Stand ye in holy places

Tonight I was channel-surfing and broke into the middle of Spike Lee's masterpiece, "X." Now referred to as Malcolm X, the Movie. It was a particularly powerful scene, where Denzel Washington is explaining the role of family in the Nation of Islaam to his future wife. "If we're going to build a new nation we have to start with the woman, because the woman is the children's first teacher," or words pretty close to that.

Now, I read Malcolm X's autiobiography -- ghost-written with Alex Haley -- during college, and before I saw the film. It was a book that called to me from the shelves. Only a few books have done that. Most of them have been about black men. More on that another time. More on a LOT of things another time.

For years Malcolm X taught separation of races, believing it was necessary in order to rebuild a strong black family. He eventually retreated from that extremism. One thing he never softened on was the notion that the family is a separate and sacred unit, that a man was its leader and protector, and men should be willing to kill or die to defend their families.

I love Malcolm X. When I get to the afterlife I very much hope he isn't too busy to see me. I want to meet the great man.

Since I can remember, all I wanted to be was a man. As in "a real man." I have a lot of people tell me I'm smart enough or eloquent enough to "be" this or that. My professors at Weber State essentially drafted me into the journalism program after I wrote a few letters to the editor of the student paper. Even my shrink tells me I shouldn't be a truck driver: "With your intellect, you should be doing more than just manual labor."

But -- again, as long as I can remember -- I define being a man as someone who stands for what he believes, and more importantly that he provides for and protects his wife and family, and provides and example and lesson of godly living. Nothing else matters much compared to being a father and husband and leading a little group of people to salvation. And none of the spiritual stuff is possible if he isn't doing everything he can to materially provide for their legitimate needs.

I love real men. Malcolm Little was hyper-intelligent and a skilled hustler; Malcolm X was a man who simply used every faculty he had to do as much as he could, for what he believed was right.He wasn't an opulent provider, but he did provide, and he was a good father. And, like many great men, in the end he had to die on his feet facing his enemies. He took the blow on one cheek, held his ground, and took the next and fatal blow to his other cheek (not, as some interpreters of the Sermon on the Mount prescribe, by exposing his other cheeks during a blubbering, apologetic retreat).

I really don't give a hoot how I make my living. I do, however, want to raise a family and be free to do what's right. That means marrying an exceptional woman who will actually honor me for being a man. That almost certainly means not marrying one of today's Daughters of Zion. So you'll understand that I've searched far afield and begged God's help to find her. Which he has granted.

If that bothers some people who read this, it doesn't change the fact that everyone must find some way to stand in holy places, to opt out of a corrupt culture and create a holy place in which to stand. Mine will be another country where the government is corrupt, but only wants my money, not my children or my soul.

May you all find your own holy places, wherever they may be.

Obama Youth

OK, I know it seems hysterical to compare Obama to Hitler. I'm not saying Obama hates Jews and wants to take over Europe and Western Asia. But this is definitely an Obama version of the Hitler Youth movement.

The federal education department apparently sent this to-do list to all its state-operated franchisees. Here's an excerpt:

President Obama’s Address to Students Across America September 8, 2009
PreK-6 Menu of Classroom Activities: President Obama’s Address to Students Across America
Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education
September 8, 2009

Before the Speech:
• Teachers can build background knowledge about the President of the United States and his speech by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama and motivate students by asking the following questions:
Who is the President of the United States?
What do you think it takes to be President?
To whom do you think the President is going to be speaking?
Why do you think he wants to speak to you?
What do you think he will say to you?
• Teachers can ask students to imagine being the President delivering a speech to all of the students in the United States. What would you tell students? What can students do to help in our schools? Teachers can chart ideas about what they would say.
• Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?
During the Speech:
• As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:
What is the President trying to tell me?
What is the President asking me to do?
What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?
• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

E-Books, publishing and pricing

Once again there's a new development on which to hang a headline and a story about the decline of traditional, on-dead-tree publishing. This time it's the potential demise of the hardback book, with Amazon's Kindle, Google's e-books and Amazon's aggressive price-cutting to blame. Please, do read the linked article.

The question, once again, is whether this is a bad thing. E-books can be much more profitable to someone -- apparently, not yet more profitable to publishers -- even when they cost less than half the retail price for normal hardbacks. Obviously. Because there's no, you know, printing or binding.

