Tag: Personal

It’s pretty hard, growing up and being obligated to cast away a lot of the things you enjoyed as a kid.

Not that I don’t cling to my inner child like a life preserver, but there are still a few facets of youth that are rather difficult to carry on into adulthood. Things like tall glasses of milk, bubblegum flavored toothpaste, SpongeBob Band-Aids, and Flintstones vitamins.

Graduating to the bitter pill from basically a chewable candy was one of the hardest transitions I had to make into manhood. But is it still necessary?

You may already know the score from the One A Day VitaCraves Gummies review in 2009. One A Day has been gradually expanding their line gummy vitamins for adults, recently coming out with two new blends tailored to specialize in men’s and woman’s health, much like their already existent Men’s and Women’s Formula pills.

I picked up a rather expensive bottle of 50 gummies and a box of Men’s Health Formula, and was saddened to see how many vitamins were omitted in the making of the gummy blend.

The gummies are, in fact, completely trumped nutritionally by their pill counterparts. Straying away from their definitive brand name, it is also still required to consume Two A Day instead of One, which halves that 50-count to a mere 25 doses.

They still come in three fantastic fruit flavors – apple, cherry, and blue raspberry, which were all true to their pleasing but generic artificial taste.

They’re similar to real gummies enough to tempt me into having more than the suggested amount, but with a very light bitterness that sort of reminds me of cough syrup. They’re also slightly chewy, a non-issue for people like myself that grew up on Haribo Gummi Bears.

After I polish off this bottle in under a month, I probably won’t be coming back to One A Day Men’s VitaCraves Gummies. They’re tasty, to be sure, but at almost $9 a bottle, I’d sooner stick with my Kirkland Signature Daily Multi.

(Supplement Facts – 2 gummies – 15 calories, 3 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of sugar, 4 000 IU of Vitamin A, 75 milligrams of Vitamin C, 400 IU of Vitamin D, 30 IU of Vitamin E, 5 milligrams of Vitamin B6, 400 mcg of Folic Acid, 15 mcg of Vitamin B12, 600 mcg of Biotin, 10 milligrams of Pantothenic Acid, 150 mcg of Iodine, 5 milligrams of Zinc, 110 mcg of Selenium, 60 mcg of Choline, 40 mcg of Insitol)

Item: One A Day Men’s VitaCraves Gummies
Purchased Price: $8.79
Size: 50 tummies
Purchased at: Publix
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Taste enough like gummy fruit snacks. Real supplement nutrition. High levels of B vitamins. Flintstones vitamins.
Cons: Still slightly bitter. Trumped by One A Day Men’s Health Formula. Taking Two instead of One A Day. Ridiculously overpriced. Bitter pills.

A hand towel in the bathroom at a big house dinner party gives me an idea of what it would be like to participate in a gangbang. You’re sticking a body part in something that’s wet and has been used by many other people during the past two hours.

While I’m willing to break the five-second rule when it comes to food that I’ve dropped onto the floor and I may let the party host’s dog make out with me instead of using a napkin, I won’t use a hand towel at a party. I don’t mean to go all Dateline NBC on you, but a hand towel at a party is also a party…for germs.

Usually, if I need to dry my hands, I’ll either walk through the house like a doctor prepped for surgery to get a napkin or paper towel or I’ll shake my hands vigorously as if I’m a puppeteer making his puppets dance to death metal.

However, when the next dinner party rolls around, I may just bring a box of Kleenex Hand Towels with me.

If you’ve ever been sick or you’re a male who has masturbated, you’re probably very familiar with the Kleenex brand. But, you might not know they make more than that, unless you have the Kleenex website in your web browser’s bookmarks to keep up to date with the latest in booger trapping technology.

The Kleenex Hand Towels are individual paper towels that come out of a box and work the same as all Kleenex boxes — pull one out and the next one is ready for another person. If inks, dyes and fragrances bother you, your sensitive skin won’t have to worry about any of that with the Kleenex Hand Towels. The 9.1 inch square towels are small when compared with other paper towels, but they’re softer than the stuff you find in a public restroom, and they’re more absorbent. Unlike most public restroom paper towels, I needed only one Kleenex Hand Towel to dry my hands.

Sure, it’s just paper towels from a box and a roll of paper towels is significantly cheaper, but have you ever tried tearing off a sheet from a paper towel roll with two wet hands, trying not to get any other sheets wet. I don’t know about you, but when I try it, I look like I’m attempting to bring back a dance from the 1990s. I think the convenience and ease of use are worth a little extra scratch for your guests.

While the Kleenex Hand Towels are soft and absorbent, the box they come in is a little more impressive. The shape of the box allows you to place it on top of a towel rack, creating a convenient dispenser in case you don’t have much room on your bathroom countertop due to a prescription drug addiction or a toothpaste variety addiction.

