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Somebody with greasy hair piled high or hanging low is the envy of nobody (bald men and the French possibly excepted). If the grease is named Brylcreme rather than sebum, unctuous hirsute middens conjure legions of hot babes, at least in the 1950s. If crusts rather than puddles are your personal statement, Vitalis is ready with the "dry look." Hair spray, first cousin to 3M Photomount, was too limp-wristed for manly men, certainly given logistic complexities of container storage and transport plus social awkwardness in bar bathrooms. As the 21st century gathers steam we have polymer science and the lower classes keeping the ball rolling - which is to say, in place.
I and my sweetie venture forth Sunday mornings, while simpletons are safely cached in churches and expecting a spare meal of their God, to wallow in mercantile surfeits of Ralphs Supermarket. (The founder's surname was Ralphs. Placement of an apostrophe is best left unventured.) Ralphs' (oh, well) patent drug quadruple aisle is notably amusing (Linda lacking the technical acumen to lambaste herbal food suppliment displays). We occasionally tour an area otherwise of no interest, like hemorrhoid creams or pediculosis amendments, to keep current with the problems of the Joneses. Thus it was that pastel colors bubbling forth from Dep manual pump dispensers stroked our eyes.
There were perched upon the shelf green Super Control Dep, yellow Extra Super Control Dep, orange Ultimate Dep, and pink Frizz- Taming Dep. Like Canukist ani money in its various Monopoly hues, illiteracy is no bar to using the product. I scanned their contents panels. Green, yellow, and orange Dep were mostly water with thickening additions of poly(vinyl pyrrolidinone) (PVP, hemodynamic plasma extender and non-toxic water-soluble glue) plus sorbitol (humectant and non-caloric sweetener). Frizz was put down with hydroxypropyl cellulose, though I imagine an alkali-swollen alternating copolymer of ethyl vinyl ether or styrene and maleic anhydride would have done the trick if it were cheaper than derivatized cotton mill waste.
There is no Regular Dep. Like H-bombs, angry skunks, and IRS audits... even a feeble one is the big kahuna. All the transparent pump dispensers were the same size, suggesting that the Dep Marketing department has been delinquent in its quest for lineal shelf gormandizing. Where was the emergency Purse-size Dep dispenser? Where was gallon-sized Prom Bathroom Dep?
Dippity-Do slithers through the same cosmetic back alleys. Its ruination is being packaged in a tub. One has to touch the stuff to apply it to hair. Admixture with a sprinkling of glitter cannot save it.
Dep is notable for making virtue out of nuisance. Mixing viscous slimes or gels invariably entraps air bubbles. Gooey industrial mucks (uncured Space Scuttle solid fuel, for instance) are wanged together in planetary mixers topped with hemispherical steel shells that, when fastened, can be evacuated. Pumping a vacuum, mixing, then breaking to air collapses big bubbles to very small ones in the here and now. Tiny voids eventually dissolve in the degassed matrix. Dep bites the bullet (saves money on equipment and processing) by relishing its bubbles as decorative embellishment, allowing the container to be partially filled with nothing.
No shrewd and sober citizen sincerely believes consumer pompadours sustain green, yellow, orange, and pink Dep. One conjectures that seemingly innocent pale pastel Dep coagulum is really water-soluble latex-compatible trouser eel-slippery Butt Buddy Dep. Do the alternatively sexually empowered luxuriate in aqueous PVP plus sorbitol in water for Extra Super Control? (Compare with Cosmos-brand Kimchi, which on its label sidebar proudly states "It is safe to eat.") Menopausal distaff Baby Boomers are a growing audience for "feminine moisture" products as Premarin-basted harpies vie for male kudos (perhaps Viagra envigorated) unscythed by first heart attacks.
Whatever the fated destination of Dep - prom queens' beehives to drag queens' bottoms, the goo patiently perches on Ralphs' shelf. A graduate masters thesis awaits, statistically analyzing retail sales demographics versus income levels and sexual orientations. Imagine, somewhere every second and right now a pump dispenser repeatedly plunges into its socket preparatory to its owner doing a little socket plunging of his own - one way or another.
Linda and I walked on to the center aisle. We perambulated past sinusitis, callouses and corns, adult incontinence, bloating and flatulence, dandruff, body lice... How does the Third World sustain its immense reproductive rate absent of access to patent medicine miracles guaranteed to veil human disgust at disgusting humans? Dep for the masses!
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