This is upsetting publishers because they rely on release-control to squeeze their most enthusiastic readers for maximum profit. Just like the movies used to wait years to come out on video, trying to force you into the theaters. The Internet and the ease with which movies are pirated and distributed has made that impractical. Now there's a short theater release during which people who love the big screen experience can see the latest Harry Potter flick, followed by mass distribution of cheap DVDs at Wal-Mart for the growing number of people who own 12-foot plasma screens or simply don't like to deal with traffic.

Only this year will we see the second first truly ambitious effort by a Hollywood innovator to bring people back to theaters, not by attempting to withhold the movie from any other venues, but by making the experience better. CNN's headline asks, "Will James Cameron's 3D 'Avatar' change cinema forever?" The first ambitious attempt was IMAX.

Basically, there is one person changing things for each of the three traditional media markets: print (books and news) is being revolutionized by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who started off by blowing billions and billions of dollars selling discounted books on the Internet, until he changed people's shopping habits, a critical mass of buyers was formed -- and traditional book stores started dropping like patients in a Canadian hospital (OK, a bit of exaggeration there. Canadians live longer than American book stores).

Steve Jobs is the one man giving people a reason to not download pirated music, by making it easy to get high quality recordings cheaply and as soon as you want them on iTunes. I often can buy CDs for less, brand-new, on eBay, but iTunes makes it possible for me to have something the moment I think I want it. But the only albums I buy are usually of classical music; with pop music there are just one or two songs I want, since studios are used to forcing us to buy 7 crappy tunes for every 1 or 2 decent ones. Recording companies moan that iTunes hasn't brought either album or single sales back to early 1990s levels, and their earnings are way down. But that's much like Dan Rather complaining about bloggers being less professional than he was. It's too late, folks. Best to get with the information age and change your business model, even if that means making less per act.

Now there's Cameron, adding to IMAX another reason for going to the theather and paying a good chunk o' change for a viewing experience you can't duplicate at home. Good on him. But DVDs and movie downloads are still the way people will see more and more of their films and TV shows. Get used to it.

OK, back to the original reason for this rant: the future of print publishing. Many people still like to hold a book in their hands, and I think there will always be a demand for on-dead-tree media. But that doesn't mean publishers have a "right" to make many times more money than they pay authors by using controlled-release tricks such as limiting new titles to hardback for months and months. The trade paperback is an attractive way of binding books that is also plenty sturdy for careful readers. And for impatient readers like myself, the Kindle is a fabulous way to combine the original Amazon benefit of access to everything in print plus lower title prices, with the added benefit of access to a massive library of out-of-print books. Then you lose the drawback of waiting for books to arrive; they download in a minute or so.

And although Amazon is pretty aggressive at undercutting publishers, as I understand it, they've never gone after the profits received by authors. Meanwhile, all my published friends tell me the same story: even big printers are getting stingy (or downright fraudulent) with the royalties, eliminating the advance payments that encouraged publishers to earn back their investment by pitching the book aggressively to sellers and readers, and instead dumping much or all of the marketing and promotion work on the authors. Most publishers used to actually earn their high margins by doing work that was useful to the author; now they just rely on the prestige of their names to lend credibility to authors. They no longer edit, proofread or pitch like they used to. In an age when self-publishing doesn't mean what it used to, they're still relying on their name brand to attract both authors and readers. They're losing both.

My highly thought-out conclusion: screw 'em. Amazon might be a scary future monopoly, but they're getting more books to readers more cheaply, and so far without doing anything to undercut authors. It's conceivable that authors will be better off because of Amazon, while many publishers will be forced out of yesterday's business models. Or out of existence.

Eventually Amazon could get just as heartless with writers. I won't say it's all for the better. But I don't see any reason to be loyal to the old business model, either.

Scott Rogers, a great friend and a great shaver

Friday I spent 2 hrs. 20 mins. getting my head shrunk with my therapy group at the south IMHC tower in Murray. Afterward I spent about 10 hours hanging with one of my favorite humans, Scott Rogers.

I roomed with Scott and Jeremy Gordon my last year at WSU, and he's still just as delightful as ever. I truly love being with people who are smart and observant enough that, for instance, you can mention different cities of the world and nation without having to specify their country or state. I could narrate my last week as a truck driver by saying I went from Seattle to Birmingham to Syracuse.

