Lice: The Final Solution

You know what? I'm tired of these little bugs.

We've just gone through the second phase of the hair-washing treatment. You're supposed to do it seven days after the first, to ensure that lice hatching from any surviving eggs get killed off. So here I am, once again reeking of ti-tree and eucalyptus, with a houseful of people who smell likewise.

This is stupid.

I'm going to send the kids back to the school. Sooner or later, one of 'em is going to bump heads with another kid who's carrying travellers. And eventually, it's all going to come home once more.

I'm tired of this shit. I'm tired of smelling like eucalyptus. I'm tired of arguing with Genghis and The Mau-Mau and Jake about putting this crap in their hair. I'm tired of periodically checking for infestations. I'm tired of suffering horripilations every time I find myself scratching my head.

Here's an interesting article for you: Waxing Kills Off Sexual Pest?

It talks about the troubles suffered by the Rotterdam Natural History Museum in its attempts to acquire a display specimen of the once-common Crab Louse, phthiris pubis. Apparently, they're having no end of difficulty laying hands on one of the little beasties -- and their best guess is that recent fashions in pubic waxing and shaving have made life very, very hard for the critters.

(Yeah. I have almost as much sympathy as you. I can hear a louse-sized violin playing right now...)

You get the picture, though. What with everybody going the Brazilian lately, crab lice are trundling down much the same path as the Dodo. And whereas a large, land-bound pigeon is actually an interesting sort of creature whose loss has been a matter of cultural note and some regret, a lack of pubic lice is by and large worthy of the same degree of mourning as, say, a sudden disappearance of bankers worldwide. Just to pick a random example.

So.

We managed to kill off smallpox by vaccinating EVERYBODY. We're getting so close to wiping out polio in the same fashion that it's almost a done deal. I vote the next vile creature we target for extinction should be the common head louse.

It's easy. All it would take would be one, simple, co-ordinated World Shave Day. The UN can organise it. Barbers and hairdressers everywhere can do one completely epic day of business - and then go on holiday for a month. (What the hell. We could even pay them to go on holiday. It would be worth it!)

Meanwhile, the newly bald world would gather up all that hair, and just... bury it. Or burn it. Or whatever.

And that's it. No more head lice, ever. Gone, baby gone.

One single day of world baldness, and I'd never again have to smell like koala vomit.