The Hair Was Created By Man. It Evolved. It Rebelled.

My hair is getting out of control.

What started with sheer laziness and a vague desire to look like Baltar from Battlestar Galactica has turned into a disaster of Hindenbergian proportions. Or is it Heisenbergian? I can never be certain.



I can't remember the last time I had my hair cut professionally, and my definition of a hair care "professional" is pretty generous. If you own a pair of scissors that doesn't have bright orange plastic handles, you're probably overqualified to cut my hair. Generally I cut it myself -- by which I mean I set my $7.95 trimmer to 1/2" and buzz away until the bathroom floor looks like a scene from a werewolf movie.

What kind of creature could have done this?

I don't know, Sally, but whatever it was, it was big.

I've grown my hair out a few times before. The first was my unfortunate Kevin Costner/Dances With Wolves phase, during which I danced with few wolves but was occasionally mistaken for one. Then there was my even more unfortunate Steven Seagal phase, which had the unanticipated side effect of prolonging Steven Seagal's career by making him look relatively good in comparison. I suppose my selection of Baltar as my current hair role model will eventually seem foolish as well, especially since my hair has thinned to the point where I'd have a better shot pulling off Colonel Tigh than Baltar -- even the John Colicos version of Baltar.



So now I have a choice: tough it out, knowing that even another eight inches isn't going to make me into Baltar (insert your own joke here), or shave it off and start over. I finally broke down and bought some conditioner a couple of weeks ago. I bought the manliest (read: cheapest) conditioner I could find: White Rain, the conditioner with the vaguely disturbing name. In fact, now that I think about it, how manly can you be when you're squirting something called "White Rain" on your head?

Besides, in case you didn't know, White Rain pretty much sucks as a conditioner (I'm comparing it to my wife's fru-fru conditioner, which I used during the transition stage between "I don't need conditioner; I'm a man!" and "Ok, I'll buy conditioner, but I'm not paying more than 84 cents for it.") White Rain is cheaper than motor oil and probably about as effective on split ends. The first ingredient listed on the label is water, which seems like a ripoff -- unless it's holy water, in which case there should be a warning label for vampires. After all, vampires were the original metrosexuals, in addition to being surpisingly litigious -- although it's true they don't have to worry about sun damage, so they have that going for them.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The second ingredient is alcohol. Then comes something chemical-sounding I don't understand, then citric acid, then another kind of alcohol. More chemicals, then "sodium chloride (sea salt)." Sea salt differs from table salt in that... uh, I think it's pretty much table salt. Then more alcohols, acids, and other chemicals. So White Rain is mostly alcohol, acid, salt and various scary sounding chemical compounds. Now I don't know what those scary chemicals do, but I hope it has something to do with counteracting the damage done by dousing your hair with alcohol, acid and table salt.

The good news is that if you've watched Battlestar Galactica at all, you know that Cylons are indistinguishable from humans except that the Cylons pretty much all look like supermodels. The only characters that we know for sure are human are the ones who are so frakking ugly that it's hard to believe anyone made them on purpose. Given that fact, I think it's clear which of the two characters in that first picture is the Cylon.

And homely as I am, at least I'm no Edward James Olmos. Although I'm sure that's nothing that long term exposure to White Rain and Don Johnson won't fix.




This post would show up on humor-blogs.com if I wasn't preoccupied with my hair.