So what's this I hear about this new Olay body lotion? I've seen ads for it a couple times, and it's being touted as 'breaking the cycle of dry skin.' Okay, think about that for just a minute. Olay earns money selling lotion. If they invented a lotion so amazing that once you use it, your skin stops being dry, why would they want to market and sell it? This would be like Starbucks giving out a recipe for their amazingly good hot chocolate that actually made amazingly good hot chocolate. I would never buy hot chocolate again; I would make my own. They would have destroyed the market for their product. If I used a remarkable lotion that kept my skin from drying out, why would I ever buy it again? I wouldn't. My skin wouldn't be dry. I wouldn't need to. In short, this is one of the more ridiculous advertising pitches I've ever seen. Whether or not it's a good lotion, I refuse to buy it on principle alone.
St. Ives' Whipped Silk, however, is as far as I'm concerned pretty much the perfect lotion. It makes my skin feel nice and soft without making me feel like I need to wash my hands before I can touch a book. And it smells nice.
It is an interesting fact of life that brand names that become names for types of products in their own right (Xerox, Q-Tip, Band-Aid, etc.) are automatically assumed to be the best of their kinds. Or usually it is only interesting; in the case of Kleenex, it is interesting and unfortunate. For Kleenex is not in fact the best tissue. I have found it to be little better than the store brand. The absolute hands-down best brand of tissue is Puffs. They're much thicker and softer. They may be pricier; I honestly don't know - I don't bother looking at anything else. If they are, though, I promise they're worth it.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Sunday, March 04, 2007
10 reasons hot-water radiators are better than hot-air vents
1 While you're taking your shower, you can lay all your clothes out on the radiator, and when you put them on, they'll be nice and toasty. This technique does not work with vents.
2 What if there's something wrong with the heating? Well, if you have radiators, nothing happens. The radiators simply aren't warm. Which I grant you is not a good thing, but with vents, instead of nothing happening, cold air is blowing into every room of your house. Think of a little mini fan going in every room, all day. Nice in the summer. Not so nice in the winter. (My bathroom has this problem perpetually. I don't think I have ever seen the bathroom get warm enough to steam up the mirror, no matter how long a shower I take. I do not like it, Sam I Am.)
3 A radiator simply warms up the room. If it's doing its job, you don't even notice it. But a vent? You can hear it. You can feel the breeze. (I slept directly under one before I moved to the lower bunk. I had to bury my face under a blanket to be able to sleep.) A vent interferes with your life; a radiator is simply there.
4 What if you have exotic allergies to dust or mold? Or what if you just wonder what might be in the air that's circulating through your house? Anything could be in those air vents. No, really. Once more, for emphasis: Anything could be in those air vents. Could you decisively prove to me that there aren't mice living in there? Snakes? Cockroaches? Flobberworms? Pixies? I know I couldn't. Surely this is a bad thing.
5 When a person, or a cat, or a dog, or whatever, stands over the vent, they're blocking the warm air. They're taking the warmth for themselves, and it's not getting to the rest of the room. When a person sits in front of a radiator, or a cat on it, there's a lot of heat still escaping to everywhere else. Warming up by the heating apparatus is not a community disservice when it's a radiator.
6 Some vents are in the ceiling. This is so obviously idiotic that I wonder that such vents exist. But they do. They blow out hot air (ideally), and since heat rises, it stays right there, keeping the ceiling nice and toasty (ideally). Now, I'm in favor of nice toasty ceilings. I wouldn't want my ceiling to be catching a chill. But all the same, I'd like a little of that warmth to be finding its way to me. I grant you, this is not a problem with all vents, but I dare you to find me a hot-water radiator stuck to somebody's ceiling.
7 Well, I wouldn't like the ceiling vents to feel singled out for chastisment, so how about floor vents? Stuff falls into them. Crumbs and bits of food in the kitchen. Hair in the bathroom. Candy wrappers and pencil stubs and scraps of paper and who-knows-what everywhere else. They're difficult to clean, and easy to get dirty. This is a bad combination.
8 Central heating vents require a big ugly box to sit somewhere outside by your house. It cannot be disguised, and is too large to be tucked behind the average shrubbery. A furnace hides in the basement with the water heater.
9 Radiators are so darn useful! Cats can lounge on them. They're a bit high to sit on, but if you haven't a chair, you can use one as a sort of miserichord. They're perfect for goals when you're playing a mostly innocuous game of indoor soccer. Throw a ball under one to add an interesting challenge to your dog's day. You can set all kinds of stuff on them - especially if you put a board on top first. See, useful as can be. Name me one thing you can do with a vent. I dare you.
10 An old-fashioned hot-water radiator just looks so much classier than a vent.
2 What if there's something wrong with the heating? Well, if you have radiators, nothing happens. The radiators simply aren't warm. Which I grant you is not a good thing, but with vents, instead of nothing happening, cold air is blowing into every room of your house. Think of a little mini fan going in every room, all day. Nice in the summer. Not so nice in the winter. (My bathroom has this problem perpetually. I don't think I have ever seen the bathroom get warm enough to steam up the mirror, no matter how long a shower I take. I do not like it, Sam I Am.)
3 A radiator simply warms up the room. If it's doing its job, you don't even notice it. But a vent? You can hear it. You can feel the breeze. (I slept directly under one before I moved to the lower bunk. I had to bury my face under a blanket to be able to sleep.) A vent interferes with your life; a radiator is simply there.
4 What if you have exotic allergies to dust or mold? Or what if you just wonder what might be in the air that's circulating through your house? Anything could be in those air vents. No, really. Once more, for emphasis: Anything could be in those air vents. Could you decisively prove to me that there aren't mice living in there? Snakes? Cockroaches? Flobberworms? Pixies? I know I couldn't. Surely this is a bad thing.
5 When a person, or a cat, or a dog, or whatever, stands over the vent, they're blocking the warm air. They're taking the warmth for themselves, and it's not getting to the rest of the room. When a person sits in front of a radiator, or a cat on it, there's a lot of heat still escaping to everywhere else. Warming up by the heating apparatus is not a community disservice when it's a radiator.
6 Some vents are in the ceiling. This is so obviously idiotic that I wonder that such vents exist. But they do. They blow out hot air (ideally), and since heat rises, it stays right there, keeping the ceiling nice and toasty (ideally). Now, I'm in favor of nice toasty ceilings. I wouldn't want my ceiling to be catching a chill. But all the same, I'd like a little of that warmth to be finding its way to me. I grant you, this is not a problem with all vents, but I dare you to find me a hot-water radiator stuck to somebody's ceiling.
7 Well, I wouldn't like the ceiling vents to feel singled out for chastisment, so how about floor vents? Stuff falls into them. Crumbs and bits of food in the kitchen. Hair in the bathroom. Candy wrappers and pencil stubs and scraps of paper and who-knows-what everywhere else. They're difficult to clean, and easy to get dirty. This is a bad combination.
8 Central heating vents require a big ugly box to sit somewhere outside by your house. It cannot be disguised, and is too large to be tucked behind the average shrubbery. A furnace hides in the basement with the water heater.
9 Radiators are so darn useful! Cats can lounge on them. They're a bit high to sit on, but if you haven't a chair, you can use one as a sort of miserichord. They're perfect for goals when you're playing a mostly innocuous game of indoor soccer. Throw a ball under one to add an interesting challenge to your dog's day. You can set all kinds of stuff on them - especially if you put a board on top first. See, useful as can be. Name me one thing you can do with a vent. I dare you.
10 An old-fashioned hot-water radiator just looks so much classier than a vent.
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