straight

Screw it - I'm taking a much-needed break. From two things.

First, from my work, which I've been so swamped in I haven't updated this trickle of treacle or the much more lauded, but more secret, blog for the kids. So much has been happening and it's all been slipping by blogless in favor of sleep and renovating a house.

Second, I'm going to take a break from the stupid ass, low grade, disproportionately expensive world of planned obsolesence that is the disposable razor and try my hand at using a straight razor.

We've all seen them, and if we're lucky not just in TV westerns, because then maybe we were raised by men that used them so we might have an early memory that would otherwise be matched in simple masculinity only if your dad played pro ball or boxed. I never really gave any thought to using one, though, until I saw this in Treehugger, and thought for the first time in awhile of the lather mug my dad inherited from my great grandfather and sporadically used. It helps that I've HATED paying inflated prices for replacement razors since I was a freshman in college and couldn't borrow my dad's (by then) disposable; it's a great business, really. Just make your flagship product unusable every few years, forcing consumers to get a new inexpensive replacement razor that requires expensive refills and is useless without them. It's like selling drugs in the schoolyard.

Guess how many disposable razor heads are thrown away in the US every year? 2 billion. They're small, but 2 billion of anything adds up. And for what? An overpriced and quickly low-quality shave? Those things do a great job for about the first three shaves. After that (long after, as I'm so cranky about the price that I really drag their usable life out), they suck, and into the can they go. Gillette's richer, I'm poorer, and I have to shave again in the morning.

I very rarely smoke cigars, I don't fly in helicopters anymore, I don't even drink scotch from the couple of bottles in my cupboard. I spend the vast majority of my time either in an office cube (mental castration if there ever was such a thing) or cleaning up after children at home. This isn't to say I don't feel 'manly' enough - being a father I've learned is the ultimate expression of it, and I've never relied on the macho template anyway - but I would enjoy something that I regularly do to be unequivocably and intentionally male, even if it's just shaving. And, as this guy who I'd probably never otherwise read says:

Absolutely nothing is more masculine than a shave tool that can take your head clean off. Straight razors practically drip testosterone from their unprotected blades. ...They are unassailable icons of dangerous living.

Maybe not icons like a bathtub Porsche, but cool nonetheless, and worth a shot.

First things first: I need to get my hands on a kit. We'll see how this goes.