Thanks Mags for the great opening post (I love the images!) . I'm IN for a sober weekend.
Congratulations on shotgun calmself!
Like yourself I also use coal tar shampoo if I have an itchy scalp. It's not very often I have to use it but I always have some in the house just in case (it's sold in the UK under the brand name Polytar). The smell of it reminds me of my childhood. My gran used to wash her hair / scalp with it once a week and the smell of it would linger in the air in her house. It also reminds me a little of the smell that used to linger in the air outside in the 1970s when my town was undergoing rapid expansion and there were a lot of new roads being built everywhere - it has a similar smell to freshly laid tarmac! I think the latter may be better known as asphalt in the US.
Even if it is good for the scalp, coal tar shampoo does sound horrendous though: wikipedia describes coal tar as "Coal tar is a thick dark liquid which is a by-product of the production of coke and coal gas from coal. It is a type of creosote".