Smokey the Magnificent

The fenugreek was OK, if anyone was wondering. I did a pretty heavy pre-wash oiling and didn’t use any kind of cleanser, so I’m not sure how much of the moisture and ensuing greasiness was due to the fenugreek and how much was because of the jojoba. It did give my hair some initial slip which ACV notably lacks, but that was mostly gone by morning. Since then I’ve stocked up on catnip, marshmallow root, shikakai and amla and will perform some experiments, which will hopefully make my head smell less curryish.

That paragraph actually makes sense if you’re into natural haircare, by the way. If not, pay it no heed.

Know what I’m doing right now? Caramelising white chocolate. It had never occurred to me one could do this thing until I found David Lebovitz’s blog - he’s the guy who wrote The Perfect Scoop. Incidentally, he has this whole blog post about how he likes his caramel to taste slightly burned, otherwise (according to him) it is sickly and cloying. Which explains a lot. I was hard pressed to restrain myself from leaving a nasty comment. Anyway his caramelised white chocolate ice cream looked so delicious that I had to give it a go: also I am babysitting my little sistren tomorrow night and need to make something to quiet their gaping maws. I am also planning to make his Candied Bacon Ice Cream - it could be divine or repellent, but I don’t want to live my life not knowing. (His butterscotch pudding is entirely underwhelming, though. I find him a bit hit and miss all round, but the success of butterscotch and white chocolate flavours make me tolerant of a few flops.)

Anyway, the white chocolate has been in the oven for 30 minutes and, as promised, has become chalky and cloggy and generally unappealing. Apparently this is a good sign, heralding the transformation to caramelly deliciousness. We shall see.

Yesterday’s Challenge tasks:

• Write one article a day.

Yup. Did. A review for Untrained Housewife of “The Gift of the Christmas Cookie”, a book that tried far too hard. I know now why reviewers are tempted to give good reviews to items they get for free; it seems very unchivalrous to look gift swag in the mouth. But there you go. The book was weedy.

• Do one thing every day to make the new house look more homelike

I got rid of a bunch of packing boxes (thank you Freecycle), and potted up a bunch of seeds. The pig emptid out the pot containing my nasturtium seeds and the packet of snow pea seeds, and tromped for some time on the resulting pile. Very homelike.

• Do one organisational thing a day

Forwarded mail for previous tenants. I’m going to spend my life doing this.

Everything else

Nuh-uh. I was going to henna my hair, but the lady came to pick up the boxes at 7 and I didn’t feel I could carry off the encounter with green eyebrows and a plastic bag on my head. I will do it tonight, or even this afternoon if the pig allows it. Too long have I hidden my roots under a hat, in direct contradiction to Scripture.

Today I took the piggie into town, always a fraught manoeuvre these days as our pram is on the fritz. She tends to conk out halfway home and have to be carried, while I clutch my purchases in my other arm and feel my arms slowly slip from their sockets. Still, we needed to return a library book. And while at the library I did something daring. I’ve been complaining lately about not knowing any good contemporary authors. Mostly being a classics girl, I haven’t read much recent literature more arcane than Harry Potter. And given that I don’t know the scene, I’m not even sure where to start - mostly I pick up books on the grounds that I saw the movie, or heard that author referenced by another author, or heard someone talk about it. But I never pick up books cold, on the grounds that the title looks interesting. Do people ever really do that? I don’t. But anyway… today I did. In fact, three of the books I chose simply because the snortlepig picked them randomly out of the bookshelf and the dust jackets looked OK.

We will see how it goes. If I were a braver man I’d just start at the As in the fiction section and read my way right through, figuring that if someone liked it enough to publish it it probably wasn’t absolute trash. I’m not currently quite that brave (or well-endowed with spare time), but this is a start. I feel v daring.

Right. By a minor miracle the pig’s asleep without me, so I’d better go slap some henna on my head and make a milktart.

Have had an interesting few days. The Swedish-girl-who-turned-out-to-be-Danish - she hasn’t given me permission to use her name on my blog, so we’ll call her Hamlet - turned up yesterday and she, April and I went out for dinner. Sans pig. It was marvellous.

