Tomorrow could be boring

Flavour fail: man gloss

I recently acquired a nifty jumbo-sized Urban Decay Primer potion (which has become a must-have beauty staple). It came packaged with various other mini-sized products, one of which was a Pocket Rocket lip gloss. It's a lovely coral pink colour and I immediately smothered some on without further inspection because coral-pink is one of my favourite lip gloss shades on the planet.

To date, the only things I've known to go wrong with lip glosses are:

1) Brush fail: the old Bobbi Brown glosses had a hairy wand that exploded to something resembling a chimney-sweep after a few applications.

2) Ageing lipline fail: the gloss creeps up where it shouldn't.

3) Lipgloss-hair fail: repeat after me - "Thou shalt not wear lipgloss on a windy day."

Whilst I'm delighted to encounter make-up novelties after over 20 years of various degrees of make-up junkedom, this new surprise wasn't a pleasant one.

The gloss tasted strangely... savoury.

I looked at the packet. Apparently it was a "Timothy" flavour. A man-flavour? Slightly worrying.

It definitely reminded me of something other than lip gloss, but what? I hadn't encountered Pocket Rocket glosses before, so I checked the Urban Decay website. I read the description and thought: "Ah; they're a pisstake of those undress-the-bikini-clad model pens that used car salesmen would buy each other for office secret santa in the 80s. How clever."

This is from the product description:

"Undress our men with the flick of your wrist! Inside the cap of our custom tube is a photo of a yummy man.

And the gloss? This formula is so slick and cushiony, you would love it even in a plain ol’ tube. Each shade varies in opacity and finish, but all have a sweet crème brûlée flavor.

Tilt the tube back-and-forth to strip them to their undies! (We've even included front and rear photos.) Whether you swoon for a future senator or a tree-hugger, one of our men is sure to please you. Our guys make awesome gifts for bachelorette parties, baby showers, or b-days."

Here's the thing. They were going for crème brûlèe, but got McCoy's Flame Grilled Steak crisps instead. Everyone who has tasted steak and the aforementioned crisps knows that these crisps taste nothing like actual steak. Instead, they're flavoured with a fairly sweet, slightly burnt, smoky, umami savoury concoction that I find quite enjoyable when served on a ridged potato product. I don't actually like steak that much. 

I don't want to have gloop tasting of it stuck to my lips. When I realised what the flavour reminded me of I laughed out loud. It amuses me that some flavourist has got away with calling this crème brûlèe.

And it tickles my inner nerd that the McCoy's marketing department has long lead with a "McCoy's - Man Crisps" -campaign.

I imagined various scenarios where this gloss might have been put through a consumer test before launch.

"How did you like it, miss?"

"My boyfriend said I tasted yummy."

The trouble with being a science student

I read a lot and I think a lot.

I don't want to live forever, but I'd like a way of knowing what happens to the world, the human race, the Universe and everything.

There are days when I wonder what the point of living is, given that it's likely we'll [the Universe] either crunch or expand out of existence anyway, so even if we somehow [rather improbably at this point] manage to colonise space, there will be precisely zero left of all of our weighty human efforts at the end of it all.

Of course if there's a crunch, there will hopefully be a new Big Bang as a result of it (which makes one wonder how many Universes there have been before ours), but that'll be like shaking the celestial Etch-a-Sketch and starting again, with no trace of our "achievements"; just the building blocks everything is made up of.

Have a nice day!

Biggest Muppet Fangirl

In the first company conference I attended after joining, I was asked to do a presentation to everyone (about, oh, 200 people & all the company founders) about what it meant to work for them. Struggling for ways in which to put my feelings to words, I drew a Kermit on the flip chart and said: Well, this place; everyone here - it's like the Muppet Show.

(Laughter. Confused looks).

I continued by explaining that there seemed to be a myriad of colourful, big personalities in the room with a bunch of different talents. And that the company was a big variety show with a great leader at the helm.

Mark (figurehead of company, co-founder, co-owner): "So, are you calling me a Muppet?"

(Silence).

Me: "Well, yes. But coming from me, that's a big compliment!"

(Everyone is holding their breath).

Mark: "Oh, I quite like being compared to Kermit. At least you didn't say Napoleon."

(Relieved laughter).

TRUE STORY.

I want my Miss Piggy Powder Compact right NOW! Hay-ah!

Perhaps it's a desire to be forever childlike and cute like the Japanese girls, or an attempt at denial over one's own age - or maybe just a simple nostalgia marketing trick - but it seems that various unlikely characters have been appearing on beauty compacts for a little while now.