Item: Kleenex Hand Towels
Price: $2.99
Size: 60 towels
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Very absorbent. More hygienic than a communal hand towel. Great for having in the bathroom at parties. Convenient box that can be placed on a towel rack to save counter space, but not towel rack space. Ink, dye and fragrance-free. Softer than paper towels found in a public restroom.
Cons: Might be pricey for some. Smaller than most paper towels. A communal hand towel being like a gangbang. Dances from the 1990s. Breaking the five-second rule. Making out with a dog instead of using a napkin. Prescription drug addictions. Toothpaste variety addictions.

Welcome to my first non-food-related review! In this post, I’ll be putting chemicals into my hair instead of my stomach.

I happened to notice TRESemme’s new Fresh Start line via a commercial that caught my attention due to several lines that were said about the product. To give you a bit of context, the point of Fresh Start products is to make your hair look like you washed it when you really haven’t. We’ve all had those days – your groggy brain hits the “off” button instead of “sleep” on your alarm clock, and something in your brain tells you to wake up ten minutes before you’re supposed to be at work. You race around frantically, culling your list of usual morning rituals down to deodorant, teeth-brushing and making sure you don’t make the classic nightmare scenario of going to work with no pants on a reality. The whole shower thing is out of the question; at this point you’re just trying to get to work on time before you get fired for excessive tardiness. Perhaps you should invest in a Clocky.

According to the commercial, women are deeply ashamed of second-day hair. They will swathe themselves in scarves and hang their heads in shame. I have never had anyone comment on my second-day hair, probably because a.) nobody notices or cares, b.) everyone has done it at some point, and c.) most people know that that would be intrusive and rude. Also, instead of hanging my head in shame, I’d probably just say “fuck you, I woke up late”, and that would be that.

But TRESemme obviously feels differently about this. So they created a dry shampoo for your “going hobo” days (as it is referred to in my household). According to them, “Fresh Start dry shampoo for oily and straight hair uses a mineral clay and citrus formula that removes oil and odor while injecting volume…getting refreshed, full-bodied hair has never been so simple.” They also go on to say that you can get “salon healthy hair on the days you skip without the salon price.” This sentence confuses me. Are they implying that most women go to the salon every day before work? That is crazy. The only women who would possibly do that are incredibly rich and don’t have to be anywhere to begin with. TRESemme, you crazy.

TRESemme offers products for both oily, straight hair and curly, dry hair. I chose the former because I am an oily motherfucker. I feel odd describing my hair in such detail on the Internet, but I suppose it’s necessary for the context of this review. My hair is straight and has been long enough to reach my waist for almost my entire life. I used to live 20 minutes from the Pacific Ocean, and the humidity brought out my natural oiliness so much that I really couldn’t afford to go hobo, because my hair was greasy within 24 hours of washing. Then I moved to the desert, and my oil levels seem to have gone down to “normal people” levels, so I can go a day without washing my hair, but that’s about it.

Oh, and I also have never used products on my hair, my hair is not dyed, and I let my hair air-dry every day, so it’s pretty much a blank slate on which to experiment. Most guys probably take more time doing their hair than I do.

I was intrigued by this product, so I decided to see how well it actually works. I decided to perform an experiment: how many days, if any, could I get away with JUST using Fresh Start Dry Shampoo? How long would it work? Would all my hair fall out? I will now answer these questions by documenting my process. I have devised a 0-10 system, 0 being “fresh out of the shower” and 10 being “I have the flu and have been bedbound for two weeks with no bathing”. Let’s get started.

Day One
Before shampoo oily/dirty factor: 2
After shampoo oily/dirty factor: Uh…2?

I want to interject something before I even say anything else: DO NOT USE TRESEMME FRESH START DRY SHAMPOO IF YOU ARE AN ASTHMATIC OR HAVE ANY PULMINARY ISSUES. Read on to see why, if you haven’t already figured it out.

Okay so my hair didn’t feel that much different after spraying. I thought maybe I hadn’t sprayed enough on, so I decided to try it again. Recalling memories of watching my mom hose her hair down with hair spray, I attempted to emulate her motions, and sprayed far more vigorously the second time.

Oh. My god. First of all, Fresh Start Dry Shampoo has a VERY strong odor to it, like a mix between hair spray and a really strong perfume. I am allergic to perfume. Second of all, I should have thought to hold my breath, but it wouldn’t have mattered, because a cloying cloud of dry shampoo hung over the sink of my bathroom well after I was done spraying.. I had to stumble out, choking, and actually needed to use my rescue inhaler. I considered stopping this project right then and there, but I only plan on doing this for a few more days, and I’d already done it once, so I figured I’ll stick with it.

