so I am in the shower thinking about monkeys!

let's start with "Get your mind out of the gutter"

The other day I noticed that my shampoo bottle claims that its contents were "not tested on animals."This should make me feel good, I suppose, but as usual I thought too hard about what that statement meant exactly, and ended up irritated, confused and wrinkly.I think the controversy about animal testing arises from a misunderstanding of the word 'testing.' To me, 'testing' something means using something in the manner it was intended to be used, to see if you get the desired result. So to test shampoo on a monkey, you would first shampoo the monkey's hair, then rinse the monkey, and finally smell the monkey to see if the monkey still smells like a monkey. If, rather than smelling like a combination of monkey sweat and poo, the monkey now smells like a combination of strawberries and wildflowers, then success! Otherwise, it's back to the lab again.

So while you may hear horror stories about how scientists smear shampoo directly into the monkey's eyes to see how they'll react, I think that such cases are probably rare, and result mainly from inadequate training of the scientists. I think the scientists just need to be told what shampoo is actually for, and that they can assume that having shampoo smeared into your eyes (or your monkey's eyes) is going to hurt like hell, so they don't really need to test for that.

I say that if manufacturers aren't going to bother to go through the due diligence of animal testing, they should be required to pay the first couple hundred humans who try their product. Besides helping to ensure that our shampoos are properly tested before being sold in stores, this system would also open up employment opportunities to individuals who might otherwise not be able to find jobs. I'm speaking, of course, of the chronically dirty.Just imagine what would happen if a shampoo manufacturer sent a bus through the seedy parts of town offering free shampooing to all of the homeless people, in exchange for a warm meal, a bed for the night, and signing a release form waiving them of any liability. Best case scenario, you'd have a lot of clean, well-rested homeless people who smell like strawberries and wildflowers. And even if things go horribly wrong and they all die of cancer, at least you'd have fewer homeless people

alrighty then Week #1 is off to a great start! Chicken Little came over to Tanner's on 87th and Knocked off the top teams there, I Kiss Girls knocked off Car Ramrod last night at Tanner's 119th and the Xtreme Team Trivia locations are all looking very competive! Remember it is only a nine week competition this time!