'With Jojoba Oil'

After a hard workout, there is nothing more attractive than an uninhibited bath. To sever all connections with civilization, fill up a steaming tub and relax for several minutes with only the gentle hum of the bathroom fan as accompaniment is the personification of ecstasy.

I just emerged from one such bath. I use the term "just" in the general sense: I got dressed before coming to my computer. My bath was, like most baths, a catalyst for muscle relaxation and mental formation, as Hume calls thinking. My epidermal layer is now wrinkled like a prune in the sun, my mind has completely let go; to this moment I am still enjoying the bliss of perfect escape.

Note: "Bliss of Perfect Escape" is a term borrowed from the back of a shampoo bottle. But there is no shame in stealing slogans from cleaning agents. In fact, there is little else to do while laying partially submerged in steaming water.

Case in point, reading shampoo bottles is precisely what I spent the majority of the last forty-five minutes doing. Given lifestyle decisions and a propensity to find entertainment in more orthodox sources, I have rarely found the time to actually read the information on a shampoo bottle. Even while at the shampoo store, I tend to purchase based only on a price per ounce calculation; ingredients, special scents, pictures of attractive women with lots of hair, advertised textures and "Jojoba" are never considered.

Yes, Jojoba. My brother, who has longer hair than I and therefore uses several non-astringent chemicals to "soothe, satisfy and satiate" (also taken from a shampoo bottle) his scalp purchased a bottle of shampoo that specifically contained some Jojoba. Jojoba is, as you might gather from the banner on this post, a fluffy plant that doesn't in its natural form look at all good for one's hair. But hours of careful processing and several tons of heavy machinery turn God's natural gift of Jojoba into a pasty hair product. Come to think of it, maybe the banner is actually of steam from the Jojoba purification plant.

One of the bottles in our bathtub, a blue bottle with a sleek shape designed to make it look larger than it actually is, advertises its secret ingredient before even naming the product. "With Jojoba Oil" is pasted in large but sexy letters over the brand, drawing the consumer's eye there first.

I have only little idea what Jojoba is or what it does for hair, nor do I really care to know more, but the shampoo company obviously feels that Jojoba is very key. The back of the bottle has a paragraph of prose describing the "euphoric cleanliness" instilled upon the user and the "just woke up this way beauty" that natural ingredients provide.

(I, for one, do not need to shampoo in order to attain the "just woke up this way beauty," but I understand how some people might).

Anyway, to make a long bath short, I reached over and checked the ingredient list on my nondescript economy size shampoo. There, in small letters, barely legible to those with trombone vision, was the word "jojoba." The same ingredient, minus the fancy packaging.

Take that fancy bottle with attractive woman with lots of hair!