Can't say who was the absolute trend-setter, but Paul & Joe's Disney make-up range must have been one of the first of the recent batch. Bambi face powder or, what is that, a tube of dog shampoo? No, it seems to be a hand cream. The star of the range surely has to be the skunk powder. You too can smell this good!

I've seen it sold in Harrods here in UK if you absolutely must get hold of some.

Recently, I spotted that the quirky make-up range Too Faced has decided to become super Smurfy - the blue characters have been chosen as the theme for a new make-up range. The creator of the range, Jerrod Blandino, is convinced that "Smurfette was the 'it' girl of the 80s generation". Yes. We were jealous until we went blue in the face.

MAC is also up to something - I've read that they will be launching a Hello Kitty line this spring. That seems suitably cute and appropriate, but their current special collection might raise a few more eyebrows. Would you consider Dame Edna your style icon? Not to say that the way in which her looks are applied is sloppy (she always looks excellent on stage), but the look is intended to be a send-up of an over-done drag-queen. And it fits the bill very well. I suppose MAC is a range with colours and textures fit for theatrical as well as everyday looks and maybe launching a Dame Edna range is in some ways a nod towards MAC's make-up artist roots. Since the Estee Lauder aquisition, we've had more "seasonal looks" and the sort of fluff you usually associate with a mainstream brand - not to mention MAC perfumes, which clearly indicate Lauder Group meddling (same happened to Bobbi Brown after they were bought by the Lauder Group - all of a sudden there was a perfume launch).

So with Dame Edna eyeshadows and lipsticks, MAC can teach us all how to send up your own customers, or if you prefer this interpretation, to pay homage to its own beginnings as a professional make-up line. Or if you think like me, you'll applaud them for doing something that gets all of us writing about them.

What I really would like to see now is a Muppet Make-Up range. Are you listening out there? You could have Animal deodorant (it brings out the animal in you), Gonzo concealer (hide your little beauty flaws) and a Miss Piggy Powder Compact (you too can be like the most glamorous pig in showbiz). Come on! It's not such a leap. There was even a Miss Piggy's Guide To Life back in the day.

The worst (best?) pop video ever?

Going to Finland has its hazards. Like being exposed to this sort of thing. Only I don't seem to be alone in thinking that it's so bad it's good! But then again, a great many products of the 70s entertainment industry were.

The bit where the dancers all line up and the front man suddenly wiggles his hips is my favourite.

I Googled Armi and Danny and found a tribute site to Armi; sadly she died in 2002. To cheer you up afterwards, you can check out more videos on Danny's website.

Cadbury's is vile. I feel like saying I told you so. So I will.

There are now fresh fears over more Cadbury's brands, as the original Salmonella contamination has now thought to have spread to other products. A leaking waste pipe is the culprit, apparently. I've ranted about the poor quality of Cadbury's chocolate before, but the image of some unhygienic factory with waste leaking into the food mixture just really seals the deal. Luckily I've been avoiding Cadbury's products like the plague anyway.

Arf arf.

The official Cadbury's website displays an understated product recall, but is trying hard to send a message of luxury on the front page. Brr. Well, can you imagine? "Hi, welcome to our chocolate factory where we have just developed a new product for the summer called Salmonella Surprise!"

They even had the cheek to delay the release of this information to the Food Standards Agency.

Questions were being asked why it took Cadbury more than five months to report the contamination. Although the incident occurred in January, the Food Standards Agency was told only on Monday.

In the intervening months, the number of cases of the same, unusual strain of salmonella poisoning trebled. Health experts are unable to say whether there is a link.

Homeopathy hocus pocus

It's lovely to have alternatives available for "conventional", Western medicine. It's nice to have an "open mind". I make these statements with only a touch of wryness; I do sincerely try to keep an open mind. Nevertheless, I am really rather relieved to read news reports about a group of leading British doctors who have directly challenged the way many NHS trusts use their funds.

A GROUP of Britain’s leading doctors has urged every NHS trust to stop paying for alternative medicine and to use the money for conventional treatments. Their appeal is a direct challenge to the Prince of Wales’s outspoken campaign to widen access to complementary therapies. Public funding of “unproven or disproved treatments” such as homoeopathy and reflexology, which are promoted by the Prince, is unacceptable while huge NHS deficits are forcing trusts to sack nurses and limit access to life-saving drugs, the doctors say. As reported by The Times Online

I have very little faith in the NHS, as some of you may already know, but, rather ironically, the aforementioned doctors' lack of faith towards unproven alternative therapies is increasing my faith towards the doctors.

