Seek and Ye Shall Find

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Seek and Ye Shall Find graphic by Greebo T Cat

The Hootoo archives contain many weird and wonderful bits of writing, which don't always get the attention they deserve. Unless they enter the Edited Guide, or are unearthed by the Underguide, The Post or CAC, they may lie unread and unloved for years, while their authors go out for a sandwich or even permanently Elvis1. The best way to find these gems is undoubtedly through the search engine, having ticked the box marked no Edited entries. The infinite improbability engine and searching conversations provides too much dross: searching unedited guide entries is the way to go.

Hair

This week I shall wind a comb through the tangled mess of archive material on hair, beginning with A3132, the original Edited Guide entry. Marvel at its cruddiness and slapdash nature. Wonder at how long it can have taken to put that together. When you think that the old writing team, who wrote this and many other 'gems' are almost the only people who have been paid to write for the guide, you have to laugh. You can still leave them abuse about their shoddy work on their page, but funnily enough, they don't seem to have been back - still laughing all the way to the bank, probably.

Moving on, it would appear that the Hootoo community is fairly conflicted2 about hair.

The author of A79355 makes a compelling logical argument.

Many centuries ago man discovered that the hair he had all over his body was a leftover from his time as an ape. Apes are generally considered ugly and repulsively hairy, so one would think that so was the hair on man.
But no! We're hair obsessed - what could be the reason?

Well U49339 notes, in this little piece, that hair can serve a useful climate control function. S/He then goes on to say that

Early humans couldn't seem to get enough hair. They would go out and steal the hair, literally off of the backs of other creatures that had more. Only in the past century have humans nearly ceased this mindless hair snatching that always ended in the death of the snatchee.
Which I have to say is a little more tendentious, if we're looking at it from a historical truth type point of view.

The writer of A82496 is OK with the hair on his or her body, it's hair in her or his mouth they are not keen on. Pthh, sphh! Something I think that many of us can emphasise with, especially when it's, hair from erm lower down our body...

Still such hair has its uses, and this is a fairly encyclopaedic look at them, including soap protection and 'natural' packaging. Not all of them are pleasant, inevitably. Consider yourself warned. The second piece on A188660 takes a more philosophical approach. The argument outlined follows:

The hair we have on our heads is different from our pubic hair. However, animals have the same type of hair/fur all over their bodies, including that region. What I want to know is: Why do we have different pubic hair/Why don't animals have pubes?
I just know that some smart biologist is going to come along and point out that not all animals have the same type of hair, and that in fact finger nails are just a dense form of hair, and chimps have those plus lots of the regular stuff, OK? Maybe while you're at it you can tell me why we called a hangover cure after A265646, huh?

Back to the hair on our heads I think. A235667 warns men sternly of what can happen if they don't have a shave before they go on a date. Get rid of that macho stubble now - it's not big and women aren't impressed, apparently. Of course, they may be too worried about their bad hair day to notice. Not that Nicorodeo is. He's got wild locks and he doesn't care, because as he sagely notes

Many expensive hair styles of 'hip' celebrities have been replicated on my head, for no price whatsoever.

A1116802 is a lucid and wry look at the author's hair problems. A1169921 on the other hand, describes the perfect, awesome hair of Melancolykat.

Finally, let me finish with a completely off the wall piece. I never had a hair growing cat soap but they sound great, don't you reckon? Happy searching!

The Seek and Ye Shall Find Archive

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01.07.04 Front Page

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1In other words - the author has 'left the building'.2OK, I admit that this word doesn't really exist in English as we know it. However, I believe that in the US of A, it is perfectly acceptable to use a noun as a verb in this way. Any American readers that think different, leave me a message...

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