Do you use lotion? Read on if you do...

So there I am, minding my own business typing at the pc. I get a bit uneasy after a while and adjust my seating position to find a new comfort zone. Suddenly it strikes, an itch attack of a magnitude only achieved on the driest of winter days. It feels as though a hundred fleas materialize onto each of my forearms and simultaneously feast off my cells.

Emergency lights and alarms go off in my head. It is time for me to dig out the lotion and apply it as a last resort. This bottle has lasted me 3 years and is still pretty much full. Guys don’t use lotion unless their arms are about to fall off you see. We’d sooner scratch our legs till we bleed (Done this before guys, haven’t you?) than simply squeeze out some lotion from a tube and painlessly massage the itching away within seconds. If you’re a guy and you haven’t done any of these things you are either a mommy’s boy or a homo. So there…

There is a point to all this rambling. You see after applying the lotion to get rid of 200+ fleas on my arms I started wondering about the contents of said lotion and how those work to eliminate itching and dry skin. So I take a gander at the ingredients on the label.

· Cucumber

· Aloe vera

· Honey

· Buttermilk

· Mint

· Palm oils…

…the list went on and on naming these ingredients, which would probably make a good light meal on their own, each sounding more soothing and cool than the previous. After the list of recognizable ingredients came a bunch of chemicals, and this is where the average person would stop reading. No, not me, I had started reading and wanted to get to the very end of the list of ingredients. So I tried (in vain) to recall some of my first year chemistry as I slowly pronounced the names of each compound. That’s when I spotted it! There! Between Dihetrasulphoxychlorisomthing and Hydramethdoodyvonphospholux…

It said very quietly in Arial font, size 0.5

Urea

UREA!!!!

WTF!!!???

Those bleddy, dishonest, deceptive, backstabbing, lairs! I’ve been lathering myself up in urea whenever I get all itchylike. That’s just not cool. Laxatives in chewing gum is alright, but urine in lotion crosses the line! I wish people were honest about their products. Sure you wouldn’t sell much lotion if you call it “Cool Aloe, Cucumber and Urine” flavour but that’s not the point! You need to exclude mixing in random excreta with your products!

Why, oh why, do you have Urea as an ingredient in any case? Is it some sort of joke? Do employees just relieve themselves in the mixing vats to have a laugh? Who was the guy that decided it would be easier to just make urea an ingredient as opposed to firing the employees involved in taking a dump in the lotion?

I WANT ANSWERS DAMN IT!

Oily disastrous death of DOOM!

So I’ve been keeping half an eye out on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill news. In fact, ‘oil spill’ is putting it lightly. It’s the single largest environmentally destructive man made force EVER! Surprising then that the worldwide media has sidelined the whole affair in favour of Lindsay Lohan’s jail sentence for violating parole… or some such rot. I don’t care if some juvenile lesbo has to spend TWO WHOLE WEEKS in jail for being an idiot. The only time ‘Li-Lo’ deserves to be put in the papers ahead of an environmental disaster of this magnitude is if they found… a cure for HIV AIDS made from a paste constructed primarily of her dried crushed bones, organs and brain matter.

I’m drifting…

In any case I thought I would summarise the whole oil spill and the way it was managed by those clever guys at the ‘BP science, engineering and brainyness’ division. Why, you ask? It’s just that I found looking at individual pieces and media reports gave a somewhat hazy and incomplete picture. Putting all those bits together will help us average people understand the steps BP have taken to ensure nothing but the best (or least worst) results from this whole ordeal.

April 20 2010: Blowout preventer on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico fails resulting in… a blowout>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, one of our deep sea rigs had a blow out in the Gulf of Mexico.” BP Engineer 2 “Erm, yeah we shoulda realised something would happen after Jay took apart the old blowout preventer for a valve he needed to fix his mom’s Studebaker.” BP Engineer 1 “So what are we going to do about mate?” BP Engineer 2 “This needs some thought… I’ll get back to you”

7 May 2010: Oil leaks out at a rate of approximately 60000 barrels a day for 17 days before>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, we could lower a huge box over the leak.” BP Engineer 2 “That’s a great idea Dave, that way we can minimize our losses by harvesting and selling the spilled oil!” BP Engineer 1 “What about the excess oil that leaks into the ocean?” BP Engineer 2 “Meh, it has to go somewhere…”

9 May 2010: The box-funnel idea failed and eco-warriors put pressure on BP Engineers to come up with environmentally friendly solutions>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Hey Chuck, maybe the oil will stop spilling out if we shovel dirt into the hole” BP Engineer 2 “Hey, yeah Dave, I recon that will work. When I was I kid we used to hide stuff by shoveling dirt onto it…” BP Engineer 1 “Heck and getting rid of dirt is environmentally friendly too, EVERYBODY wins!”