Some alternative therapies may form a solid support mechanism for suffering patients, but I do think they should be an optional extra; a luxury in a way; not something that the taxpayers pay for. If any of the alternative therapies would be scientifically proven to be consistently effective in treating serious conditions, I'd be saying different things.

If I have a tension headache, or if I am feeling the pressure of stress, aromatherapy might help. But I wouldn't dream of making someone else pay for my treatment.

If I have an incurable disease for which I am receiving conventional treatment, I might also wish to use some additional therapies. But the additional therapies should be a choice, an extra and entirely at the expense of the private individual.

Some alternative therapies seem to hover between the line of "conventional" and "alternative". That's when this whole thing becomes very messy and it's hard to hold on to a hard line on either side of the argument. The BBC website has a wonderful set of resources, examining these very issues:

Research conducted by the BBC has shown that alternative medicines are becoming increasingly popular. Yet their effectiveness is yet to be proven to the majority of medical practitioners in the UK and there are concerns over safety as many of the treatments remain untested. BBC News Online's health team examines the issues.

Paris, 20e arrondissement
Originally uploaded by mainblanche.

My biggest beef is with Homeopathy. You see, it's utter bollocks. Well, apart from the - sometimes, admittedly, very vividly experienced - Placebo effect.

Let me elaborate (although the above statement sums it all up quite tidily). The original concept of Homeopathy, when explained to a person to whom metaphysical matters are of interest, will sound inviting, promising and even plausible.

To treat the patient with a little bit of what might be making them unwell.

Classical homeopathy is generally defined as a system of medical treatment based on the use of minute quantities of remedies that in larger doses produce effects similar to those of the disease being treated. Hahnemann believed that very small doses of a medication could have very powerful healing effects because their potency could be affected by vigorous and methodical shaking (succussion). Hahnemann referred to this alleged increase in potency by vigorous shaking as dynamization. Hahnemann thought succussion could release "immaterial and spiritual powers," thereby making substances more active. "Tapping on a leather pad or the heel of the hand was alleged to double the dilution" (ibid.). From (the utterly scrumptious) The Sceptic's Dictionary.

So, the original concept seemed to have a little bit of potential, well, to gullible sorts anyway, but good grief. Basing the entire treatment on how much, and through which very specific methods it has been diluted?

Let me put this in other terms. Let's say we start with a few drops of a plant extract. All well and good. I actually DO believe that plant-based medicine and treatments can be incredibly effective. After all, much of the now so-called conventional medicine started that way.

However, in Hocus-pocus-pathy, you take the plant extracts, dilute, shake... then take the diluted mixture, add a few drops of that to a new batch of water and dilute, shake... then take the diluted mixture, add a few drops of that... well, so on and so forth, until the final "remedy" has as many molecules of the original plant as you would randomly find by chance in, say, sea water.

Just think about that quietly for a moment.

Various tincture-based elements are then added (alcohol, grapeseed oil, or perhaps something else to give the remedy a medicinal consistency) and abracadabra, a cure-all is ready!

Homeopathy is based on the notion that water has a memory. That its molecules can remember the presence of a substance that, for all intents and purposes is no longer there.

Did I mention the word BOLLOCKS yet?

What homeopathic practitioners do very effectively, is provide consultative, holistic treatment to their patients, complete with such apparent (or quite possibly very sincere) care for the wellbeing of the patients that the experience in itself must be very healing. And I don't dispute that. I just so wish that people weren't being told, well, bollocks.

I wish that if a practitioner were to set up a councelling and spiritual support service, they'd just set up one of those; not a charlatan outfit designed to exploit the weak and vulnerable. Homeopathy is the Scientology of alternative therapies and I really don't think it's fair to charge people horrid amounts for so-called remedies and therapies when it's all a bit of a con, really.

It's been bugging me for some time to know that in this country, my tax money has gone towards paying for someone's homeopathy treatment - I would certainly let out a little whoop of delight if NHS dropped that form of alternative therapy from their list of funded services. It is none of my business if people wish to pay for this kind of stuff privately (it doesn't harm me; and I know lots of people get something very real out of it), but I don't think it has any place whatsoever standing shoulder-to-shoulder with therapies that have been scientifically proven to be effective.