All that said, after the second dousing, I got a vision in the mirror of what my hair will look like in about 30 years. There were streaks of grey in it from the shampoo. I let it sit for the recommended 1-2 minutes and then brushed it out, which turned out to be a little harder than I thought since I’d sprayed a pretty high concentration of it in some places. Ladies, if your co-workers don’t notice the strong odor emanating off your head, they probably will notice the sudden grey in your locks. Somebody’s gonna piece it together and figure out you didn’t shower today!

Day One, after shampoo oily/dirty factor (take two): 0

TRESemme may wind up killing me, but I’ll go out with people thinking I’d washed my hair today. I discovered that you have to give it a few minutes, but after that, my hair really didn’t feel oily at all, and there was a noticeable fluff to it that it was lacking beforehand.

TRESemme wins day one in the hair department, loses in the “I can breathe” department. We shall see how things go on day two.

Day Two
Before shampoo oily/dirty factor: 3
After shampoo oily/dirty factor: 2

I remembered to hold my breath this time, which helped things immensely. I also got shampoo spray all over my shirt and hands. I was pretty amazed at how long the shampoo held out from yesterday. I noticed a diminish in returns on day two, but I still felt like I could get away with going to work in a professional environment. I felt like my hair had a strange texture, though, like it was a little oily but dry at the same time. I wonder if Fresh Start Dry Shampoo is actually a desiccant. I understand that the powder is supposed to soak up and wick away the oils, but the idea that my hair is being treated like a bag of beef jerky is disturbing.

Day Three
Before shampoo oily/dirty factor: 6
After shampoo oily/dirty factor: Data not available

I decided to end my experiment on day three because my hair was getting pretty oily and yet the texture was still like hay. The build-up of powder was enough that I could actually feel it on my hands when I touched my hair. It brought back memories of a very traumatic time in my life. I spent a week with friends at a beach house after I graduated high school. I thought it would be a great idea to dye my hair with a temporary black-with-blue undertones dye. I have blonde hair. This all turned out to be a very bad idea, since instead of being black, it turned my hair bright blue. At the end of the week, I was starting a job at a very large amusement park with a very strict dress code, and blue hair wasn’t exactly on the list. So I had to cover the temporary dye with permanent black dye. My mother did not talk to me for days. Eventually, she dragged me to the salon. Three days and 16 hours later, my hair was blonde again, but it had the texture of hay and I couldn’t even get a brush through it. I cried. That is how my hair felt on day three, and I didn’t like remembering those days.

So, I took a shower. It was the best shower ever. I got my real hair back!

So what’s the verdict? TRESemme never explicitly says that this product is only to be used for one day, but I think they convey that idea pretty well in the commercial. You can’t use Fresh Start Dry Shampoo forever. So, judging on day one’s results, the shampoo does its job, but it makes the texture of your hair kind of freaky. Plus, it’s strongly scented, can give you an asthma attack, gets everywhere, and can leave grey streaks in your hair if you aren’t careful. Personally, I’d rather just go hobo, but if you’re dead serious about having “shower fresh” hair, I guess it accomplishes that pretty well in the end.

Oh, and one last word of caution: don’t smoke while using this product!

Item: TRESemme Fresh Start Dry Shampoo
Price: $5.29
Size: 5.7 ounces
Purchased at: Albertson’s
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Does make second-day hair look refreshed. Will reduce shame in women with second-day hair concerns. Clocky. Easy to use and faster than a shower. Getting to see what my old woman hair will look like.
Cons: Very strong smell. Can get everywhere if you’re not careful. Feeling like beef jerky. Will irritate sensitive lungs if inhaled. Traumatic salon memories. Will leave grey streaks if you don’t brush it out enough. Creepy hay hair feeling.

The new Listerine Zero has no alcohol in it, which means it doesn’t have the usual Listerine burn that causes some to curse oral hygiene.

However, I enjoy the burning sensation because if I’m suffering while swishing Listerine for 60 seconds, I can imagine how much pain those millions of germs in my mouth that cause bad breath are experiencing.

All of it warms the cockles of my heart. Their agony is my pleasure.

However, with Listerine Zero I derive a lot less pleasure from killing those millions of germs.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I could hear the screams of the germs or if the germs could beg for their lives or if I could pretend to let the germs go, giving them a false sense of hope and then hunt them down using the RFID chip I would surgically place in them. But as we all know, germs don’t have mouths to scream out of or knees to beg on, and microscopic RFID chips aren’t available yet.

If only I could get my hands on some nanotechnology, then I could have nanorobots, armed with razor sharp arms, gut each and every germ. The nanorobots would also be programmed to take a germ’s skin and wear it.