Then today, being one of Hamlet’s last days in New Zealand and her first time in our glorious city, was dedicated to sight-seeing… and our glorious city being what it is, we tactfully put her in the car and drove elsewhere. To Tirau, as it happens: a small, quaint, whimsical town mostly consisting of homeware stores, Kiwiana and a giant corrugated iron sheep. It’s not the Taj Mahal, but it’s better than our glorious city. So we spent most of the day shopping and eating, then returned to our gl. c. to visit the public gardens and take photos of our hair.

That isn’t as odd as it sounds: Hamlet belongs to a long hair forum April and I belong to. It’s customary at such meets to post pictures of the rear view of oneself and one’s friends and show them to the rest of the community afterwards in a gloating way… which doesn’t make the proceedings sound any less odd, now I come to think of it, so pay it no heed. Suffice it to say that trying to set up timer shots and dash to put our noses to artistic backdrops so our hair could be seen in all its glory, while members of the public gave us curious looks and the snortlepig kept dashing down paths, was quite an experience. Then at the height of it all Hamlet rope-braided my hair with April’s and took a photo of the resulting two-toned conjoined braid… who says one needs hallucinogenic drugs to have fun? (Hamlet’s hair was about a foot shorter than ours, or we could have attempted a French braid; but what’s the bets one of us would have lost a head in the detangling process?)

Anyhoo, what with all these larks and high spirits it’s been a sort of messy week, and my points have suffered accordingly. Helpdesk Man has been sick for the past two days, too. So assuming he revives during the night (which would be financially savvy, no pressure to his languishing system or anything), I intend to spend tomorrow being virtuously domestic.

Also, answer me this: Would you accept a million dollars on the condition that you never have a shower again?

There are those who would say that knowledge is useful as a means of most perfectly expressing our appreciation of creation. There are others who think it is important in that it separates us from the beasts; others who feel it is our duty in order to most thoroughly appreciate Sacred Scripture.

They are, of course, wrong, although all these reasons are important. The primary reason for knowledge is that it allows you to recognise when movies get stuff wrong. Which is of course vital to the pursuit of smugness and the attainment of trivial conversation, both of which are very important things.

Things that bug me in movies naturally fall into my own categories of interest. Hair, for example. As any female who has spent hours fruitlessly attempting to recreate hairstyles from Star Wars: Episode 2 is aware, movie hairdressers are a devious bunch. Though they presumably know how hair works themselves, they bank on the ignorance of the movie-going public to get away with some truly unlikely hairstyles - braids that appear from nowhere, updos that require far more hair in length and thickness than the character possesses, hairstyles for respectable medieval women which blow loose in the breeze, supposed terminal lengths which are barely waist-length, and so on. The oddest example I’ve seen recently was in the animated Beowulf, in which the women sported hairstyles containing  braids that were longer than the loose hair. As any turnip knows, braiding makes hair shorter, not longer - meaning that these animated wenches must have cut one back section of hair a good foot shorter than the braided portions, which would seem to be a strange thing to do. Of course, given the other dubious anatomical features present in, for example, Grendel’s mother, I suppose it is only to be expected.

And of course, historical movies are always a blend of period accuracy and contemporary sensibilities in any case. I highly doubt actresses in Renaissance movies don actual lead makeup for the cause, or forgo using shampoo and conditioner for the duration of filming. And how many actresses conform to the physical standards of beauty prevalent at the time? It just doesn’t work - look at the BBC Pride and Prejudice. Sure, Jane probably would have been considered prettier than Lizzie at the time, but watching the film with modern eyes it seems so obvious she isn’t that all the references to Jane’s superior beauty strike a false note. Given this, I suppose filmmakers figure we wouldn’t be able to cope with a leading lady with unshaven legs or a size 14 figure, let alone wimples and bound hair.

Still, some of the circumstances in which heroines wander around with flowing tresses are quite bizarre. As the owner of flowing tresses myself I happen to know that wind and physical activity quickly turn “flowing” into “matted, dingy and beginning to spontaneously dreadlock”. Adding wood fires into the mix makes them downright dangerous. So to see Eowyn wandering around Rohan, of all places, exposing her perfectly-groomed wavy hair to the howling wind really just reinforces the fact she had a death wish. Even when she’s on the lam riding horses and hauling sacks of potatoes, it doesn’t seem to occur to her to put her hair up. Funnily enough this can be excused during her battle scenes, as neatly-braided hair would have drawn even more attention to herself amidst the shaggy-locked Riders, who apparently found through trial and error that the quickest way to a glorious death is getting hair in your eyes in the middle of a battle. Honestly, is it any wonder the Free Peoples were in jeopardy? At least Galadriel had the sanity to remain a soothing background presence for the sake of her coiffure - and one notes that the actual saviors of Middle-Earth were two of the few characters with short, sensible haircuts.

