How To Unsafely Dye Your Hair With Fabric Dye For $10 (part 1 of F)

    At some point in the last five years both Punky’s and Manic Panic discontinued their dark green line of hair color. Upon discovery of this I realized that if I had dark green hair I could succeed in not conforming to the other non-conformists and their pussy pink and purple hairstyles.

After six months and fives of dollars expended I had merely succeeded in turning my hair turquoise, teal,  healthy seaweed, unhealthy seaweed, and eventually, straw.  My path lay clear: I must use my Dr. Seuss endorsed imagination and follow the advice I seem to remember getting from what was possibly a public school teacher and think outside of the box. I would embark on a quest to figure out how to make science, and then make the hell out of some science!
 
Armed with ten dollars and all of the DIY tutorials Google searches provided in almost an hour, I would invent my own dark green hair dye.
   
Part One: Preparation

I’m writing this article for the future of freelance hair science, since every search I entered that didn’t return links to Manic Panic or Hot Topic were full of NO and NEVER and DON’T. If I’ve learned anything from hours spent in Fallout 2 and Marvel Comic forums it’s that anyone that types IN ALL CAPS is an idiot with no evidence attempting to pass opinion off as fact. Therefore my hair experiment (or exhairiment,) will now adhere to strict empirical method. I don’t know what ‘empirical’ means but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Medieval Europe and I’m pretty certain that Medieval Europe is where they invented aspirin by making peasants eat poison and discovered exorcisms by drilling holes in crazy people's heads.
 
After scanning Google’s so-called ‘results,’ I discovered that punk rockers originally used fabric dye to dye their hair, and that it was readily available at the local craft store. They also stated that this was shockingly primitive and dangerous and stupid, but people are required by law to say that before doing something kickass so that they don’t get sued when people that don’t kick ass attempt to kick ass.

After exhausting my resources ($10,) I had a large bottle of RIT Dark Green Fabric Dye, a tub of bargain hair bleach, and a dye applicator. Experimental shaking of the bottle of the dye suggested that it was in liquid form, and more research would be required to discover how to make it stick to hair.

I briefly surveyed the NO, NEVER, DON’T sections of the search results for possible solutions and also for any nouns or verbs that sounded like they might kill me. One post stated that there were many, many reasons not to dye hair with Rit, but only named one: Salt, which is an ingredient in Rit. I’m almost certain that the only time salt is ever dangerous is when it’s thrown into the eyes of the good-guy wrestler by the bad-guy wrestler’s manager, and also only when the bad-guy wrestler is from China or Japan and also also when it was 1987 and that kind of racism was still okay and sorta expected from wrestling fans. I also remember that when this happens, the good-guy wrestler still manages to rally the fans' support and channel it into Hulkamania and kick the karate guy’s ass with an Atomic Elbow Drop. And I’ll trust steroid-induced face rampages over some superstitious, hand-wringing saltaphobe in a cosmetology forum any day.   

Before: in trouble.

    Further examination turned up the words BURNS, STAIN and SPEND THE EXTRA 6 BUCKS. I know from rumor that Vaseline is often used to protect the skin from errant hair dye, and the word BURNS doesn’t concern me because a search of my brain revealed that fabric dye is used on clothing and clothing is used on humans and all out of 100 humans wear clothing regularly and hardly ever burst into flames because of it. The SPEND THE EXTRA 6 BUCKS comment was obviously planted by a Hot Topic operative with ties to the shadow banking system that secretly runs the world and won’t allow me to have big bags of free money, no matter how much I say I want them. I disregarded that comment in keeping with my strict “Screw The Machine That I Depend Upon For My Survival” ethos.

After: Chemical Burns

One poster suggested adding a small amount of color to conditioner to keep the dye ‘vibrant.’ After asking a girl if that meant ‘periodically vibrating’ and being laughed at, I realized that I might be onto something. If I were to add a LOT of color to a LITTLE bit of conditioner I could force the dye to stick to my hair and not damage my eyes with crafty ninja-salt attacks.

  My search of the International Brain Vomit And Commercial Returning System (Google,) hadn’t proven as educational as I had hoped. It would appear that only 17 people in the entire world know anything about intentionally dangerous home made hair color. With my new-found knowledge of conditioner and Vaseline I embarked on a quest for Direction.

Part 2: Owner’s Manuals

The instructions on the back of the Rit bottle were confusing at best. There were two recommended methods: Washing Machine and Stove Top. Both of those things would appear to have nothing to do with making things different colored, let alone something attached to a living human head, itself attached to a living human body.

 

Further inspection implies that Rit Fabric Dye requires a temperature of simmering* to function. I’m fairly certain that washing my entire Vaseline covered body in the washer on the “hottest WATER safe for fabric setting,” would probably kill me, so I set out to answer several questions. A) how can I put boiling water on my head for an hour without causing brain injuries? B) is there a way to make Rit Liquid Dye function at Earth temperatures? And C) Could Phoenix Brands, makers of Rit Liquid Dye, be a front for some sort of not-human life form living among us?

After taking a half hour break to contemplate and test my hand for heat endurance I found my answers: A) I can’t, B) maybe, and C) Holy Shit Yes It Is!

I also decided that, since I would be using a goop made out of leave-in conditioner and Rit Meat Salting And Human Cooking Dye instead of almost boiling water, I would have to rely on my old friend: the blow drier. I have one of the old kinds that can make beef jerky and dim the lights at the corner store a block away, so it gets plenty hot. Also, since it’s handheld I can simply move it if I notice any adverse side effects like the appearance of smoke or expectant space-cannibals. After the allotted hour I would then rinse what’s left of my head in hot water from out of our not-made-in-space water heater.

The bleach I at least am familiar with. Mix the powder and the goo in the tub, glop onto hair, cook for half an hour agitating occasionally, put the container in the trash can, rinse hair, attempt to find Sharpies in the colors of everything in the trash can’s blast radius before roommates return home, make mental note to dispose of unused bleach more safely next time, forget mental note. Simple.

At the end of day one I felt confident in my ability to not kill myself accidentally. And, thanks to a XXL white dress shirt I wrote ‘lab coat’ on, in my abilities as a scientist as well.

Part Three: Day Two: Part 3A

After sleeping almost three hours, I spent most of the morning answering increasingly exasperated emails from my so-called ‘friends,’ and their backwards, un-American attitudes of “Ok. That’s cool. Are you sure you don’t want the store-bought stuff, I’ll lend you the money,” and “You sure about this? Have you smelled that dye yet? It smells like something they’d use to turn a horse into glue.”
 
Following many very loud minutes of adult language I finally convinced my obviously superstitious friends that this kind of fear, this kind of hostility in the face of progress that shackles humanity to it’s ignorant and culturally intolerant past. I realize now that by being attacked for ‘thinking outside of the box,’ I’m really no different than Native Americans being racially assaulted by smallpox blankets, or Chinese wrestlers when they get a size 13 boot to the face for using underhanded tactics, or being brown in Texas and not holding a lawnmower. I think that this proves that not only am I a Doctor of Science with a major in Rad, I’m also kind of a hero, like Gandhi or Dr. King. Or Spider-Man if Spider-Man was black and nothing like Spider-Man. Back to the experiment.

*The asterisk led only to questions and terror.

Part Next: The Conclusion!