Scott himself moved to Maryland after college and worked for the federal government a few years, then switched to the private sector, making USB chips for Micron. Last year he returned to the Wasatch Front and makes the 8GB chips for Micron's Utah County facility.

Scott saw me buy my first straight razor in 2000, a lovely short-bladed, stainless steel Henckels. That was just a few years before Henckels, which had been making razors in Solingen (Germany) since 1730, dropped that line of blades; it still makes its excellent kitchen knives, a set of which I bought for my sister Charlotte as a wedding present in 1990 and which continue to serve in her kitchen.

Anyway, Scott remembered my straight-edge and later followed the LDS line of reasoning that it's good to be prepared for times of shortage, and eventually bought a Fromm, one of the only Solingen-produced razors still on the market these days, via Amazon.com. He broke the edge while shaking water off the blade, striking it against the sink; he bought another but hasn't found it easy to use.

I had the pleasure of bringing my honing tools to his very neat and modern bachelor's apartment, where I inspected his Fromm and found it was a nicely respectable shaving tool, only dull. I put a proper edge on it, then demonstrated the right method of stropping and how to shave down once, relather the face and shave "against the grain" for a nice smooth face.

Scott is the first person to use my home-made shaving creams; I sent him two 4-oz. jars last week, one of lime-scented and one of my signature lavender/peppermint/rosemary combo. He said he was pleased with it and considered it superior to the Colonel Conk's shaving soap. Although Conk's is a widely used shaving soap at a decent price (Amazon has it for $3.50 a bar or lesss), I recommend the product from classicshaving.com because it contains bentonite clay. For me, I can make identical soap in five minutes by heating some of my white melt-and-pour soap base purchased from NewDirectionsAromatics, then adding the clay and a few drops of my favorite essential oils (actually I can make it better because I like stronger scents than the commercial bars come in), and it will only cost me about$1 a bar rather than $5. That's because Conk's is nothing but melt-and-pour clear glycerin soap, with a bit of dye and scent added, poured into a soft plastic mold that doubles as its sales package.

But for someone who wants a decent soap NOW, without all the fooling around with bulk supplies that only save money in the long run, Classic Shaving has the best product at a reasonable price.

Anyway, Scott's feedback is encouraging. I also discovered the cream goes a lot farther when I'm not fooling recklessly around with it. It maybe takes half a tablespoon for a great shave, and that's two face-latherings worth. Therefore, come Monday I'll be posting my pint jars of cream for sale on eBay. I won't have my eBay store set up until some time during the week; I'll post a link when it's ready.

Enough about shaving. It was great seeing Scott. I hope to get together again with him and reunite with out third member of the old college gang, Jeremy, who is working as an EMT for Gold Cross Ambulance in SLC. Jeremy married Geri, a lovely lady he met after Scott and I left Harrison Heights Apartments, and they now have three cute kids together.

Last thing, I remember it was Scott who talked me in to getting back together with Wendy, my first wife, the day after I told her politely that things weren't working out. But I didn't need that much urging, really. I wasn't going to learn the lessons I had to learn any other way but the hard way. But my experiences do make me feel Scott is fortunate in a few ways to have reached 37 and not gotten hitched yet. If he gets it right the first time at his age, he'll be ahead of me as I start over at 40.

Plus he has some really cool toys, in the way of computer equipment, a shelf of cool videos (nothing over PG-13) and some nice guns. Rock on, Scott.

Breaking in the new cream

Today I shaved for the first time using my new shaving cream formula, with two results. One, I'm obviously putting too much water in the mix; it took half of the 4 oz. jelly jar to make all the foam I wanted. But then, one of the reasons I'm making it myself is because it costs about 75 cents a day to shave with all the fluff I want from Vulfix (Truefitt & Hill would cost twice that). Still, water is cheap, and this shave probably only cost me a dime.

Despite the poor commercial value represented by my overly diluted cream, the experience of actually shaving with it was everything I could have wanted. The bentonite clay gave me the slickest, most buttery-smooth shave I've ever had, and my face looked like Will Smith's during the restaurant in Hancock; you know, where the follicles are so empty they make the face glitter. (I must point out that the lather was also wonderfully hot thanks to my Moss Scuttle.)

