Category: Advice

Accumulated Knowledge

Advice, House & Home

Background:  I once worked for an ad agency that had among its clients Vidal Sassoon, and from them I learned all the secrets of the trade.  Below is just a sample.

At its most basic level, shampoo is just a detergent.  Like all detergents, it takes away oils and greases.  Unlike your average kitchen dishwashing detergent, however, it’s very “gentle” — which means it has been severely diluted and therefore, on a cost per fluid ounce / milliliter basis, it outpaces Biden-priced gasoline.  This is particularly true if you buy the “premium” brands (e.g. with French names).

Technically, you could use simple bodywash (also expensive) or even a bar soap like Zest to wash your hair, although it’s a little harsh if your hair is normally thin and fragile.  However (and this leads into our sub-topic), what really counts, if you care for your hair at all, is not the detergent you use but the conditioner.

This is way more important than your shampoo, and a good conditioner will make your hair healthier than will some VO5-type budget conditioner — although, as with all things, budget conditioners work extremely well for some people because their hair responds to it better than to others, even expensive ones.

The more aggressive / cheaper your shampoo, the more money you’ll have to spend on conditioner.

So what do I use?  The cheapest shampoo (generally to be found on the bottom shelf at Kroger, with the lowest cost per ounce) and a mid-range conditioner like Pantene Pro-V.  But I have thick, healthy and wavy (not curly) hair, and I never use a blowdryer.  Also, I wash my hair about every other day, and use conditioner once a week only.

YMMV.

Addendum:  if you’re bald or wear your hair in a don’t-care buzz cut, you are obviously disqualified from commenting on this section, in that your opinions are like those of a cave-dwelling hermit about TV shows, or John Kerry about guns.

Thoughts On The Colorado Thing

Advice, Elections

As we all know, the Colorado courts have ordered Trump’s name removed from the Republican primary ballot of 2024 because he “encouraged insurrection” (yeah I know, he didn’t, there’s no proof, but that’s not gonna stop the Lefty craziness*).  You can’t even write his name in, because the court ordered those ballots to be counted as “spoiled” and discarded.

Of course, this idiocy is going to the Supreme Court, where it should be struck down (and the Colorado courts’ collective pee-pee as well, don’t get me started).

But it might not be, because if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Supreme Court as currently constituted is that what seems blindingly apparent to anyone with a sentient brain, is often just a way for them to apply some tortured fucking legal logic to gainsay the obvious.

Whatever.

Here, however, is a way for the Stupid Party to do something not stupid.

Simply refuse to hold a primary in Colorado.  (They’re talking about doing the caucus thing — like Iowa does — but that’s not what I’m talking about here.)  Boycott the state completely.  Declare them “irrelevant”.

OR:  let all the Republican weenies who are desperately trying to achieve relevance in the election field refuse to have their names on the ballot as well.  Withdraw from the Colorado primary altogether.

Now of course that will never happen, because politicians are all greedy motherfuckers and all it takes is for one fat New Jersey politician to break the compact and the others would have to get back in.  One might suggest that breaking such a compact would be a clear indicator that the fat fuck isn’t fit to be POTUS, but Joe Biden seems to have made the “fit to hold the office” thing completely irrelevant.

Anyway, this may all be moot because SCOTUS might actually tell Colorado that what they’ve done is un-Constitutional, which it plainly is, but then see my statement above about the Biggest Lawyers’ reliability.

What a mess.

*We need remember only one Leftist quote to prove this statement:

“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail.” — Che Guevara

The Colorado court clearly thinks the same way.  Q.E.D.

Not The Optimal Choice

Advice, House & Home

Today, I want to address the topic of:

Knife Sets

First, the dirty little secret:  not one of the brands which offer their cutlery in “sets” / blocks are very good, in that a “set” of knives tries to do everything well, and only partially succeeds.  Price is not an indicator of quality because inevitably, one (or more) of the components is not fit for function.

I have one of these, purchased before I knew better.

