Title to be decided

I've been a tad busy lately and so no updates. So, gentle reader, here is an incomplete post to keep you diverted. I'll get around to finishing it sometime in the future.


In no particular order ellipsis abuse, razor blades and people who are chipper in the mornings.

Ellipsis abuse. You know what I'm talking about. The urge to use those innocuous periods, "..." with gay abandon in any and all sentences. I know that I am guilty of it and ergo my apologies. And you gentle reader, you do know that you are guilty of it too. So the next time you feel the need to use ellipses, ask yourself, "Are these dots really necessary? Would I use them if I was talking to someone? Would I say, “But Dot Dot Dot" or "I disagree Dot Dot Dot"?” It will not be any easy change to make, but with time and effort we will be able to fight the problem.

And now onto my pet hate (With props to Dave Barry and apologies for any unconscious plagiarism).

Razor blades have proven to me once and for all that the human race is still evolving. A brief history of the razor blade and the reasons for my conclusions follow. In the distant past when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the average human ancestor resembled a hamster, razor blades had but one blade. A single solitary blade, one that could make the hamsters presentable before they set out for work in the morning. Fast forward a few million years and someone at Gillette or Boeing or IBM decided to add an extra blade. I can imagine the shrill cries of excitement at corporate head quarters when the research boffins came up with this idea. “Two Blades! Why, that’s brilliant. Brilliant I tell you, brilliant.”

But they were soon faced with the daunting task of selling this idea to the stubbled masses. And then the geniuses at the ad agencies came up with the modern razor blade advertisement. An animation showing the first blade merrily chopping off a hair, but doing so imperfectly and leaving behind a sizeable chunk. At this point in the ad, the wise men would whisper to themselves “It was now that the focus group said that they felt the most amount of despair.” But just when you think that all was lost, along would come the second blade which would decapitate the remaining hair and quell any other follicular rebellion.

Well okay, that ad wasn’t too bad. But then they needed to sell the razor with three blades. So the ads would now show blade two waging a valiant battle but being ultimately defeated by the evil forces of H.A.I.R. And just when you thought the battle was lost, along would come blade three, which would neatly swoop in and save the day. And then they would switch to a close-up of a model stroking his cheek with a goofy smile on his face. Sometimes there would be a female model with the male model and she would stroke his cheek, and they both would have goofy smile on their faces. I think the subliminal message here is that if you use their razor blades models will stroke your face in the morning. Now think about that. That is a bit creepy. You wake up, you shave and out of nowhere, a model pops up strokes your cheeks and disappears down the drain.

And then just when we, the stubbled masses, thought that we had reached the pinnacle of shaving progress we were presented with the four blade razor. But the ads stayed the same. Blade one bad job, blade two some progress but not enough, blade three would valiantly struggle but falter at the threshold of victory and then finally blade four would swoop in and save the day. This would be followed by the obligatory goofy looks and metaphors of smoothness, the metaphors of smoothness being illustrated by visuals showing an abnormally cute baby’s whose cheeks would be rubbed against the freshly shaven. It must be pretty traumatic for the kid to be used as some kind of smoothness gauge. I can imagine him growing up and going on a murderous rampage because of that trauma. His weapon of choice would of course be the razors, which by this time would have forty six blades. And they no longer would be called razors, but would be called shaving systems, because that makes them more impressive. I know I’m impressed. I truly am.