The combination of essential oils -- peppermint, lavender and rosemary -- is the best-smelling I've come across (Kudos to Nancy Boy for inventing that mixture). The rosemary is an earthy-smelling astringent that helps the skin tighten up without making it hang onto the whiskers. The lavender and peppermint give it perfume and liveliness. I use enough essential oil in the recipe that the smell clears my sinuses and the cream gives my face a warm-cool feeling. No need for aftershave with this one; I smell good, and not in a girlie way. With the soap base made from olive oil and coconut oil and with added glycerin, my skin is softened, but without so much humectant that I feel like I'm in a rain forest afterward, like after a Noxzema treatment (Noxzema's a good cheap alternative to the luxury creams).

The final verdict: Those 40-odd jars of shaving cream in the garage might not all be ready for selling, because the mix is too thin and the cream will run out too fast. No worries. I live for my daily shave.

The Thing From Another World

Watching TV was a big deal for me between about 10 and 14 years of age, because that's when my mother had the devil box banished from the house. Very uncoincidentally, that banishment marked the beginning of my fascination with the written word, which before was neglected due to the tendency of neurons to flow along the path of least resistance.

Enny wey, my dad owned Homestead Sales in Richfield and in the office there was a TV. A few times during my Middle School years I persuaded my mom to let me have a sleepover. That consisted of me and my brother Anthon, or simply me, hanging out in the office with sleeping bags and a few quarters for the Coke machine, watching TV until the newer, color programs went off and the old black-and-whites took over.

One of my most memorable TV marathons was about 1981 when I watched Friday Night Theater alone, with "The Thing From Another World" as the feature. It fascinated and frightened me, and I've never forgotten it; the most horrifying, brain-searing scene was of a torn-off alien arm coming alive and starting to twitch on a laboratory table.

Just Saturday it occurred to me that the film was doubtless in the public domain. Sure enough, it's free to watch on Google Video here.

I'm not as hooked on kooky old films, particularly horror and sci-fi from the 50s and 60s the way Doug Gibson is, but I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed The Thing as an adult. The writing is actually quite good, despite the over-enunciated/under-nuanced, but certainly well-memorized lines. The dialogue was written for an unusually natural flow, with characters anticipating each other's statements and talking over each other. But these actors were raised on radio shows.

There are some silly technical things, but less so than with most modern pictures; there are fewer breakdowns of common sense and more discussions of actual physical principles. The dumb guy who gets good guys killed is, of course, the Ph.D. dude with his goatee and Continental accent and constant reference to "science" as an almost godlike force: "We must leave these things to science," etc. Of course, he really means leave it to him and the other eggheads who want to sing kumbaya with the vegetable-based biped that lives off the blood of sled dogs and unlucky eggheads.

Filmed in 1951, just months after the explosion of the first H-bomb, and just a few years after the mass UFO-sightings of 1948 onward, this is a fascinating look at the culture our parents and grandparents inhabited. This movie predated Star Trek by 15 years and doubtless had a major effect on that show. It's the earliest movie I know of that sets the pattern for hundreds of other "first contact" shows to come. For my fellow sci-fi geeks, it's worth a watch. I even think I'll be buying the DVD if I can find it.

Luxury shaving -- it's a way of life

As a 24-year-old missionary in Preston, England, and later in the towns of Manchester, Timperly and Rochdale, I frequently had members of my church ask, "Elder, what are you going to do after your mission?"

I always had the same reply: "I'm going to stop shaving."

And that's precisely what I did. From 1993 until 2008, when I finally discovered the true joys of shaving with the proper tools and the proper attitude, I was seldom without some major style of beard and mustache. For years it was a simple full beard, with a bit of trimming under the jaw and at the top of the cheeks. For a while it was the Burnside look, just for variety. But always there was something full and furry, camouflage for the fact that I only trimmed the edges every third or fourth day.

What else was I going to do? I'd begun shaving at 12 and by the time I was in 10th grade it was a mandatory daily ritual, unless I wanted to look like a modern skateboarder. Then I joined the National Guard my senior year of high school, on Dec. 6, 1986, and on March 4, 1988, I joined the full-time Army. In Korea where I spent my first two years we worked six days a week. Then I spent seven months in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait for the Persian Gulf War, and there we had to shave every blasted day because of the threat of chemical weapons and the need to keep our faces smooth-shaved so our gas masks would seal (in fact, Western armies didn't start making their soldiers shave until WWI, the first war to involve chemical weapons, for exactly that reason).