My summary:

  • the bread knife is terrible — it hacks the bread because the serration points are too sharp — and now I use a budget bread knife bought at the supermarket instead.  (The included paring knife is New Wife’s favorite kitchen implement:  we have two.)
  • the carving knives are quite good, but lose their edge rather quickly when you’re cutting things like cooked meat (ahem), so now I grudgingly use an electric carving knife for that purpose, and use the block’s carving knives only for cutting and trimming raw meat and veg.
  • the scissors are total shit — they fell apart (literally) after about six months.  I replaced them with a Kitchen-Aid pair (note the price), and they’re coming up for their sixth year of (ab)use, without complaint.
  • the block’s steak knives are also crappy:  they tear the meat rather than cut it.

Takeaway:  the Son&Heir worked in the kitchen at both Chili’s and Pappadeaux, and took note of what the pro chefs used there.  So when he finally moved into his own place (after sharing with buddies for years), he bought one sinfully-expensive carving knife — I mean, chef-quality — and uses two cheap paring knives (both Zyliss, see above), one serrated, one flat-edge.  He claims that those three take care of about 99% of his kitchen cutting needs.  (“What about the  remaining 1%?”  Dunno, he didn’t tell me;  knowing him, probably his Al Mar folder.)

The only reason to have a knife block at all is so that the knives’ edges aren’t damageded by clanging against each other in the drawer.

Frankly, if I were starting again, I’d get one of those wall-mounted magnetic numbers, and use it to store my own sinfully-expensive carving knife, a couple-three Zyliss utility knives and the Kitchen-Aid scissors.

For steak knives, I’d go with Victorinox because, duh Victorinox (see also:  Schmidt-Rubin rifles #Swiss quality).

Speaking of steak knives, I once had a set of Laguiolet knives, (bought in Paris and modeled, it’s said, on the Pyrenean shepherd’s knife), and they’re awful.

The blades are excellent, but the handles are too thin and they turn in the hand rather disconcertingly.  I think I gave them to Goodwill or something.

Frankly, I’d rather get a set of steak knives separately (as opposed to included with the cutlery set) and just store them in the box they come in, like this one:

Finally, I have a small cleaver for when I lose patience and just need to hack something apart (e.g. pork knuckle), and I have this one, which has a touch-up sharpener built into the sheath:

Five years of serious (ab)use, and counting…

I don’t have a butcher knife and don’t know much about them, but the Bearded Butcher guys use Victorinox, so there ya go.

Feel free, of course, to add your thoughts on this topic in Comments.

Certain Truths

Advice

Over the past couple of days, I’ve seen a couple of things on the Knuckledragger’s website that just make me nod my head at the truth of them.  Here’s the first, which I’d actually seen before — with a caption:

The caption?

“Every time I see this gif, all I can think about is:  child molesters.”

The other one, which also holds universal wisdom, is less radical but sage nevertheless:

Is there a man alive who would go rummaging around in his wife’s or girlfriend’s bag?  Speaking for myself, I just hold the bag as in the pic, and hand it over without saying a word.

When asked why, I make a flippant remark like “I thought I heard some hornets buzzing around in there”, or “No no no, there are things with sharp teeth in there”.

And you know what?  I don’t think I’m wrong, either.

No man should.

“Dear Dr. Kim”

Advice

“Dear Dr. Kim:

“I’m a somewhat public figure, the head of state of a small island kingdom, and I have the rather distasteful task of visiting one of my country’s former colonies in the near future.

“Needless to say, I’m being scolded for the sins of my father (and grandfather, and great-grandfather, etc. etc.) and told that I have to apologise for the ‘unpleasant aspects’ of the colonisation of said ex-colony.

“What do you suggest I say?”

 — CR, London / Windsor / Balmoral et al.

 

Dear CR (if that is really your name, and not some silly outmoded title):

I think you have every obligation to apologize to these poor, hard-done-by indigenous assholes.

You should apologize for:

