Manly Mondays

Megken here! Meg came to visit after a trip from the mall with something that looked like an alien bar of soap.   She said, "look at this cool
soap."  I said, "really cool, it's not soap though, it's a massage
bar."  I saw them in the store once. The lady explained that it melts
with the heat from your body to make an oil that you then use to massage.  It kinda reminds me of chocolate melting in your hands. Although, I never tried using chocolate as massage oil.  But I think
that would be fun. Now thinking about it, it would make the sheets look like a horrible scene took place and may even scare the maid. I guess I'll veto the chocolate massage.  The bar I received, Wiccy-Magic-Muscles smelled really good, I put it next to the bed and it's kinda working as a potpourri.   

The thing looks a little weird, there are aduki beans in the mix which are supposed to add to the massaging feeling but to me they look like alien eggs. For a little factoid, it's the bean that in Asian food is known as "red bean paste" it's typically sweetened and eaten on flavored shaved ice or turned into deserts...Very yummy.  

Megken here – I don’t normally write about very controversial issues. I am sure I am going to create a few Megken-haters.  Also, I don't normally write with bad puns, so you have been warned!!

I get a little, okay, more than a little… totally grossed out when a dog kisses me on the mouth. I know there are a few Megheads out there that let their dogs kiss them, not just on the mouth, but on their whole face to a point equivalent to going to a K9 aesthetician. I am fine with the dog licking my hand, that’s where it stops. I recall back to a tail of my 7th grade science teacher saying he would “rather kiss a dog than a human. A dog’s mouth is much cleaner than that of the bacteria and viruses filled human.” Maybe he was just trying to get us to practice abstinence because that is not true. He was kind of a strange influence on my young mind. His science room had 3 rats living an dietary experiment. One rat ate rat food, the other ate cat food and the third ate just Owen’s doughnuts. Owen was another whack-job of a teacher. I went to hippie schools where we called the teachers by their first names. He looked like a member of ZZ Top with a long beard and lived on a sailboat and wore green thongs, not the underwear kind that I know of, but the foot kind that perfectly displayed his discussing toenails. Unfortunately, some things from childhood scar us forever. Part of his duties was to sell doughnut to us during recess. Needless to say the Owen-doughnut-eating-rat was smaller than the other two and was constantly bouncing off the bars of its cage and running on the wheel to practically create sparks. They wondered why half the school had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (A.D.H.HHD)? Well, back to the dog-on-the-mouth-kisses thing and why I am glad that there is an amazing toothbrush called the Supersmile series II LAS45 to fight against any dog germs. The Megheads are fans of the company’s Supersmile Professional Whitening Toothpaste and the Supersmile Toothbrush is a good companion to that miracle of the dental whitening world. Beside you don’t want your teeth to look like Shih-Tzu.

Megken here-  I love to see people get it together and start a business; it's the American way.  When someone has the guts to take their idea and form a company around something they love, I am more than impressed. In fact, I am often emotionally moved.  Moon's Harvest is a shining example of enterprises. At the moment it's small company and you feel the pride in knowing about them before they become a household name. From the packaging to the product's wit, you feel that love and thought has been put into everything they make.  They create fun natural products that have great workwomanship behind each item. The other thing is value. Their prices are in a good range for gifts and to treat yourself.  They have that feeling of things you can only buy in that favorite small town gift shop or a community fair.

When I hear the name of their company, "Moon's Harvest" my mind fills with imagines ladies in long flowing dresses, flowered headdresses, dancing with the forest animals, singing songs like Enchanted's Giselle, the Disney princess and making soap with a dwarf.

Megken here! Lets talk about face scrubs or as I like to call it, "sandpapering your face" for beauty.  Have you ever noticed that companies put different kinds of ingredients into your scrubs to give it that grit? There are also so many different things we do to our faces to age well, I mean- not us guys!  We try a lot of techniques to keep our faces to our former youthfulness and none of them sound that healthy. There's “dermabrasion”, “laser skin resurfacing” and “micro dermabrasion”.  Actually the word “horrifying” sounds less painful.“You enjoy your laser-dermabrasion-resuracing, I am just getting some horrifying done on my forehead.”

I am pretty into cars and waxes.  The hardest thing to take care of is a clear-coat. People who detail cars know that you have to be very careful with anything that can leave marring.  Certain products have aggressive abrasives in them and it can kill the shiny luster of a clear-coat. It ends up looking foggy.  Skin works differently because as I understand the process if your skin thinks that it was slightly damage it itself rejuvenates. What if it doesn’t? I don’t particularly like the idea of tricking my skin… but this the theory as I understand it with some cosmetic dermatologists’ treatments.  I like to think that the best way to take care of skin is to nurture it as if it was like my car with one coat of paint that I have to make last. About once a year I like to give my car a good polish and maintain it regularly with a solid Carnauba wax.

Megken here – “We are all on Spaceship Earth… Teach the Moral ABC that unites all mankind, free, instantly 6 billion strong & we’re all one.”  Does this sound familiar?  It’s the preaching of Dr. Bronner.   Yes, the soap-maker.  The soap you find in the health food stores with all the tiny writing on the labels.  I never bothered to read it until Meg and I watched a documentary about Dr. Bronner called "Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox".  I am not going to review the soap but give you a quick review of the film and talk about conveying messages through products and social entrepreneurship.

The film tries to focus on Dr. Emanuel Bronner, but since he passed away before the film was shot the film makers had to use old home movies and stories about him, mostly through the family members and employees.  He lived his final years blind, but with such a positive attitude it is an inspiration for all of us.  He claimed to be rabbi and as well as Albert Einstein's nephew (and you think you have some wacky relatives?)

The film tracks his whole life. He was born in Germany to a long line of soap makers.  In the forties he escaped from a mental institution, moved to California and he started manufacturing 'Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap,' a peppermint-infused, all-natural, multi-purpose liquid.  Today it sprung a multi-million dollar company. His simple single color labels are jam-packed with words and if you just read it briefly it seems like lunacy or looks like it may cause your own personal insanity.  But on careful study you can find a virtuous message that he called 'The Moral ABC,' with a purpose, 'TO UNITE ALL MANKIND FREE!'