero asylum seekers,” Wilders said in a television debate on the eve of the election.

Sounds kinda like Trump, doesn’t it?  Let’s hope that Wilders, unlike Trump, actually starts to do something about the situation once he’s sworn in.

Expect the lawyers to start sharpening their quills so as to try to stop in the courts any commonsense policy he implements — just like our leftist assholes do Over Here.

Let the mass deportations begin… and once again, not a moment too soon.

Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls Etc.

Business, Watermelons

Stephen Moore has an excellent “story of the film so far” about the Net Zero / Green energy / no more cars with engines / unicorn fart-based energy initiative:

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that “clean energy” investment funds are tanking, with some down as much as 70% in recent months. Solar has been one of the worst-performing industry stocks this year.

This collapse is happening right when Exxon and Chevron have engineered a combined $110 billion blockbuster acquisitions to expand oil and gas drilling in the Permian Basin in Texas, one of the biggest oil fields in the world. This year, they both reported their largest profits ever.

They and their investors are looking at the real-world data, not green energy propaganda. In 2023, the world is guzzling oil and gas like never before. Global consumption of fossil fuels was higher in 2022 than at any time in human history, even as the developed countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars trying to stop oil, gas and coal.

As they say:  follow the money.  All the politicians’ wishful thinking won’t change the nature of the world (i.e. reality), as much as they’d like to think it can.

“Quick, Martha…”

Immigration, Mocking Furriners

“…hand me mah smellin’ salts!”  From KrautPres / Reichkanzler Olaf Scholz comes this little bombshell:

“We must finally deport on a large scale those who have no right to stay in Germany.“

I’ll believe it when I see it, but you have to admit, it’s a first from any post-Mutti Merkel politician.

And in the same article, from Swissland:

Switzerland moved rightwards in an election on Sunday, giving the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) more seats in parliament as concerns about rising immigration outweighed those about the environment, final results showed on Monday.

Wait… the Green Nude Eel is starting to lose favor with, of all people, the Swiss?  And “concerns about immigration”?  Anyone would think that Swiss cities like Zurich have seen a massive increase in violent crime, mostly committed by “immigrants” of the Afro-Arab persuasion.

Oh, wait… they have.

Bad Behavior

Manners, Men & Women

Back when I was still on the dating scene (shortly after someone discovered fire), I was thankfully spared the prospect of my date behaving badly by being glued to her cell phone during the meal.   (Back then, I didn’t even have a landline phone because the phone company — in South Africa, the Post Office — had a three-month backlog on new home phone installations.)

However, that was then and this is now.  Here’s what one guy did when faced with such a situation:

A man has caused a debate after admitting to walking out on a date without paying his portion of an $80 bill because his potential love interest was ‘constantly on her phone’. The man, who is from a major US city, revealed he met up with the woman after matching on a dating app. The pair hit it off and decided to meet in person.

The man was quick to brand the woman as a ‘vapid moral monstrosity’ who had the ‘attention span of a gnat’, after she spent a whole five minutes ferociously texting as they waited for their food.

When they finally began to chat she was quick to, yet again, start answering her ‘buzzing’ phone . The man attempted to make a few hints to his date about her antisocial behavior by joking and even saying he would throw the phone out of the window if it continued. However, his incessant hints fell on deaf ears as her eyes continued to be glued to her phone screen.

An appetizer and two drinks later, the man realized he was miserable and there was no possible way to turn this date around. He headed to the toilet, promising himself that if her eyes were still locked on her phone screen, then he would be making a swift exit out of the door.

When he came out to find her eyes fixed fixed on the screen, he validated that promise by quickly leaving. He detailed: “I looked the other way and there was a service door open behind the kitchen. I turned right instead of left and exited into the sweet, sweet air of freedom.”

And here’s the kicker:

It was only 30 minutes after he had left that the date even realized his absence, texting him: “Did you leave?”

Good for him.  I’m even glad that she got stuck with the tab, because having such appalling manners deserves to be punished.

I don’t even know why there would be a “debate” on the topic.