Then, less than a year after my return from Operation Desert Storm, I was a Mormon missionary, and you never have a day off on one of those. So, years on end of shaving EVERY FREAKIN' DAY. With either cartridge razors or electrics. I'd just accepted the notion that razor burn was part of being a civilized man. And I was sick of civilization.

But it turns out civilization doesn't have to be painful. In fact, it probably isn't supposed to be.

My introduction to "the blade"

My first straight-razor shave was at the barber shop on Camp Pelham, outside the ville of Son-Ya-Ri, South Korea. Spitting distance from the DMZ, 1988. Pretty Asian girls who hated Americans and hoped to move to our country would give what I think was called "The Works" for $20. That included a shampoo, haircut (like most artillerymen there I got a new high-and-tight every other week), hot wet towels on the face followed by electrically heated shaving cream and a straight razor shave, followed by a clay facial treatment that was allowed to dry and then removed with more hot, moist towels, topped off with a so-called "massage." Despite my pleas they never got the massage right; it was more of a two-girl assault on a hapless private. They leaned me forward and beat on my back with a catchy rhythm that was loud enough to drown out my grunts of pain.

The one thing that stuck with me was the sight of an unsmiling girl coming at my throat with a glittering knife. It took nerve to sit still the first couple of times. But after that, I learned to relax and trust, and then I discovered that being shaved is probably one of the grandest pleasures a man can experience in mortality. Back in those days, when I was as close to an athlete as I ever came, I could doze in almost any position. And I came very close to falling asleep while my face was being scraped smooth.

Years later I bought a brand-new Henckels stainless-steel, short-blade, round-point razor at Lorenz Cutlery, the generations-old knife, scissors and sharpening shop just west of the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City. I also got a leather Illinois strop and a badger shaving brush. The trio of shaving tools set me back about $120. The old dude behind the counter ran the blade across one of their massive turning stones and proclaimed it super-sharp; in later years I learned it had been just barely sharp enough to shave with. Also, he didn't properly show me how to strop and my clumsy efforts actually rounded off the cutting edge. Almost as bad, I used that $25 badger-hair brush to slop cold, canned Gillette foam on my face. Two slow and painful shaves I got out of that razor. Then it sat in the medicine cabinet for three years and finally disappeared along with most of my other best possessions in my first divorce.

Nowadays Henckels doesn't even make razors any more. Dovo is the biggest single maker of blades in Solingen, Germany, the one-time world capital of cutting edges. Dorko makes a less pricey blade that's sold almost solely to barbers. Pakistan and China produce some good-looking knickknacks that are called straight razors, made of cheap stainless steel that's never been tempered and won't hold an edge. I've been back to Lorenz's and it's under new ownership. The proprietor usually has no razors at all; he can only get about four Dovos at a time and they go fast.

But somewhere between the time Henckels lost all their master razorsmiths and decided to drop their 270-year line of razors (they just make kitchen cutlery now), and when I started thinking that a good Mormon should have a plan for shaving after the inevitable economic collapse and the following Tribulation, straight razors started making a comeback. Two things apparently brought that to pass; the rise of eBay and the promotion of old-style wet shaving. Suddenly all those razors moldering in heirloom boxes or at the back of medicine cabinets became valuable collector's items with millions of eBayers anxious to bid for them. I came across online articles telling me how wet shaving was not only Old School Cool, it was easier on your face. It's a way for men to be masculine and self-pampering at the same time.

And naturally, I figured, if you have a straight razor and the tools to keep it sharp for the rest of your life, when the ever-more-imminent collapse of civilization comes, you'll still look spiffy whilst the rest of manhood is trying to use magnets and alcohol to eke more life out of their $3.50-per-cartridge Gillette Fusions.

Now, a word about the real safety razor and its superiority over cartridge razors. Back in Korea I'd purchased a Gillette adjustable double-sided safety razor (see right pic); that must have been one of the last years it was on the market. I think my mom threw that gem away during my mission when all my 45 records and a WWII encyclopedia vanished. I've since purchased four Indian-made Parker-brand razors (see left pic); they're nice but they aren't adjustable. I bought 100 disposable stainless-steel blades cheap off eBay, and I discovered that they really are the best sfety shavers imaginable when used with a light touch, rather than being ground into the face the way I did while in Korea, uneducated as I was in the science of shaving.

