Recent news regarding my hair

Until about three weeks ago, I hadn’t washed my hair in seven years. Well, that’s not entirely true. It had been washed, but only about three times a year when I had it dyed, and even then it was just an unfortunate requirement of hair dying and certainly not a voluntary choice. After a washing, it would take seriously a week for me to like it again, which is an unacceptably long time for a modern girl who’s just trying to make it in this world while looking good and feeling good. Sometimes super-short hair is just better dirty.

When I would admit my lack of hair-washing in conversation (it comes up!), the most common reaction would be casual incredulity. “So, you just, like, use conditioner on it?” No. “What, you just rinse it every day?” No, not really. “You don’t wash it as in you just wash it once a week or something?” No, I don’t wash it as in I don’t own shampoo.

The only people from whom I ever cared to hide my hair habits were certain gentlemen who might have run their fingers through it or nuzzled their faces into it. I worried they would be horrified. But if they found out, and they sometimes did, they never seemed to care. (Side note: thank you, straight boys, for being so low-maint.)

But recently, I’ve been growing my hair out, and an earth-shattering thing has happened: it looks better when I wash it sometimes. The past couple weeks, I’ve been washing it every few days! I’ve been using a tiny bottle of shampoo/conditioner called Tulipan that I took from my hotel in Mexico City, but I think it smells like nothing like tulips and a whole lot like Cherry Robitussin. (Do Mexicans like this smell? No entiendo.) And so, for the first time in years, I am ready to buy a bottle of shampoo. I am inordinantly excited about this, but I am also stymied by indecision. In the shampoo aisle of the drug store, I can do nothing but stare, dumbfounded, at the variety of available shampoos. It’s like that scene in Hurt Locker where Evangeline Lilly sends Jeremy Renner to get cereal and he just can’t process all the basically same-looking cereals in the grocery aisle.

So you guys, what kind of shampoo should I get? Should I get something with “bio-” in the name? Should I get this kind called Fruitopia out of nostalgia for the the now-defunct mid-90s beverage of same name? Should I get my childhood favorite, The Body Shop’s Ice Blue shampoo? (It makes your head feel all tingly!) I can totally get down with chemicals, so it needn’t be Whole Foods worthy. Suggestions welcome.

Things I learned about Bermuda while in Bermuda

1. If you arrive in the country without yet knowing know where you’ll be staying during your trip and you unwittingly admit this to the customs agents by leaving the “Where are you staying during your trip?” section of your customs form blank, you will not be allowed to leave the Bermuda airport until you can prove that you have procured a hotel reservation. You will be sent to the immigration office, where a very friendly immigration officer will act as your personal travel agent and call around the island to find you a room. He may even give you his cell number and invite you for a drink later, an action that would surely get him fired were he an American immigration official.

2. Relatedly: if you try and book a hotel room at the last minute during high season, you will have a very hard time finding one. The available ones will be exceedingly expensive, even those that are in quaint but ramshackle bed & breakfasts where the floors creak and the bathroom doors don’t fully shut. You’re frugal, you say? You want to stay at a hostel? Too bad. There aren’t any. Want to pitch a tent and camp? Too bad. You’re not allowed.

4. Bermudian money is just like American money, only pretter. Also, they have lots of $2 bills.

Bermuda's public buses:

a) Are blue and pink. Who wouldn’t want to ride on such a festive bus?

b) Seem to have no way of tracking fares. Upon boarding, passengers drop money, tokens, or tickets into a non-computerized cylindrical container while the drivers seem to pay little attention. I think you just could drop your grocery list in there and no one would be the wiser.
c) Are designed for Lilliputians. Squeezing down the aisle is a comedy of errors, even if you are a normal-sized human who should theoretically be able to walk down a bus aisle with ease.

6. In every post office you will find an Internet kiosk that you can use -- for free! Also, you will not find an Internet kiosk anywhere else on the island.

7. There is only one fast-food chain on the island. It is a KFC. At this KFC, you can get a 125-piece barrel of chicken nuggets for $60.75 and an accompanying barrel of coleslaw for $38.95.

8. Barritt’s in a can tastes better than Barritt’s in a bottle.

9. The heat and humidity cause ice melt very fast, making for watered-down dark & stormies. I suggest to local establishments that they use larger chunks of ice for slower melting. Bermudian bars, call me.

For a strange reason,* over the past year I have taken several trips to the Main Line Center for Laser Surgery in Ardmore, PA, to get a tattoo removed from my upper arm. For those unfamiliar with Ardmore, it’s a cute and snooty little moneyed town about 20 minutes outside Philadelphia. It’s the kind of place where the high schoolers play lacrosse, and where you should only go into the Starbucks if you’re prepared to hold the door for the four Lululemoned 30-something moms pushing Bugaboos who will inevitably come in right behind you. There is a Lily Pulitzer shop. There is a dog store called the Bark Avenue Boutique that sells homemade dog treats. There is a local-organic-sustainable fast food place called Sweetgreen but not a Burger King. Money Magazine put it on its list of Best Places for the Rich and Single.

