The secret of looking young...
...never use cosmetics.
I am an analytical chemist, which is what happens to Chemistry graduates who only get a Third.

Once upon a time I used to work for a well known cosmetics firm in an obscure Welsh valley. You think your glamorous lipstick/eyeshadow/shampoo is formulated by a beautifully made up young woman of 20 in a crisp white labcoat? O no, it's a hairy-arsed Welsh rugby full-back with a coat stained all colours of the rainbow mingling into a dirty brown.

Anyhoo I used to analyse the raw materials and can testify that donkey foetuses were at the time used in anti-ageing products, and the nerve endings of horses used in eye cream, and lanolin (the grease from sheep's wool) used in lipstick. I used to do the rancidity test on the lanolin, don't worry I made sure the rancid stuff got rejected.

The senior technician, let's call him Mr Bean, was the only one trained to use the HPLC, which indicated the sun factor protection. We started to get complaints that people's babies were burning even though they were using the top grade lotion. Turned out that Mr Bean was printing the same HPLC results every time - he did not know how to operate the machine at all, and the lotion contained no sun protection ingredients whatsoever.

We regularly used to pollute the river, but not as badly as the nearby paper recycling factory (never let it be said that recycling your newspaper is green). At one time blue mascara turned the river bright blue, the kind of colour the (then) NRA had been trying to get it for years. Another time we polluted it with acetone, and the fish were so desperate to get away from the stuff that they jumped out of the river and died. The production manager suggested to the man from the NRA that he might like to use them as firelighters.

Soul destroying stuff. Now I analyse beer for a living which is much more rewarding :)
(biscuitsocks random gene expression, Mon 1 Oct 2007, 19:55, Reply)