One time, after a shower in my flat in Cape Town, I noticed that I had not rinsed a bit of soap off of my leg after I got out of the shower. It was a small amount and I dried it off. A day or two later, I noted that I had acne in that area. Lesson learned, I paid even more attention to rinsing myself off in the shower.
Six years later, I was reading an Alternet article about something or other and saw a comment about natural soap products, specifically natural hair care products. The commenter mentioned that normal products contained petro chemicals that made your hair feel clean for a short while, but actually made it dirtier. With Whole Foods right across the street from work, I decided I would try out these products and find out for myself if my hair was any cleaner. This was how I learned about the value of "lather, rinse, repeat", and noticed that after a day without washing, my hair did seem a little bit cleaner. It wasn't until my three day trip to Houston when I used hotel [conventional] shampoo every day, yet couldn't wait to get home to finally wash my hair [with natural] that I really observed the difference.
So I stopped using conventional shampoo, but still used conventional products for everything else. About a month ago, I ran out of my deodorant. I used Secret Platinum, which had 19% of the active ingredient. Secret Clinical Strength, which was half as much for twice the price, was 20% of the active ingredient. It didn't matter which one I used though, I still had big rings of sweat on the pits of my clothes most days. It was usually small enough that I could conceal them by not raising my arms too high, but of course, that just made the sweat patch get bigger. I was out of deodorant, but only wanted to go to one store - Whole Foods or Target that night, and I needed dinner. Whole Foods had fresh food, Target didn't, so I tried out one of the natural deodorants at Whole Foods. The first day I tried it, no sweat. The second day I wore it, no sweat, and so on, for about a week. The main problem was that it didn't cover up my BO as well, but no one except me noticed - even when I asked people. Then I was chatting with a guy I know in the deli at Whole Foods and he suggested Crystal Stick deodorant, so I bought that. That takes away the smell and still, no sweat.
So my hair is clean, I smell good, and I'm not sweating like crazy anymore. Back when I was in Cape Town, I had brought with me my first ever bottle of Neutrogena's body wash. I remember seeing the commercial. It had nice, clean looking white teenagers standing on a white sound stage, confessing that people get breakouts on places besides their face. Being able to relate to that, I noted the product and bought a bottle when buying my toiletries for Africa. To be honest, however, I can't say that Neutrogena's body wash worked any better than any other soap for reducing acne on other parts of my body. It did help when I rinsed all the soap off, of course. Earlier this year, I started using natural soaps for my body more often, and now I use them exclusively. This weekend, I realized that I no longer had any body acne. In fact, I haven't noticed any breakouts or even single zits for a few months. I'd have to go back to conventional soaps - maybe I could use up all my Bath & Body Works things - to fully experiment on my body, or maybe I could just keep using this soap and see if I get acne anyway.
In my life, a number of things have caused me shame. For the last 12 or 13 years, one had been random breakouts, and in the past two years, another had been excessive sweating. They seem to be gone now, without making medication changes, without going to so-called "stronger" products. In fact, because my hair stays cleaner longer, I have less incentive to shower than normal. Though, now I will shower and not wash my hair more often because my hair is getting obscenely long.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Why I Use Natural Products
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Let the New Movies Begin
Will it be Made for TV or Big Screen? Michael, The Movie.
The last one was 1992, which was before the first time he was accused of molesting children, but after he began to whiten. There are so many more things that we need to know, and the rumor mill is stating
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Good News, Governor Sanford
You're NOT the biggest news of the week. Who would have thought?
So, get this, the governor of a mid-size state goes missing. The Lt. Governor wasn't notified, his wife is clueless, and aides claim he went off hiking in the Appalachians. About six days later, he shows up at the airport, blabbering about a love affair with a woman in Argentina. Amanda writes a great post about the meanings of passion and conservatism and BOOM
Michael Jackson effing dies
Can anyone say Gary Conditt?
Friday, June 12, 2009
Never Studied
A friend on Facebook posted a cool photo of a storm in Iowa. The people that saw the clouds in this storm think that there should be a new cloud classification based on these clouds. But not everyone agrees and the article mentioned that meteorologists would classify these clouds as an existing type of cumulous clouds. It sounded like an interesting debate until I got here:
But Pretor-Pinney, who never studied meteorology, believes the clouds merit their own cumulus sub-classification.