Another thing that bugs me in films is childbirth - a common peeve among crunchy seditious types, I believe. I read a study once comparing the rates of exotic childbirth complications in film and TV to real life, which was illuminating; but that’s not what bothers me so much as the general attitude of pace. Aaarggh, she’s in labour! Here’s the car! Here’s the lift! Here’s the wheelchair! Here’s the IV! Thirty seconds of screentime, tops; twenty-five hand-held shots in all. One gets the impression of someone running to the bathroom to be sick, which (although a genuine facet of labour generally unrecorded on film) is rather more sudden and urgent than the average childbirth.

Gone with the Wind (the book, not the film), for all its flaws, actually did a decent job of portraying the monotony and dreary lagging of childbirth. Films and TV, not so much. Rachel’s birth in Friends took an appropriately long time, but the realism was counteracted by the fact that she seemed to be perfectly normal and oblivious to events between contractions and had to be told when she was ready to push.

The really odd one is Star Trek. Again, I recognise that the series was made in space-time as well as portraying it; but still. How come every combination of species gives birth reclining? The Bajoran “no pain during childbirth” thing was intriguing, but in general it’s all much of a muchness - screaming, tricorders, oh-dear-the-baby’s-in-distress-we’ll-have-to-transport-it-out. Very dull of the writers, really. Shouldn’t Klingon women at least be gritty and cling to a knotted rope or something?

Another one, of course, is religion. This was brought home to me recently during an embarrassing moment in Bible study, where I was temporarily unable to distinguish between facts about the Ark of the Covenant gleaned from the Old Testament and those picked up from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it’s the more insidious dumbing-down of religion that bugs me. Take Shepherd Book from Firefly, who responds to River Tam’s criticisms of the Bible not with devastating presuppositional argumentation but a lame line about how “You don’t fix faith, it fixes you” - in other words, it’s OK to believe a load of drivel as long as it makes you feel good. Now, religion being what it is I’m sure this is a true portrayal of the opinions of many, and I don’t object to a different point of view being portrayed per se (especially by a possibly fraudulent Shepherd); but I suspect this was Joss’ way of being terribly sensitive and enlightened about religion, and given many other references in his shows it’s clear he just doesn’t get it.

All this does occasionally hamper my enjoyment of movies. Helpdesk Man, of course, has it worse. Being knowledgeable in computers, swordfighting, science and biomechanics I’m pretty sure he feels actual pain whenever a character destroys a computer by firing into the monitor or indulges in a bout of aim-at-the-sword-not-the-opponent duelling. In this instance my lack of science education is kind of an asset - it never occurred to me to find sound in space a problem until he pointed it out, and I am deliciously free to make up my own mind as to whether replicators/transporter technology/cloaking/phasers/warp drive are possible, fictional or currently in existence.

Other things that don’t bug me include horses - which my horsey friends tell me are always switched around in movies for budgetary reasons, hoping we won’t notice, which clearly I don’t - vehicles, costume authenticity and architecture. Just think how much richer and more frustrating the movie-going experience would be if I were able to simmer about the non-period use of cotton blend, the blatant mixing of Gothic and Baroque architectural elements or the implausibly high engine sound of a…. um, car that makes a different engine sound. I could be like those mysterious contributors to IMDb who point out that a film set in 1954 features a 1955 Chevy in the background, an observation which never fails to astound me.

So tell me, Gentle Readers: what peeves you in film? Are you a doctor who cringes every time CPR is performed incorrectly; an expert in multiple-personality disorder who fins most portrayals of it inaccurate; or a psychobotanist who simply feels left out?

Much has been written about the symbolism of hair. Admittedly, on the Internet at any rate, ninety per cent of this is devoted to decrying the mullet; but there is wider scholarship. Natalia Ilyn’s The Blonde Myth: The Roots of the Blonde Myth in Our Culture references, according to the blurb, “ancient myths, fairy tales, Hollywood iconography, and the daily assault of advertising” - not too shabby. Victorian women coveted abundant hair; African-American women distinguished “good” hair and “bad” and wore either as a conscious statement of race; the shaved head has symbolised everything from concentration camps to fevers, prostitution to gang affiliation.