The Main Line Center for Laser Surgery is in Suburban Square, the outdoor shopping center in the middle of the town. In addition to eradicating tattoos, it will help you rid yourself of dermatological insecurities such as sunspots, freckles, spider veins, rosacea, acne, and hair. At its helm is a doctor who appears regularly on local television news and in women’s magazines, and for good reason. The man is unflaggingly, almost off-puttingly animated, as if every moment of his day were the most exciting of his life. He shows a perplexing amount of interest in his patients’ jobs, lives, and hobbies, which I’m sure is very appealing to people who like talking about themselves but is horrible for those of us who would far rather divert attention back to our host than face the terrifying prospect of trying to string together articulate and interesting sentences about ourselves. Nevertheless, I find it very difficult not to like him, and when he tells me how tough I am because I sit calmly -- without the aid of numbing agents -- while he sears my skin with a laser, I always feel a little warm and fuzzy inside.

Those interested in learning more about the services available at the Main Line Center for Laser Surgery can pick up one of the 19-page glossy brochures sitting on a side table in the office’s waiting room (where you can also pick up a Werther’s Original and a Wintergreen Lifesaver). The brochure details different types of laser treatments and illustrates them with a combination of in-house before-and-after photos and stock images. Fittingly, my favorite such image is on the tattoo-removal page. Look at the picture in the bottom left-hand corner. The first sentence of the accompanying text reads, “We all make mistakes.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I'm pretty sure that in most cases people don't get all the way to half sleeves as part of a mistake.

*I was part of a study for a company that was developing a new type of tattoo ink. The idea was that they’d put tattoos on me and then laser them off. No one believes me when I cop to this. I don’t know why they’d think that I’d make it up -- I find it pretty embarrassing.

Time-wasting tactics

Many of us have jobs that can be boring. Those who can employ innovative methods of amusing themselves have the best chance of surviving these jobs. My friend and colleague Leslie should be commended for her abilities to kill time during her mind-numbing shift at the front desk of a quiet organic spa, a job that -- besides fielding the occasional client query about how to prepare one's pubic hair for one's first Brazilian wax -- consists almost entirely of dusting shelves, folding hand towels, and listening to the same pan flute & sitar CD on repeat for eight hours ... without internet access. Being stuck in this role is on par with being stuck in Dante's seventh circle of hell (the one where you float down a river of boiling blood and may be turned into a thorny bush that is fed on by Harpies).

Leslie improves upon her barbarous circumstances by using the day to create works of art that take product display to new levels, as seen here in a recent piece:



The Targeted Bio-Brightening Face Serum and Enlighten Skin Roll On sit side by side on a miniature wicker chair, upright and proud. Together but not touching, they are a comment on love, representing a strong partnership that will stand the test of time. Their own kind surrounded them, as bridesmaids and groomsmen would at a wedding and family members might during old age. The images and text interspersed throughout are reminiscent of the advertising and other outward influences these two will encounter during their lives and against which they must persevere. It is a beautiful demonstration of how radically overpriced skincare products can be about more than just consumerism. They can also be a rumination on the nature of relationships and time.

If you lack the artistic prowess of Leslie and do have Internet access at your boring job, may I direct you to this site, which is intended to be used as an online alarm clock. I highly suggest you instead use it to shock your colleagues by opening it on their computers when they step away and setting it to go off minutes after their expected return from the water cooler. The "Slayer Guitar" setting is a personal favorite.

Philadelphia sidewalks are full of poles to which people once affixed their horses while they went about their non-horse-riding business (you know, like getting their shoes cobbled). They're sort of like old-fashioned bike racks. Most of these posts are topped with sculptures of horse heads, thereby alerting passersby that they are specifically for horse parking:


A few, however, seem to be specifically for cat parking:


You can choose which post to use based on your own cat's demeanor. The post on the left is for outgoing and festive cats who enjoy wearing jewelry. The post on the right is for stoic cats who rarely deviate from meditative poses.

The post below is for parking one's pet pine cone, which is useful. After all, who among us hasn't experienced the frustration of a pine cone wandering off the second you turn your back on it?

Don't worry: I have found the Justin Bieber section of the magazine rack. (Side note: there is a magazine called "Yikes!")

It's no secret that a dog with a cone on its head is the best type of dog. The cone ups any dog's cute quotient 20 percent. This may seem a cruel thing to delight in: after all, that dog has no peripheral vision; he is probably confused about the presence of a giant bowl around his neck; he is recovering from some sort of painful injury or operation; he wants to lick his wounds and he's trying but he can't, he just can't! But hey, I can't help that it's fucking adorable. I'm just reporting the facts.

I present to you the cone-head dog to end all cone-head dogs. What is that thing? Why does it need to be so big and floppy? I don't care -- it's awesome. This dog is wearing the fancy Sunday church hat of dog cones, and he should be proud.