But that wasn't enough for me. There's another bold step that takes one to the manliest, most reliable, sustainable, eco-friendly, and actually smoothest-shaving method possible: mastery of a high-quality, properly honed and stropped straight razor.

It takes about $200 to get the right equipment to be a truly Old School Cool master shaver. First, the razor. You can get a well-made antique for about $25 on eBay, or about $80 to $200 for a new one from Dovo. Then even if you buy a new one you'll need to spend at least $40 on a good hone, because no straight razor is truly "shave ready" out of the box. Then $20 for a simple leather strop, but you're much better off with a $50 Dovo strop, with its three-inch width and Russian-style leather back. You need a tube of diamond stropping paste for refreshing the blade between honings, and that's another $20.

And you definitely want a badger-hair brush for applying either shaving soap, or actual shaving cream, the kind that comes in a jar or a tube. The boar brushes are cheaper, you can get them for as little as $6, but the extra $20 to $30 is very worth it (the hair is softer, yes, but even better, it soaks up and holds a lot more water and a lot more lather).

Now, more about the soap or cream. You need something with a lot of glycerin that's going to soften your skin as well as your beard. And it needs to smell purty. Shaving is a chore with modern tools and foams (they are NOT creams if they come from an aerosol can), but shaving should be a meditative ritual, a self-indulgent, relaxing time where the rest of the world goes away while you do the most singularly civilizing male ritual there is: remove the sign of your adult manhood from your face, to reveal your true appearance and please your significant other (and perhaps your bishop or pastor or boss, too).

You can buy shaving soap at Wal-Mart -- yeah, it's actually there, in the shaving aisle on that bottom shelf you've never looked at. But don't bother with it. It's cheap and it works, but it smells ... well, like soap. And it won't leave your skin feeling baby-soft, like a proper shaving soap or cream should. So you're gonna need to shop online. My favorite source is classicshaving.com. They have good prices and carry nearly all the major brands of luxury shaving supplies. My favorite is the Vulfix cream; it's cheaper by half than, say, the Truefitt & Hill brand, and just as good. Pearly, heavenly smelling creams explode with fluffy foam under the swirly sweep of a nicely wetted brush. After splashing hot water on your face you coat it in truly creamy lather and let it sit for a few minutes while you strop your razor and breathe the heady scent of limes, lavender, roses, or something milder like sandalwood or almonds.

When the beard is sufficiently softened, a properly honed and stropped straight razor carries away almost half a face-full of whiskers in a couple of broad sweeps of the blade. It rinses clean in a moment, certainly more conveniently than the disposable razors that clog on the first swipe and have to be hammered against the porcelain. After the downward-shave it's usually good to lather up again -- I enjoy it so much I've been known to use up any leftover lather on my face even when I'm finished mowing. After relathering, shave up against the grain. If the razor is dragging you don't have a proper edge on it. Consult YouTube for guidance on stropping and sharpening; I certainly had to. After being locked in an arms bunker for a month back in '89 and making 30 previously blunt bayonets cut arm hair, I considered myself a pretty good honemestier, but razor sharpening is different from knife sharpening. In many ways it's easier, but it takes a lighter touch and more patience.

When you shave with a good cream, or perhaps better, a glycerin soap containing bentonite clay (it slicks the face and prevents razor drag), you won't need to freshen up with aftershave. The essential oils and the gentle glycerin condition the skin, and straight razors aren't catchments for the filmy scum and microbes that breed in cartridge razors (and even electric razors). And why use that alcohol-based, cheap-smelling stuff that made you scream just like Macaulay Culkin the first time you used it? There actually isn't a good reason to punish your senses in order to remove the daily growth. In fact, shaving can be the most pleasant part of your daily routine. Right now, it is the most peaceful event in my day and, despite having once been the man whose primary goal in life was to stop shaving, I now actually look forward to it.

I invite all men who read these words to go and do likewise. To all women, I suggest that a couple hundred bucks for a decent straight-razor rig is a great present for Christmas, birthdays and Fathers' Day. And since most men spend $200 a year on their normal shaving supplies, you'll end up saving a pile of cash in the not-too-long run, as well as being prepared for the days of scarcity.