This has now been going on four whole months, and I thought I’ve given a little update. I’m honestly surprised at the result – I smell less. Yes, the last thing in the world I expected to happen, but I have less armpit BO than I’ve ever had before.

My only guess is that my skin has a happier balance, or PH, or whatever. And my hair is also happier, definitely feeling less greasy in the morning. I think my hair is most fashionable the day after a thorough baking-soda-vinegar washing, i.e. with one night’s sleep.

The only other surprising side effect is that I’ve gotten to like the smell of vinegar (which you can only smell in my hair the first few minutes out of the shower when I’m still wet), and I occasionally have a glass of water with a little shot of vinegar in it. Hey – Hippocrates used it, so why not me?

The only challenge is getting Bragg quality apple cider vinegar in the UK. But I found Tom’s of Maine Toothpaste in Waitrose, so it can’t be far off…

But I do get inspired by weird, unusual, or eccentric ideas, or any idea that seems to be outside the mainstream cultural theme.

So when I read about some lady who stopped washing her hair I thought, cool! I read up a bit more, and figured I’d go the whole hog. No more soap, shampoo, or conditioner, and I feel great and (apparently) look and smell normal. It’s been 10 days now, and I ain’t going back!

The routine is simple – get in the shower, and let the very hot water wash over me and my scalp. This is Europe, where everyone has shower heads that come off the wall, so you can aim them anywhere that particularly needs a good soaking, like your armpits or various nether-regions.

I then take some baking soda, get it a bit wet, and massage my scalp with the baking soda – this acts as the shampoo. I wash that out and put diluted apple cider vinegar into my hair, keeping it there for a few minutes – this acts like conditioner. I wash everything off, hop out of the shower, and am ready to go!

My hair smells a little bit like apple cider vinegar while drying, but once dry has no odor whatsoever. And I think my scalp is happier with all the massaging, and I seem to have less dandruff or a desire to scratch it. I’m curious how this will effect the usual dry skin I get in the winter on my arms as the months go on and the air gets colder.

For all of you who think I’m nuts, why not try it? Give it a week or two and see what you think.

• A can of Coke would not retain it’s fizzyness over the years, certainly not through a few thousand freeze-thaw cycles. I am not the only one with problems about this.
• When Robert Duvall’s character is given a can of fruit salad (or something) he throws it up. But then he appears to leave the regurgitation. No! Someone starving to death will happily eat vomit.
• The cellar where the bad guys are keeping people before eating them. Sure, storing meat isn’t a bad idea, but why keep the people alive and naked and together? Naked is dumb, as they will get cold and shiver and burn fat and muscle. Together is dumb, as they are presumably starving and might eat each other. And alive is the dumbest. Have you not heard of beef jerky? Have you never seen Slim Jims at the counter of 7-11? Meat can be cured, dried, salted, put in brine, smoked, anything. Hell, if it’s cold enough you can just keep the meat frozen.
• Lack of shoes. I can understand if people are starving, but they won’t be running out of shoes. Why? Presuming most humans die at the hands of other humans, and shoes are a valuable commodity, the killer will take the better pair of shoes (possibly both). Or, when humans commit suicide or die (our protagonist found 3 suicides and 1 death) their shoes can be taken. As long as the half life of a human is less than the half life of a pair of shoes, then shoes will move up the food chain, the same way mercury does in fish or DDT did when it killed the bald eagles.

  If I knew more economics, I could write a proper equation. But basically, as long as (the half life of shoes times fraction of shoes discarded times shoes on someone who dies and their body is undiscovered) is greater than (the half life of humans), there will be a surplus of shoes. This equation does not work if shoes have a finite lifetime (they do, but the movie is set before that lifetime), and admittedly cannibals will have more shoes than non-cannibals. If some economist would write a proper equation in the comments, I’d be most grateful.

• Lack of guns / ammo. This is AMERICA for crying out loud. We’re going to run out of people long before we run out of guns. Like shoes, guns will move up the food chain. Ammo, admittedly, might be scarce. But with no animals left, what are you shooting at besides other humans? Target practicing?

That’s just the impossibilities. The characters make some really stupid decisions, mainly the father.

