Random Statistic of the Week...

STRONGER FEELING HAIR*, SHINY COLOUR, WORKS IN JUST 10 MINUTES

Introducing NEW Garnier Herbashine, our first hair colourant enriched with bamboo extract, containing no ammonia and it works in just 10 minutes
Is this range right for me?
- If you want a colourant with no ammonia.
- If you want a colourant that works in just 10 minutes.
- If you want to help cover greys.
- If you want hair that feels stronger and looks shiny.

*87% agreed when tested on 304 women. Strength also measured as resistance to brushing

(Garnier website, 31st March 2009)

Two thoughts. Number one, that means 264.48 (point four eight of a woman could be interesting...?) agreed that their hair felt stronger. With the population of the UK alone being approximately 61,612,300 this would be an interestingly small sample, but on the Garnier website you can choose your location from not one but sixteen countries, including Russia, USA and China. I went to wikipedia, found their best UN population guesses and added them up, making a total population of 2,312,343,413 people. Given they specified 'women', half of that is 1,156,171,706.5 (ish). Lots of them will be kids, I know. But you get the idea. That means, that in order to advertise this product as producing 'stronger feeling hair', they sampled about 0.00002% of their target audience, 87% of whom agreed with the premise that their hair felt stronger*. I'd work that out but I feel my luck on the maths front is running out- where's Nathan when I need him??! Anyway, I wonder if those who participated actually had to buy the product or if they were given it for free? And now I think about it, I wonder about the 39.52 women who said 'No, it's stupid and doesn't make any difference at all.'

Second thought. 'Strength also measured as resistance to brushing'. Who? What? When? How? Where? Why? What colour was the brush? Was it a Tuesday? Is that the hair or the participants strength they're talking about... 'Give me that brush'... 'No, get off'.... 'Give me the damn... blimey, you're strong...'

Adverts. Gotta love em.

I'm not even going there with the bamboo extract...

*All figures are unproven and totally unscientifically worked out. In fact, I got my pet iguana to draw them out of a hat. I don't actually have a pet iguana. Which makes that last bit a lie. A lie is like a statistic, only more honest.

Twestival

This evening I will be going to Twestival in Liverpool. For at least the third time, I almost typed 'Twestical' there, but I think that is something else entirely. Perhaps to be used in a modern version of the mills and boon challenge the nano group have going at the moment. I digress.

It's at Leaf Cafe, a venue which I've never been to, and it's an entirely new event- there has never been Twestival before, let alone one in Liverpool. There will, it seems, be live music, and auctions of items as diverse as spa treatments, photographs and Stephen Fry's socks (worn). Oh and of course, a raffle.

I had planned to wear jeans. No, let me rephrase that... I almost always wear jeans anyway, and I had considered which of my narrow selection of tops I might wear with them. But then... on twitter... things changed...

There was talk of... shopping.

Now let me say right up front; I'm not adverse to a bit of shopping. I find clothes shopping a little stressful, being not the size six that the fashion industry seems to have deemed worthy of wearing its broadest selection of clothes (don't start me...), but I do like having new things to wear. However, aside from the fact that I am skint, one thing I do find very stressful is shopping under pressure. I find shopping to a deadline for clothes is almost always result in disappointment- you can never find anything you like, and then the 'stand by' things you already owned that you'd planned to wear if you couldn't find anything always seem shabby in comparison.

It seems that for the aforesaid twitterers, the shopping trip was a success, and new clothes were purchased for display this evening. This may also be something to do with the fact that they managed to get out of the house in that strange time of the day they call 'morning', which probably relieved the 'panic' element I would have felt if I'd left the house at one o'clock. I look forward to admiring their look and congratulating them on their purchasing prowess.

For myself, I will just wear my jeans and be content. And hope there isn't a dress code... o_O

Procrastination

I am supposed to be arranging 'I Have a Dream' for the gospel choir that will be arriving here in one hour and fifty minutes. I also have to shop for food, and pack to go away later this evening. Instead, I am trying to rearrange the words 'Liverpool' and 'England' on my profile, so that they will be on different lines. This has included a significantly long phone call, and some rapid upskilling in HTML, along with a discussion about how different pages may communicate with different servers.

I really don't need to do that. I need to do the other things.

This is the story of my life.