Historically, short hair was a symbol of something - usually something pretty dire - while long hair was the default. Today it’s the opposite - no-one asks why a woman has short hair, but long hair is assumed to indicate some unusual religious affiliation, a penchant for Ren Faires or an incipient donation to Locks of Love. Having long hair myself, I have been asked a number of unusual questions. One woman, seeing me with my hair in a braided bun, inquired if I was Brethren - I didn’t like to inform her she was getting her stereotypes wrong, as around these-here parts the Brethren women secure their front hair with a barrette and wear a non-braided bun behind, sometimes with a headcovering. My favourite was when I was working at an ice-cream shop, with my hair done in Heidi braids, and two girls came by to apply for jobs. They looked at me distastefully, handed over their CsV in a giggly and collaborative fashion, and then inquired “Do they make you wear your hair like that?” Needless to say, they did not get the job.

In general, though, comments are positive if occasionally bewildering. Being told my hair is long, for example, is the sort of statement that can only properly be answered by adopting a sort of River Tam expression and saying “Your shirt is red”, or alternatively looking startled, grabbing a handful of hair and screaming. One is never sure if the motive is complimentary or intended to tactfully point out a faux pas. Sort of like “Your slip is showing”, only “Hon, I don’t know if you’re aware, but you must have skipped last month’s trim and your hair grew fourteen inches… just FYI”. One half expects to be slipped a sympathetic wink and a pair of scissors.

Equally difficult to answer is “I’ve always wanted long hair”. Now, of all the fond desires in the world, this one is fairly easy to achieve. The stuff sprouts spontaneously from your head, after all. It’s easier to grow than lentil sprouts, and even I managed that once, although I admit I subsequently couldn’t find anything more useful to do with them than feed them to the chickens. People, if you want long hair, there is one simple step: don’t cut it. And don’t tell me “My hair doesn’t grow long”. You tried growing it a few years back, right? And since then? You cut it, didn’t you, genius.

Forgive my snark. It must be the weight of all that hair pressing on the sarcasm centres of my brain. I fully respect the fact that this world contains bald men, women with alopecia and people with crazed, scissor-happy spouses, all of whom may legitimately be longing for knee-length tresses. But for the rest of you leeches, listen up: I put in my time to get this hair. You know, all those long, arduous years of doing nothing. If you aren’t willing to commit to the strenuous passivity of not going to the hairdresser every month, your claim that long hair is the key to the Nirvana you seek seems suspiciously shallow. Beware, or I may find out your occupation - neurosurgeon, prima ballerina, archaeologist - and tell you with a wistful sigh “I’ve always wanted to do that”.* You have been warned.

What gets the most comments these days is the colour of my hair. After mooping through life for many years as a streaky dishwater blonde I discovered henna, and risked the wrath of the Almighty by turning into a redhead. I’d like to say “turning back into a redhead”, as I had some pretensions to strawberry blondeness as a kidling; but it’s a stretch. Fake as a fish, this colour. Fake fake fake.

At least, so it seems to me who knows the deep dark secret. Apparently it isn’t glaringly obvious to the average passer-by, possibly because my axolotly glowing pallor is mistakable enough for the complexion of the Real Thing. If I were to visit England, I might even get beat up. Cool, huh?

Which leads me to the surrealest hair conversation I’ve had by far. It was following the birth of the snortlepig - and when I say “following”, I mean that I had just completed an 18-hour induced labour and forceped placental extraction, was out of my mind on nitrous oxide and covered with enough blood to decorate the dead of the Pelennor Fields. The three doctors who had trooped in to save me from the perils of the operating room were standing around staring at me - oh, did I mention I was stark naked and kind of a yellowish-green colour? Anyway - standing around, staring at me, covered up to their elbows in my life-gore and vaguely observing the morsel of humanity clutched awkwardly to Helpdesk Man’s chest.

Finally one of them spoke.

“I thought she’d have your red hair”, she said.

“No no, this is henna”, I said with the apologetic tone I always feel obliged to use on such occasions for having duped the public, but secretly pleased she hadn’t noticed my inch of roots showing.

“Oh, really! Henna! I was gonna use that a while back. I dye my hair but it’s really damaging, I haven’t been red for ages. It’s Indian, right?”