I guess to get some delight from killing germs with Listerine Zero, I could scrape my tongue and cheek; stick whatever I collect on a microscope slide; place it under a microscope to watch those germs slowly die without a warm, moist environment; and then when they least expect it, place a drop of Listerine Zero on top of them. The mouthwash will kill them instantly and I get to watch their lifeless bodies float on the microscope slide. Rinse and repeat.

But alas, I don’t have access to nanotechnology or a microscope.

The instructions recommend rinsing with Listerine Zero for 30 seconds, which is extremely easy to do, thanks to its pleasant, muted Clean Mint flavor. While there’s still a burning sensation, it’s extremely light. On a burning scale of one to ten, with one being water and ten being original Listerine, the alcohol-less Listerine Zero would be a three or four.

With that very slight burn, I easily drowned the germs in my mouth for three minutes and then got rid of the bodies by spitting them and the murder weapon down the drain. If I had the time and saliva didn’t build up in my mouth, I could’ve kept those germs in a minty purgatory forever.

Listerine Zero did a good job of leaving my mouth feeling minty fresh and killing those germs that cause bad breath. And it did it without making me cry like I usually do with regular Listerine. But it seems the only way for me to get any pleasure from killing the millions of germs in my mouth with Listerine Zero is to swish it in my mouth for more than the recommended 30 seconds, while imagining those germs exploding and rubbing my nipples with the right amount of friction.

Item: Listerine Zero
Price: $4.79
Size: 500 mL
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Great for those who cry when using regular Listerine. No alcohol. Less intense. Pleasant, muted minty flavor. Killing millions of germs on contact. The pleasure I get from killing those germs.
Cons: Won’t wake you up in the morning like regular Listerine. Not having access to nanotechnology, RFID chips or a microscope. People with sensitive mouths might still feel it’s too intense. The pleasure I get from killing those germs.

As some of you know, I have a tendency to do things with the sexy, curvy bottles from the eco-friendly personal care and home cleaning product company Method that in all human cases would force me to have to register as a sex offender.

I will admit that I’m a little too friendly with them and I’ve been seeking help for it, but I would’ve never thought I’d find help in the form of a Method product bottle. The Method Kid Squeaky Green Fuzzy Peach 3-in-1 Shampoo is the first Method product that I have no desire to be playful with or to rub gently between my thighs, even though the toy-shaped bottle looks like it has a huge mouth waiting for something huge to fill it.

The bottle is curvy like most Method products, but it’s not a sexy curvy. It’s more like a cute curvy and I don’t feel comfortable fondling something the reminds me of my childhood friend, Totoro. So like Nicorette gum eventually weans people off of cigarettes, this cute, but not sexy bottle is slowly getting rid of my desire to molest other Method bottles.

The Method Kid Squeaky Clean Fuzzy Peach 3-in-1 is a tear-free shampoo, conditioner and body wash all wrapped into a bottle that I don’t want to touch in a way that makes it feel uncomfortable. The orange cream colored product inside has a consistency that’s a little more watery than most shampoos and body washes and it also doesn’t lather up as much. It’s 99% natural, hypo-allergenic and it’s never been tested on animals.

Its scent didn’t smell very peachy at first, instead it was a little more tropical, like a pina colada. So if your kid likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain. If they’re not into yoga. If they have half-a-brain. If they’d like making love at midnight in the dunes on the cape. Then this product is the love that they’ve looked for. Pick it up and escape.

The best part of the Method Kid Squeaky Green Fuzzy Peach 3-in-1 Shampoo is the way it doles out its product. Its dispensing mechanism is on the bottom of the bottle and it doesn’t need a cap, because it has been engineered to have the leak prevention power of well Kegel exercised muscles on steroids. Or a more appropriate way to explain it, since where it’s dispensed is located at the bottom of the toy character-shaped bottle and between its legs, would be to say that it’s like an asshole (and I’m talking anatomical not Christian Bale). This bit of technology, I assume, makes it easier for parents to wash their little children because they don’t have to worry about flipping bottle tops or anything bothersome like that.

If I had a kid, I would probably pick up Method Kid Squeaky Green Fuzzy Peach 3-in-1 Shampoo because I would only need one product to clean my kid, I can use the fun-shaped bottle to entertain him or her, it’s 99% natural, it’s hypo-allergenic and it would help prevent me from fondling the Method hand soap bottle next to the sink.

Item: Method Kid Squeaky Green Fuzzy Peach 3-in-1 Shampoo
Price: $7.49
Size: 10 ounces
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: A body wash, shampoo and conditioner all in one. Nice tropical scent. 99% natural. Hypo-allergenic. Really cool dispensing mechanism. Kegel exercises.
Cons: Doesn’t smell peachy at first. Kind of pricey. Doesn’t lather up very well. Watery than most body washes and shampoos. My problem with fondling Method bottles.