Cross-posted to: Blogcritics.org
EDIT 30/05/06: This entry was chosen as one of the "Editors' Picks" at BlogCritics.

Finland will RAWK Eurovision with Lordi!

As many traditional media sources have already gleefully reported, the 2006 Finnish Eurovision song contest entry will definitely not be what you'd expect. But let me correct these aforementioned sources - the entry is very much what you'd expect if you knew about the Finnish deadpan humour and mentality. I am delighted and even a little gleeful that my lovely, quirky homeland has decided to share its sense of humour around the world by entering Lordi - a Finnish Spinal Tap, or thereabouts - into the contest with a song called "Hard Rock Hallelujah". Sadly, and rather predictably, not many people (not even all Finns, judging by the local media reaction) "get" the tongue-in-cheek element of Lordi. Reports from the Eurovision 2006 host country Greece and from the Finnish church authorities, asking for immediate removal of Lordi from the contest, suggest that some people seem not to be getting the joke.

Lordi sounds like a hybrid between all of the 80s cheesy hard rock bands; a soundtrack to a b-list horror flick; with an underlying pop-sensibility that might even make it popular in countries other than Finland.

The Guardian wrote:

The trauma of losing the Eurovision Song Contest can do funny things to a country. In Finland, where the words "nul points" are burned into the national psyche, they have decided to take radical action and appoint hard-rocking death metal band Lordi as their Eurovision entry for 2006. A far cry from the breezy folk tunes and ultra-safe pop of traditional Eurovision fare [...]

Wait a second there, matey! You are confusing Finland with Norway! I don't recall any folk song entries from Finland! Oh, I admit. Most people seem to happily lump Nordic and Scandinavian countries into one compartment in their heads, probably entitled "That meatball guy from The Muppets".

Still, I felt it was my duty as a Finn to write the alternative announcement about Lordi, so here I am. Finland has graced the Eurovision song contest with its presence since 1961 and has always entered with a fabulously cheesy pop song in the true nature of the contest. Definitely no folk songs in sight. Who knows, with groups like Värttinä, maybe Finland should have used a folk song once in a while?

The 2006 Eurovision song contest will be broadcast from Athens on the 20th of May.

Cross-posted to: Blogcritics.org

EDIT: You may also be interested in the later entries relating to this post, We won!, Lordi scores record points... and Lordi in London

Now I've seen it all

There's tacky and kitch. And then there's...

Homer and Marge garden ornament. £24.99.

Sigh.

Now I've seen it all. (Well, obviously not, but go with me on this one).

See, I have this weird idea about gardens; I only like them when they're about plants and nature, with the accessories only being there to enhance that. I have so much plastic and kitch and stuff around normally that it just doesn't belong in my garden.

Claims to fame

I used to work as a make-up artist and hair/wig stylist. I studied at the London College of Fashion for a HND in Theatre Studies from 1994 to 1996, and was involved in a number of productions right from the start. I worked on all kinds of things - fringe theatre, pop promos, extremely dubious low budget films, fashion shows, feature films and so on. I also did some training and demonstrations for British Airways staff and for health spa staff. In the end, the most financially lucrative work came from private consultations and wedding make-up services.

It was fun, exciting, frustrating and exhausting. I climbed from a student working for free to someone being able to charge fairly well for some of the better gigs. However, those good gigs were not frequent. That time of my life could be made to sound oh-so-glamorous and I could name-drop, and frame it in a million snooty ways, but the truth is: I got stuck in that stage of not-quite-there-yet and didn't have the patience to scratch a living for as long as it might have taken to find out if I'd ever actually make it.

One of the worst things about the whole college course and make-up artist career was, that many of us were naively hoping that once we got out of college and found some footing on the showbiz circuit, we'd be able to leave behind all the part-time jobs and temping contracts and shop work and waitressing and all that stuff we had to do so we'd be free and available when The Call would come.

Yeah, right.

Fandom in small doses (or a post in which Pia uses Far Too Many Capital Letters)

I only became familiar with the concept of science fiction Fandom a few years ago. It's a curious Land in which The Fans exist on nourishment of genre lit and entertainment, conversations embroiled in endless inside joke filled punnery and the occasional social gathering that inevitably involves copious amounts of food, filking and fantastical costumes (the latter often put together in situ, from old stockings and bottle tops).

The Creators (writers, artists, media types) on the Other Side of Fandom sometimes grace these gatherings with their presence, imparting words of wisdom, but most importantly, autographs and photo opportunities.