Justin Achilli

Okay, so I had to go out and buy a brush this weekend because I didn’t have one and according to certain people’s input, that’s unacceptable. I had to buy a hair dryer and a water filter, too, but that’s not the part of the story that I’m trying to tell you here. I just thought you might want to know all the details. Oh; I got these things at Target.

In removing the brush from the packaging (I was at the store and thought it was weird that all the brushes came in sealed plactic packages. But then I thought about it more and figured that it was to keep all the scummy villains from sneaking into Target to brush their hair and surreptitiously giving all of the legitimate customers head lice.), I noticed that those clever folks at Goody Products, Inc. had included a few words of wisdom on the back of their brush box. Wondering what wisdom I could glean from this, I perused it more thoroughly. Here’s the first part:

Fair enough. I don’t normally think of a brush “smoothing” hair, but that’s a decent description of what it does. I mean, if you asked me what a brush was for, I’d probably reply with something self-evident but nonetheless unquantifiable if you didn’t know what it did already. Like if space aliens came down from the Zontar nebula and said, “What the fuck is this thing?” I’d probably reply, “It’s a brush. You brush with it.” And then I’d make a motion like I was brushing my hair, but my hair is really short anyway, so they’d likely think I was being a smartass and would declare war on us because of my ill diplomacy. That being the case, I’m glad the Goody guys put that on there, in the interests of preventing extraterrestrial violence. But even that is misleading, because if those aliens have a homeworld, it’s got to have some solid ground on it, which means that they’re not extraterrestrial at all, they’re just not from our terrestria. Which is a pretty goddamn selfish way to view the universe, if you ask me.

You can also deboucle and alisa with it, apparently, but I wasn’t in school that day so I don’t know what they are. I’m willing to bet that they somehow relate to brushing, however.

But it gets worse:

Yeah. Directions. Directions on how to comb your goddamn hair. WHO THE FUCK IS BUYING A BRUSH THAT THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THE GODDAMN BRUSH IS USED FOR? Did these people think, “Oh, I need antifreeze, but I can’t find any, so maybe this bristly thing will do”? Is it the perfect implement to glue to the end of a broken-off mop handle and hunt peccaries with? A family of zombies takes a break from haunting Target to get together and play a game of dominoes, substituting brushes for the dominoes? IT DOESN’T FUCKING HAPPEN. This is even more absurd than “Lather. Rinse. Repeat,” and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t involve the same thing. Is this the origin of the phrase, “Dumb as a bag of hair,” somehow intimating that pursuits of things hirsute are bound to be exercises in stupidity? That people who care about grooming are dumb? How about putting a similar instruction label on the office of the president: “Careful, hillbilly. Don’t wreck the country.”?

They even put it in some hieroglyphics, in case some of the terrestrial aliens from our homeworld (Thailand, I think, judging by the language) needed to figure out how to brush with the FUCKING BRUSH they just bought.

You know what this says?

It says:

In order to comb itself: Brush downwards against the leather of the hairiness. In order to dry itself with the dryer of the hand: Use a brush to maintain the hair. Orient the dryer in direction of hairdo.

Jesus.