This person is not an amateur meteorologist, one who might have read a bunch of books but never got a formal degree, no, Pretor-Pinney "never studied meteorology".
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
You're Kidding Me
I'm watching all of the episodes of Bullshit from Penn & Teller. I'll be posting reviews of certain clumps of episodes, but I'm starting with the episode College, which is actually an indictment of diversity. I can hear the bs reason for the society in Fahrenheit 451 already. In all seriousness, I am censoring my post because I am nervous about having this blog deleted, literally. Though I have almost every reason to believe that the threat of this is gone, the risk is too great, censoring away!
That is an image of [a college], my alma mater and the episode actually talked about [something I vividly remember]. [I had another paragraph about my relationship with the events and people and locations portrayed] [Finally there was a paragraph about the racial make-up of the campus and other things] I can say that the episode's description of events does not match my recollection in that it leaves things out and doesn't actually answer any of the questions I had 8 years ago.
The white rich guy in the episode said that women, people of color, LGBT, etc people are treated like children when we are "told" that we should not be exposed to certain types of speech or opinions. In my experience, these same people are asking for a learning environment free of these assholes. It isn't just speech or opinions either. Remembering going to my alma mater, I remember a lot of conversation and yes, vitriol aimed at people who said stupid racist shit. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism of your hate speech. But a lot of what was said also wasn't protected speech. Harassment and threats are not the same as free speech. Sure, attention to diversity can be problematic - I am not a moral relativist - but you can't have an open discussion with someone that insists that "f****ts", "n****rs", and "b***hes" are less than human.
We have a history in this country that creates a context of hostility towards anyone not that "majority" group with which we are familiar. It is very easy for members of a group that has not been threatened with violence or are seen [more in the past than now, thank goodness] routinely as less than human to tell us what we want. In fact, they do it all the time and they did just now. Sure, diversity is rationally ridiculous to people that don't benefit from it, but ask the out black lesbian who is going to college to learn chemistry about the tangible benefits of diversity training and even awareness in the people around her in her ability to obtain her degree.
This episode could have been much more powerful and I did not come away from the episode with any new knowledge, literally, even about the incident at my alma mater. It could have been an indictment of the excesses of diversity training. They hit on some overreactions at my alma mater and pulled a stunt protesting diversity at a diversity event. Tolerating intolerance is not tolerance and the episode proved that universities are aware of this fact. The tolerance of any idea without editing, without regard to effect is an excess of diversity and no one is doing that. Making campus safe for a KKK group would be a problem, but it isn't happening. I think the fact that this episode had to go to a second rate state university in a state that most people in America forget about to get an example of "diversity gone wrong" when it wasn't even ABOUT "diversity" is an indication that they REALLY had to reach for something that just ain't there. Seriously.
The show could have also addressed the issue of too many people going to college or getting crap degrees with which they cannot get a good job after they graduate. What about grade inflation and the snowflake epidemic? They tried to address this issue by trotting out names of talented and/or lucky people that struck it rich without college, but that does not a criticism of college make. Everyone knows that being an entertainer does not necessitate college, with the exception of maybe Peter Graves. But these days college has become what high school used to be - a training ground for young people before they enter adulthood. But we consider that college and made high school into a holding pen for children and elementary school is elaborate day care. Colleges need to be places that create future leaders, artists, professionals, and scholars to enhance society for all people, whether or not they went to college. They should not pass students after they skip the final and even ask not to be failed so they can have time to drop the class.
There is so much this episode could have been, and it should have been two episodes to address the excesses of diversity (because they exist) and the problems in college today. As is, this episode just taught me that some highly educated and high powered and uneducated but wealthy entertainer white guys don't think that diversity or college are good things, respectively. I should probably make up some kind of rating system, but overall, this episode is bullshit.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Classic
It dawned on me tonight, after I refreshed Pandagon, that almost any motion picture clip that existed, especially after the advent of VCRs, probably exists on YouTube, even if the copyright holder takes it down over and over again. So I went searching.
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