morosophical beautification

(S)-5-hydroxy-1-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-3-decanone

  • Last updated: 2013-05-17
    Last major overhaul: 2013-02-01
    First posted: 2011-04-09
    A tragicomic moral tale of one woman’s valiant struggles with first-world problems and her moves towards minimalism, environmentalism, and liberation from consumerism. In other words: hippy-dippy tree-hugging granolarama sh*t, occasional arty-farty vapid airy-fairy nonsense musings, sanctimonious pontificating rants, may contain nuts and other irritants, but but BUT: with regular chocolate.

Continue reading →

update: coconut oil experiment

dr bronner's coconut oil

EXPERIMENTAL METHODOLOGY AND RATIONALE: see tentative pre-review (2013-04-11)

NB: what works for my hair won’t necessarily work for anyone else’s hair.

MATERIALS

1. Hair =

  • fine (strand-diameter)
  • thick (density, number of strands)
  • slightly wavy all over (2b), curly to frizzy in places (3b) especially in the underside and at the temples: this is the hair that grows the slowest and is most prone to breakage, on many people
  • dryish
  • longish: longest bits are between shoulder-blades, definitely now well below shoulder-length but not yet in the bra-hitting zone
  • sensitive scalp, can be eczema-prone
  • untreated: never been dyed, retextured, straightened, hot-iron-tortured, etc.
  • very rarely blow-dried (like maybe once a year or so, plus when at hairdresser’s even though I’m training them, slowly but surely, not to dry my hair to death every time and to respect the curl, man; may also be time to shop around on the hairdressing front)
  • and basically healthy

2. Coconut oil =

RESULTS: WHAT WORKS

  1. Brush hair
  2. Scoop oil out of jar. Melt between palms of hands.
  3. Apply to hair, raking it through. Concentrating on underside and known frizz, then rest of hair. When all hair is oiled, I’m done.
  4. Twist into a medium-high bun and wrap up in cloth. Usually half a leg of an old pair of cotton/bamboo thick winter tights. Yay for recycling.
  5. Leave hair and oil to their own devices for an hour.* Make coffee, eat breakfast, drink coffee, read the news, start the usual daily deletion of pointless email crap, start dealing with email crap that’s not pointless (and, if very lucky, isn’t basically crap. With all possible due and undue respect to colleagues and others I work with.)  Continue reading →

reviews: some experimental failures

OK, a first one would of course be the Viagra Paradigm. Today is the 1st of May. A good day on which to reflect on alternatives, and maybe do more than sit around doing so at home in an armchair. If it’s a nice sunny day, why not go and do something actively and proactively about it? Might involve some singing too, and that’s very good for you.

may day

Preamble and/or irreelevent digression over, back to folly-praising business and beauty products. Continue reading →

late-lunch quickie: Face Yoga Troll Strikes (or rather, wobbles precariously) Again

This is a simple kind of troll: foolish, of limited capabilities but somewhat-unlimited financial resources, and usually not the sort of troublesome toxic beast we see around the place. The kind whose purpose in existence is stirring up trouble, causing damage, and destroying: getting MUAers deleted. Like in a game. Nope, this is the simpler sort who gets bees in bonnet periodically (full moon? who knows…), sometimes in conjunction with the my-body-is-a-temple there’s-no-facts-just-opinions neoidiotic crowd.

Bless its cotton socks, anyway. Continue reading →

sunscreens update 2013

women at work

danger: keep back: woman attempting to open (sun?-)umbrella

***WORK IN PROGRESS***
FIRST PUBLISHED 2013-04-29,
BEEN UPDATED 2013-04-30,
AND THERE WILL DOUBTLESS BE FURTHER UPDATES

What you are seeing here is a RARE SNEAK PREVIEW into what a post looks like in pre-final-revised-edited-proofread final-final-finished state! At any moment, all may change!! You might leave, go away and do something useful more worthwhile get on with your life : turn your back for a moment: and it’ll all be completely different !!! How exciting is that? It’s like seeing writing and thinking happening right in front of your very eyes (OK, more like a Victorian time-lapse version). Um… like Twitter but longer-winded and less immediate and, well, let’s face it, not actually remotely Twitter-like at all. Except maybe in Twittishness.

But I digress.

Just for a change.

Even when (t)wittering.

All the following are SPF 30 or above, probably PPD 8-10, unscented, cruelty-free, with at least 12% zinc oxide  Continue reading →

Éminence Organics (3)

eminence vs. ilike

See for previous discussion:

From the latter, here’s some stuff of possible interest. Blind believers in The Cult Of Eminence, either throw off your blinkers now and keep reading, or do not click … Continue reading →

confession: I don’t like Éminence Organics

[UPDATED: added links and screenshots from company site, and a little comment thereon.]

I’m as keen as the next chap/ess to buy local and support local companies. Unfortunately, “local” here is Vancouver, home of Lululemon, so all too often that means vacuous yogabunny purity-obsessed overpriced rare exclusive stuff and nonsense. Good old-fashioned ripoff quackery for good old-fashioned credulous fools. Or, as a very old proverb puts it: A fool and his money are soon parted. You know, this sort of thing that bugs me mightily and sets me off on particularly lengthy rants.

Éminence being one prime example of which.

And it’s been far too long—goodness gracious me, entire whole days—since I had a decent rant about something.

In the form of a collage copy-pasted from MUA Green Board commentary, here are the reasons for my dislike: Continue reading →

3rd Annual Earth Day Special (2013)

In previous years, I’ve put together Green-ish Lists. Laboriously hand-crafted. By my own fair hand. Researched and all and all.

But here’s a thing. Or a couple of things, really.

THING #1

Such lists might entice or incite someone, somewhere people to buy stuff. Amongst that stuff there might be stuff they don’t need. And stuff of which they already have a version or equivalent, albeit maybe less green or green-ish.

So this year, in a break with tradition, there will be no list.

THING #2

Earth Day should be every day damn it!

And part of normal everyday life for everybody!!!

I mean, this tosh about making a big ritual/~ised/~istic deal of planting one single tree in some random and probably irrelevant place? Fuck’s sake, if you’re that keen on planting trees, get thee to the Amazon and start beating up the bulldozers. Pillocks.

THING #3

OK, there might be a list, at some point in the future. But there’s a sound practical reason for no list: cruelty-free-ness is up in the air.

Following the cosmetic-testing ban in the EU, it will be some time before every single product on the shelf and in warehouses is new cruelty-free stock. And even longer before we start seeing which companies put their money where their mouth is, on research & development. I.e., if you’ll allow me to belabour a grammatical point, I’m waiting to see a “cosmetic testing ban” become a “cosmetic-testing ban.”

For testing to be seriously well-funded non-animal alternative testing, of a sort that becomes not only acceptable worldwide (inc. places like the USA and its bizarre antiquated insistence on animal testing)—rather than freakish and marginal—but normal and standard.

Add to that the whole “who’s doing what in China” complications.

So: no list. Well, no list of “good” and “bad” companies. Just a rough list of Points To Ponder.

THE 2013 ALTERNATIVE GREEN LIST Continue reading →