• Leaving the underground bunker. If it has been undiscovered for 10 years, hearing something that might be a dog or a human wander by is not a good reason to leave. Stay there until the food is gone (or mostly gone) then move on. Build up strength and fat reserves.
• Pulling a cart along the beach. Hello? Carts leave wheel tracks, and anyone following you is going to presume you have food – what else would you be carrying, a flat screen TV? Even if you are pulling a cart for fun, you are still potential food and healthy enough to haul a cart. It’s like a sign that says Please Eat Me! Duh – stay off the beach.
• Not killing the second person shooting arrows at them. I don’t care if you’re trying to be a ‘good guy’. There’s some screaming angry woman with a bow and arrow and you just killed her husband in a post-apocalyptic anarchy. She will probably try to shoot you again as you walk out the building. If you won’t kill her, at least take the weapon, it might come in handy and she won’t be able to shoot you with it 1 minute later.
• Hiking with a bleeding leg wound. Animals are smarter – they hole up and lick their wounds. Duh. Take some Penicillin (you DID take it from the well stocked bomb-shelter, right?) and spend a week recovering.

OK, I’m done. Maybe I’m just petty, but these things seriously bothered me when watching the movie.

• Faked a positive result on a Tuberculosis test. For the fun of it.
• Fed stunned but living mosquitoes (which recently had dined on me) to an ants’ nest. The mosquitoes were crowd-surfed away.
• After a 5 year old child said, “I want my mommy,” I replied “I want your mommy too.”
• Convinced a friend that the pivot point of his elbow during right-handed auto-erotica had led to a crippling curvature of his member, and that he needed to use only the other hand for a few years.
• Attempted to burn a wooden religious icon when in need of firewood (prevented by others, sadly).
• Smurfed a feminist.
• Accidentally started a long-lasting rumor that one of our virginal friends had contracted the clap.
• Hid a sewing machine in the trunk of a friends car, leaving her and her family to spend an entire week wondering how on earth it suddenly appeared in their car.

Exit a London Underground station in a seedier part of town and you’ll here classical music played at a decent volume. If you think its for the pleasure of music connoisseurs, I’m afraid your wrong. It’s to keep away the riff-raff and chavs. Apparently young trouble makers hate it while older tax-payers are pleased by the music and absence of loitering youth.

Well, when I was in the library in Barcelona last week, trying to eek out every last minute of opening hours and the free wifi, I was surprised and amused to hear heavy punk rock blasted fifteen minutes before the library shut. People began leaving in droves as their ears were assaulted, and the librarians presumably had no trouble shooing out the one or two remaining stragglers.

What an odd, odd world we live in.

This gets really frustrating when you want to open a bank account, because you often need a bank account statement to open a bank account. That would be the Catch-22.

Today I faced the ultimate in idiocy and irony. I opened a business bank account at HSBC (our business is registered and incorporated as of two days ago). To prove my residence, HSBC requires a utility bill (I have none as I’m a tenant) or a bank statement (the bank I have my personal account with is HSBC). So the only statement I can bring to HSBC is what they mailed to me. And they still insist on it!

Rather than just looking in their computer, and seeing that I indeed live where I claim, they need a piece of paper. The lady smiled apologetically, acknoledging this was a bit ludicrus, but rules are rules, so Friday I will be bringing HSBC the very statement they’ve mailed to me so they can photocopy it and file it. That would be the Catch-23.

If you mention in the pub that you intend to drive from, say, Surrey to Cornwall, a distance that most Americans would happily go to get a taco, your companions will puff their cheeks, look knowingly at each other, and blow out air as if to say, “Well, now that’s a bit of a tall order…”

I’ve had particular problems at roundabouts, where everyone else seems to know what to do and I’m just happy I don’t hit anyone. Yes, I know the theory, but when entering a roundabout with 5 exits and 3 entrance lanes, WTF do you do? (old people may look up WTF in the Urban Dictionary, the same thing I used to look up a Hot Richard after hearing it on 30 Rock)

As I have no car, I’ve been driving various ZipCars, including a Mini, and rented a Ford Fiesta Hatchback manual diesel for the big trip. Try walking into an American Ford dealership and asking for a Diesel Fiesta, and those sales-men with 70′s haircuts will assure you no such thing exists.

The UK Fiesta, for the record, has the worst turning circle of all the cars I’ve ever driven in my life. There’s also a certain Fiesta at my local Enterprise with a badly dented alloy rim. I don’t know how that happened, no sir, certainly didn’t happen in a country lane in Surrey last weekend.

But with all this driving, what about the famous green mini-mini-van I drove for years? The thing I got from my mom? Sigh, I sold it after it broke down the 6th time in 4 months about a year ago. Here’s the second to last photo I have of it:

Yes, it’s on a tow-truck. And here’s the last photo I have of it. Note my face, expressing the exquisite pain of having to get my ass and car towed once more. I took this picture while sitting in the tow-truck passenger seat, holding the camera in my outstretched arm. I think I’m registering existential angst on my face. Or something like that.

I remember one guy I knew from the crew team thought I was a secret trust fund kid. Hello? Do trust fund kinds drive mom’s green mini-van with 180 thousand miles and a penchant for buggary breaking?