YOU WILL COMPLY YOU WILL HAVE FUN

Sure, Alex. "HAD" to wear a thong.
Alex: "I had a lot of fun. And alcohol. But mostly fun."

What is it about blogging? I think for me, with personal blogs (as opposed to motivational, advice blogs like Zen Habits or Steve Pavlina) it's just nice to know that other people exist. I like reading about people's days, their random thoughts. I like knowing that there's people out there who are unfamous and yet also funny, intelligent, and interesting.

Really good book: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. It's awesome. Took me a while to get past the blahblahblah of various characters (one detriment of reading fast is that i tend to ignore things, and thus character names, that do not immediately register as important. this is also central to how i function in real life, and has probably contributed to my crappy memory. well, it's not that it's necessarily crappy, it's just that i automatically filter out things i label as "Not Totally Necessary". which is a lot) . Anyway! Stranger in a Strange Land is a sci-fi book (which i do not normally like, so this one's pretty awesome) about a guy who is raised on Mars with the Martians, who obviously have entirely different ways of operating than humans. About twenty (?) years later he returns to Earth, and his learnings and teachings there are fascinating...made me think about what limits we would not have were we not told they were limits.
Reminds me of the hours i would spent jumping off my couch, clutching my shiny Beanie Baby dragon, attempting to fly.

Anyway after linking to Steve Pavlina again (whose blog introduced me to polyphasic sleeping, and inspired me to start my own polyphasic experiment, and thus this blog), i found that his newest experiment is polyamorism. This is also a big theme in Stranger in a Strange Land...and a concept that presents big problem for my weak ego and monstrous jealousy problem. Anyway. Interesting stuff. Well, more than interesting. Having grown up in a Strictly Monagamous Except For the Inevitable Cheating-Christian-Ideals-American-Culture, that shit blows my fucking mind.

Oh! The no-shampoo experiment! That's going well. Yesterday i was sick as all hell (great timing, illness! awesome job! well you succeeded at preventing me getting drunk on New Year's Eve, but c'mon, i've only gotten drunk like once in the last TWO YEARS. come on. gimme a break.) My hair did feel a little greasy and, after sleeping for seventeen hours straight and being dragged out of bed to read on the couch for 7 hours before sleeping for anothter 12, i did not shower or rinse my hair at all, so today I was very excited to baking-soda my hair this morning, and then i extra-diluted the apple cider vinegar (use less if your hair is getting greasy) and then rinsed with some leftover chamomile tea with honey. My hair is shiny and wonderful, but still feels a liiiiiiiiiitle more oily than i'd like (again, i'm freakishly sensitive to this), so i think i will, after not 'washing' tomorrow, i will replace the apple cider vinegar/water mix with lemon juice and water.

UPDATE: My hair is actually not in the slightest oily. It is just softer than it has ever been in my entire life, and i had no concept of how this felt, let alone how to express it.
wow.

MY FAVORITE THING ABOUT GOING NO SHAMPOO:
freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom.
i used to spend literally a half-hour about once a week in the shampoo/soap/beauty products aisle in safeway in high school and early college, before i moved in with my boyfriend and we started going shopping together. but god, before that, i'd stand there mesmorized, smelling shampoos and conditioners, trying and buying different expensive brands (when i moved out of my dad's house i had a huuuge drawer full of probably two dozen half-full bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash). it was a really weird, consumerist addiction, fueled by TV commercials that told me i had to use Products to be Pretty. But now, i can just breeeeeeeze past that life-sucking aisle, knowing my hair is happier, healtheir, and chemical-free, without blowing extra cash on harmful, unnecessary chemicals pushed on us by a consumer culture.
CONSUMER CULTURE:

Okay, I find thse two Totally Accepted Body Care Processes a little sketch:
1: Shampoo, then Condition your hair
This translates to: Strip your hair of its natural oils, then attempt to replace those with more chemicals. These grease up your hair and you feel the need to strip it of those oils again tomorrow, then replace them, then strip them....
2. Wash your face, use Toner, then Moisturize.
This translates to: Use soap to remove dirt, use toner to strip your face of natural oils, then use moisturizer to attempt to replace those oils. Wait, what?? why not fucking SKIP both of those steps, and let your face do its own goddamn thing? Wanna know my washing regimen?

1. Instead of Shampoo and Conditioner: Every other day, scrub scalp with baking soda. Rinse with apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, or chamomile tea.
2. Instead of Body Wash: Before showering, use a body brush to remove dead skin and exfoliate. Rinse body in shower.
3. Instead of Facial Soap, Toner, and Moisturizer: Rinse face with hot, then warm, then cold water. Every few days naturally exfoliate face gently with fingernails.