2003-09-16 - 4:50 p.m.
This morning my electric shaver exploded. I was running it over the contours of my weary early-morning mug when it suddenly cracked loudly, spat out a few unhealthy noises, and promptly joined its brethren in the Big Drawer of Broken Handheld Electric Modern Conveniences in the Sky. My thoughts, in sequence: 1. Holy shit! 2. Yes indeed, heaven forbid that would happen just as I was finishing my shave.I went to work with an unbalanced shave. No one seemed to notice, though they'd hardly point it out if they did. I must have seemed branded with the same form of simple, pathetic imbecility associated with toilet-paper-trailed shoe wearers, cowlick-bearers, and mouth-breathers. So it goes. I bought a fancy whizzbang new shaver after work, and look forward to the distinct pleasure of shaving without a small electrical device exploding near my face. I also look forward to not creating the impression that I don't know how to shave, or that I have developed irrational, unfounded notions about where my face seems to end.
Today John Hart la Desincarne shared with me his list of Four Books He Cannot Live Without. My brain is sadly somewhat sieve-like when I'm ill, so I can only recall two of them: Smith's Wealth of Nations and Marx's Kapital. I found out that to at least some extent his list of indispensible books is tied to my own list of Books I Might Just as Well Live Numerous Lifetimes Without. Then again, John Hart la Desincarne is an economist egghead, and I am a literature egghead. The ladies still love us, eggheadedness notwithstanding. At least, we hope.
I ought to compile my own list of Four Books I Cannot Live Without, but there's more to life than books, and indispensibility is not half as much fun to observe as glaring, unmistakable whole-loaf dispensibility. Thus I shall offer entry #1 in my own personal List of Things I Might Just as Well Live Numerous Lifetimes Without:
1. Having a razor explode on my face.
Yep, don't need that happening again. It would be a strange and unsettling life indeed in which there was a context for saying, "would you believe ANOTHER razor exploded on my face?! Third time this week! I'm starting to get thank-you letters from Braun."