  • creating an agricultural industry that helped them grow from a hodgepodge assortment of hunter-gatherers into an agricultural nation which would, had they not fucked up said industry through mismanagement (after your government left), have resulted in their country being self-sufficient for all their food needs instead of being the starving basket-case they are currently;
  • a system of democratic government which they had never had before, but still rely on today — even though they’ve done their best to fuck that up with sundry military coups and so on in recent history;
  • a legal system which doesn’t rely on the whim of a chief or the ravings of crazed witch-doctors, but on a series of laws which are more or less copies of your home country’s laws and which grant them all sorts of rights which their ordinary people never enjoyed over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place;
  • things like hospitals (staffed by actual doctors and not the aforementioned crazed witch-doctors), schools which teach people how to read and write (skills also glaringly absent from the ordinary people over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place), and the engineering skills (e.g. roads and plumbing) which they rely upon today in a vain attempt to keep their tottering infrastructure running despite the grasping and egregious corruption and avarice which were, lest we forget, markedly absent from your previous colonial government — at least, compared to the industrial-scale thievery of current times;
  • technology:  things like electricity, radio, telephones and television which, despite the efforts of the BBC to prove otherwise, never existed over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place;
  • sports like cricket, football, tennis, golf and other harmless activities which took the place of indigenous sports like inter-tribal slaughter and fleeing from ravenous wild animals, all of which were a feature of life during the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place
  • a language which enabled the multiple tribes to have a common lingua franca  instead of the intense mutual hatred and mistrust caused by not having such;
  • a culture based upon hitherto-alien concepts like “fair play”, “doing the right thing” and lest we forget, “charity” — none of which, once again, were in existence over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place.

This is but a partial list of things you absolutely should apologize for:  I’m sure your former colonial officials can give you many more.

And then, having made said public groveling apologies, you should get out of town and visit some of the beautiful game parks and reserves, none of which existed over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place.

I hope this helps.

—

“Dear Dr. Kim”

Advice

“Dear Dr. Kim:

“I’m feeling distraught and jealous after my boyfriend slept with his terminally ill female friend as her ‘final wish’. The jealously is eating me up but I can’t express it as she’s dead anyway. I’d been with my partner for three years, and to make matters worse, he didn’t tell me about it straight away for fear of getting dumped.

“While on a group holiday, a mutual friend revealed my partner had cheated on me,  and I’ve been struggling emotionally ever since — particularly because his friend passed away not long afterwards.

“I’m confident that he was never attracted to her, and that they had never had a relationship beyond that, but I suspect she’d always had a secret crush on him. They totally had emotional sex because of her condition.  I don’t even know who initiated it.  It was probably something like how she didn’t want to die a virgin.

“I approached my boyfriend about it following advice I received from fellow forum-users, and he said he’d regretted it immediately.  He didn’t tell me because he didn’t know how I’d react and was afraid that I’d dump him.  He didn’t want to hurt me.

“We’ve had an otherwise perfect relationship, but he’s been struggling in the wake of his friend’s death.

“I hate myself because I get angry inside whenever he mentions her.  I can’t express my jealousy because she’s dead anyway.  This jealousy is eating me up.

“Dr. Kim, how can I deal with this?”

— Dead Jealous, UK

Dear Jealous:

Here’s a question you need to ask yourself (and be honest):  if your guy had asked you if he could grant his friend her dying wish by having sex with her, would you have said yes?

If so, then you have no reason at all for your jealousy.  Of course, you can get pissed off that he didn’t ask you first — it’s not an unreasonable ask — but from his reaction now, I suspect that he feared that you might dump him even for asking.

Which is the second question you need to ask yourself:  would you have dumped him if he’d asked first?  The fact that you’re jealous of a dead woman makes me suspect that you would have — and given that he seems to love you, his rationale for not asking is probably sound.

Here’s a parallel thought.  What if the sick girl had begged your boyfriend to take her to some place she’d never been to before — e.g. Paris — and just the two of them, without you.  Would you be equally jealous now?  And if he hadn’t told you about the trip until after you’d found out, would you be equally angry?

I know, a trip to Paris isn’t the same as sex — not the least because the trip would last longer, and be more expensive than a “final wish bonk” — but the principle is the same:  a friend’s dying wish was granted that you weren’t consulted about.

Frankly, I think you need to get over yourself and your jealousy.  What your guy did was not wrong — by the way, we’d be having a different discussion if you and he were married — and the shades of morality we have here would make this an interesting topic in a university Philosophical Ethics class.

The real question is:  are you ever going to forgive him, and trust that he won’t do anything like this again?  If you do, you have to agree never to bring up the topic again, no matter what the circumstances.  Accept that it happened, his motives were good, and get on with it.

If not, you need to walk away now.  And if I’m to be blunt,if you continue to harp on this and not forgive him, he would be well rid of your jealousy.  Of a dead woman.

 —