“Sort of”, I said, casting a glance at the Indian doctor who was looking mildly amused, and wondering if anyone would give me anything to eat.

“Do you think it would go with my skin tone?”

The doctor in question had sallow, faintly olive-tinted skin, but then she had just saved me from a trip to the operating room.

“Sure”, I lied valiantly, and then as guilt (or was it simply the desire to pass out?) overcame me I added “But do a strand test first.”

At that point, mercifully, the midwife ushered everyone out of the room so I could go wash the blood out from between my toes (a novel sensation, incidentally, do try it sometime). Fifteen months later, many aspects of my labour have blurred into a vaguely hellish impression of dinginess and pain**, but I still remember that doctor. Should Fate land me in hospital again, I hope I see her once more. Perhaps she could give me a heart transplant and we could talk about tanning.

*Writers also suffer from this problem.

**Not to be a downer or anything.

After revealing a few times on the Internet that I don’t use shampoo and conditioner, I occasionally get random emails asking what I do with my hair. Natural haircare is Coming Back In, whether for reasons of ecology, thrift, fear of deadly chemicals or just general hippieness. So for reference’s sake, here’s my basic spiel.

Natural haircare comes in many forms, and I’ve written a few Suite articles about various kinds.  Here they are:

Water-Only Hair Washing

Conditioner-Only Hair Washing

Different Kinds of Natural Haircare

Reasons to Use Natural Haircare Methods

Hair Feels Sticky After Water-Only Washing

Baking Soda and Vinegar Hair Washing

Gentle Hair Care Techniques

Does Brushing Damage Hair?

How to Prevent and Treat Split Ends

Mixing Henna to Dye Hair

Using a Boar Bristle Brush

Using Henna to Dye Hair

Facts and Myths About Henna

I’ve also written several about braids, one on traction alopecia, one on post-partum hair loss, a few on hair growth and length, a couple on Amish hairstyles… I have a Thing about hair. Obviously.

I came across natural haircare a couple of years ago on the Long Hair Community forums (a place I highly recommnd for all sorts of hair-related advice, long or otherwise).  I’d been using extremely expensive salon products after my wedding hairdresser browbeat me into buying them by lamenting the condition of my hair.  Not just shampoo and conditioner, but masques and leave-in treatments… the lot.  And not only was it not doing much for my hair, but it was costing the earth. Still, my main motivation to try water-only washing was the geeky experimental factor of it.  So I switched to WO without skipping a beat.

WO works better for some than others.  Some people find it makes their hair thicker (probably due to a reaction to SLS in hair products) - Helpdesk Man does, although I can’t say it did the same for me.  I found the regime fairly labour-intensive, as it involves a lot of grooming with a boar bristle brush; and if I neglected my hair for a few days it quickly went yicky.  As a result, after I had the snortlepig and barely had enough time to shower, let alone sit mermaid-style on a rock and finger-comb my hair, WO just became too much of a pain. I have sittable-on hair, which doesn’t help - long hair needs more brushing to spread the sebum from roots to tip.  Besides, I was getting sick of cold showers.

Having gotten used to not paying for shampoo and conditioner, I didn’t want to go back to regular products. So my current system is baking soda and vinegar washing - easy on the former, plenty of the latter.  It requires more frequent washes than WO (although still less than regular S&C), but the washing process is quicker and it cleans the hair more thoroughly, meaning it’s lower maintenance between washes.

Sadly, I don’t think I’ve yet arrived at the natural haircare nirvana of some of my long-haired friends, who have managed to concoct the perfect alchemy that keeps their hair bouncy, shiny, healthy and happy.  (Sometimes these alchemies are surprisingly complex, incidentally, and involve rotating several different products or washing techniques over a three-week period, combined with spritzes and moisture treatments. You know the law of the Internet: “No matter how into something you are, there’s always someone more into it than you?” Yup.) My hair isn’t as moisturised as it should be, and it tangles like a fiend. Which is almost entirely due to laziness on my part, as I know there are things my hair likes which I keep forgetting to do.

So last week, after an inspirational discussion with a friend who has nicer hair than me, I spent two nights with plastic bags over my head, soaking my hair first in henna paste and then in a mixture of yoghurt and honey.  My hair feels softer than it has for months.  Note to self: pay a bit of attention to your locks every once in a while, lest they flutter broken from your head like so much shredded wheat.