Further proof

Further proof that "sucks" is the new normal: The incorporation of routines like the morning nit check and products like Lice Shield - "a new line of hair care products demonstrated to repel lice while, at the same time, gently cleansing and conditioning" - into the body rituals of the Nacirema (or at least a few families that I know).

StraightMan lamented this morning that the days when a single rinse of pesticide shampoo could visit devastation upon the lice have gone: This is now a nit by nit battle. The guerilla warfare / new world order / post-9/11 / counterinsurgency tensions surrounding such a statement make my skin crawl as much as the idea of lice makes me itch.

I feel so colonized.

Note that the Web site photo for "Lice Shield" (above) is a child dressed as a knight engaged in sword-in-hand combat. Which seems to prove StraightMan's point. What a frustrated parent like myself really wants to see is a mushroom cloud swirling around that child's head, with stone cold lice on their backs and their six legs pointed skyward...

Uh oh. I seem to have lapsed into Cold War nostalgia. I am way too young for this.