11 May 2010: After failing to stop the leak (which has since grown to a maximum of 800000 liters a day) by dropping sand bags filled with dirt, golf balls and bits of old tire onto it (!!!) BP engineers need to find another new solution>>>

BP Engineer 1 “Say Chuck, what if we were to use a big old submarine to go down there and plug the leak?” BP Engineer 2 “You is genius Dave! But what to plug the leak with?” BP Engineer 1 “…Concrete?” BP Engineer 2 “Doesn’t that need air to dry and cure?” BP Engineer 1 “Heck no, how do you think they build them bridges in rivers…”

10 July 2010: Shoving concrete into the leak fails. The oil spill, now visible from outer space, destroys all life in its path. BP Engineers finally come up with a solution>>>

BP Engineer 1 “So Chuck I noticed this morning that the water in my bath was prevented from escaping using a solid plug like device to cover the outlet hole.” BP Engineer 2 “What exactly are you trying to say Dave?” BP Engineer 1 “Well, if a plug can stop water from going down a drain surely we could use a similar device to stop oil gushing up from a hole” BP Engineer 2 “Hmm, a radical idea Dave. We would have to reverse engineer this ‘plug’ device to function the other way around but it sounds crazy enough to work.”

15 July 2010: The main sources of the oil spill are finally stopped after BP engineers effectively shove a plug into to hole really REALLY hard! A permanent solution to the oil spill has YET to be found but is expected to be in place by September. In the mean time the CEO of British Petroleum maintains that the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico is a tiny tiny tiny amount relative to all the water in all the oceans on the planet Earth.

Phew! Thank goodness for that…

(Image http://3.bp.blogspot.com)

Rant about headlines

I’m really surprised at the shocking headlines I’ve seen recently in the news. Either desperate measures used by journalists to attract the attention of stupid people or stupid journalist not thinking about what they write while they are going about their business…

Let me explain:

Earlier this week there was a news headline with the following

“Corpses left to rot underground!”

I mean REALLY, do they honestly expect us to react something along these lines “How horrific! How could someone possibly have stooped so low as to leave corpses to ROT! UNDERGROUND!??? That evil son-of-a-femaledog. I hope he/she burns in hell for carrying out such an inhuman act. IN HELL!!!” Give the people some credit I say. How odd would it be if we didn’t leave corpses to rot underground… “Look honey, the neighbours dog died, judging from the smell and maggots it must have kicked the bucket around 3 weeks ago. I really wish he’d scooped it up and left it at the corpse pile on the corner of 5^th and Cathcart.”

Nay, the person that originally thought of burying corpses was a genius… a headline like that should be followed by picture of a man with a spade standing triumphantly at the side of newly covered grave.

The next headline was quite recent news on the radio (today if I’m not mistaken) “Miners shot by security guards after found digging for gold”. That’s a raw deal in my opinion, the last time I checked digging for gold was part of the job description. Were they innocently working before some trigger happy guard came along and shot them to pieces or were they hiding nuggets up their asses?

A few weeks back there was even a report of a Boeing 767 crash landing at Harare International Airport. The world looked on in panic as people started pointing fingers and checking flight details of family members… all until we read the full report (a day later) detailing a 767 crash-land TRAINING EXERCISE!

These sorts of things can so easily be taken the wrong way. If it’s all about getting people talking and making a fuss over stuff that ends up being really trivial, I don’t think it’s worth it at all. In my opinion, if ones story is boring, being vague and lying about it to be popular is rather juvenile. People that write news reports in this manner should be forced to swallow broken lightbulbs.

So there…