Crack jojoba

Best insult I've heard all week: 24-carat pissant. Delivered and, as far as I know, created years ago by former Australian prime minister Paul Keating when he explained to a journalist who'd moved from public to commercial news broadcasting his opinion of the transition. Courtesy of the Paul Keating Insults Archive:

"You had an important place in Australian society on the ABC and you gave it up to be a pop star...with a big cheque...and now you're on to this sort of stuff. That shows what a 24 carat pissant you are, Richard, that's for sure."

Anyways, onto today's oil, and a non-edible one for a change, though continuing on yesterday's mention of the cosmetic application of sesame oil: jojoba. Actually you can eat jojoba oil without getting sick, as long as your definition of sick doesn't include anal leakage, a side effect it shares with the notorious olestra. That's pretty funny. And apparently it's pronounced "hohoba". That's pretty funny too.

What isn't funny is how fucking good this shit is for your skin. I'm not a conventional beauty; in fact I'm not any sort of beauty; and going by all the sick shit I'd like to do to my institutional enemies, I'm not even an inner beauty. That's fine with me. Beautiful girls have to put up with a world of shit; in fact, someday when I have more time on my hands, I'd like to write a heroic cycle about the trials and tribulations of a beautiful woman, and her eventual triumphant emergence into the Valhalla of invisible menopause.

What I do have, though, is lovely skin, and the way it covers my imperfect body goes some way to making that body pleasing. So I like to take care of it, and of course keep it as nice and tick-free as possible. Which is a touch of a challenge, what with sun (not that there's been much here), artificial heating (MUCH bigger problem here), marijuana smoke, and a recent development over the last few years . . . breakouts of eczema on my elbows when I get stressed. Eeeurgh.

So. I mentioned awhile ago that I've started making moisturizers at home, mostly for the sake of the F-word's fussy skin. I whipped up a coconut butter-jojoba-tea tree oil solution for him to take to Italy and left the jojoba oil on the counter in my abstraction (liquid at room temperature, solid in the fridge). Also in my abstraction, I'd forgotten to mix myself a new batch of moisturizer, so when I got out of the shower the next day I just grabbed the jojoba oil and used that.

The results were SUPERB. I've been using it since - every other day or so - and it's been working so well that I'm having an even harder time than I usually would during a month of enforced separation from the F-word not touching myself constantly. And elbows still lovely and unblemished despite crippling stress. And I do mean crippling, I'm one fuckwit away from a nervous breakdown. And yet my skin looks so fucking good.

Apparently that's because jojoba oil acts like sebum, the goo your skin excretes and that gives you pimples, so by smearing it on you it's as though you're fooling your skin into thinking you're actually a teenager exuding all sorts of goo. Or something. I don't know. I'm going to slow down on using it now, since my skin profile is more dry, and it's most recommended for oily types; the conventional wisdom is that it fools your skin into thinking its producing enough sebum, so the sebum production slows down and your acne goes away. Whereas my skin doesn't produce enough goo to give me more than the occasional pimple, and I don't really want to throw the balance off.

That all sounds like bullocks, doesn't it? That's the trouble with home moisturizers; I'm not a chemist and I don't know anything about anything, and I'm not sure the people publishing the recipes do either, so I have to be sparing with everything in case something is actually horribly bad for me. But the jojoba oil is addictive. It just makes you look so good. So look it up and try it if you dare; I haven't found any contraindications, and am probably just suffering some Catholic guilt over becoming so attractive to myself.

And for the macho among you, fear not, as it doesn't smell like anything; or it shouldn't anyways; certainly nothing girly. But if you like being smelly, you can add a few drops of sandalwood oil or some such and have a certain class of woman falling all over you. Personally I prefer my men to smell like something edible; once more, however, I'm aware I'm not the voice of the majority, more fool the majority.