Tuesday 31 May 2011

Shaving, yet another of God's hilarious jokes

Such a vast amount of unacceptable acts the human body naturally engages that it's hard to believe that anyone thinks a perfect being created even one of us.  I mean mucous, sweating, prostate exams, and pooping are all pretty stupid when you really sit down and think about them.  They're also funny.  Especially the pooping thing. Not the prostate thing.  They stick a finger up your bottom, which I know to some people is a pretty good time, but not for me, not since I was a kid and had a thermometer pushed up in there in an orgy of crying and teamster-level swearing that will be mentioned from now on as 'the incident'.  And, he typed trying to change the subject, what about boogers?  Seriously, boogers?  What kind of all powerful, all knowing entity would throw this one at us?!  Why not just create us in the image of itself, complete, without the need for nasal lube hardening and hanging out of our nostrils like some lime green brachiator?  Don't look for the answers in the bible, that book is a longer and more boringer than... nope, I got nothing.  It's the yardstick for long and boring.  But even reading the 'Hezekiah begot Somorphiah' chapter is an indignity that simply cannot compare to the daily act of lewdness that we call shaving.  When I was much younger I dreamed of the day that I would shave every morning.  Like a real man.  You know, like the ones that I saw on the television.  I imagined swiping that razor across my face and relished the anticipation of the shhhhhhhhick as I wiped my epidermal layer clean of all the offending hair.  And the smell of bright green aftershave, that mysterious alchemist's elixir the very promise of freedom and power, would be my most masculine reward for finally arriving in the land of the mature.  Every shaving commercial made dudes look like vikings mid-sack, hauling off booty to ships with dragons on the front.  Perhaps it's the myth of the sword, whose riddle I learned from Conan, or that the wielding of the razor was in preparation for business and battle, like a Samurai being covered in sandalwood oil before charging into glorious and certain death.  But I just crossed a threshold and with this commencement comes a new sort of wisdom; Shaving is shitty.  I think the Muslims, Chassids, and Lumberjacks all know something that we don't and I envy them for it.  But I digress, the threshold I just passed is specifically this: I now need to replace my disposable razor every day.  I used to have very gentle facial hair, like the stuff on top of a baby's noggin, or a Greek lady's upper back.  If you fed Persian Kittens a diet of pure sugar for a month, then pulped them into a fine slurry, and then made cotton candy out of that slurry THAT'S how my facial hair was.  Easy to remove.  Pliable as warm nutella.  But this morning I tried to use yesterday's razor, which was virginal and untouched just 24 short hours ago, and it didn't do shit.  My chin still had the same sort of menace that a field of newly culled forest does, stumps immovable sitting smugly, unable to be shifted by my now antiquated Gillette.  And what's worse is that yesterday's morning ritual left the edge dulled, nicked, and notched like a civil war bayonet.  After one swipe my chin was hanging off like lunch meat.  I looked like I was just mauled by a jungle cat.  If I thought I had veins in my chin I would have swore that I cut an artery.  So now I have to change the blade daily.  Like an Italian.  And shaving has never become the glorious ritual that my youth promised, instead it's just another step in the endless Bataan Death March of upkeep that life has become.  But at least it's better than a prostate exam.

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