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iKon short comb
Super Max platinum
Gillette Pure shave cream
Semogue owners club finest badger
Nivea balm
Clubman brandy spice aftershave
iKon short comb is one notch past medium aggression but what a great shave
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Well done!! Looking good...keep it up...!! Nothing like a nice creamy lather...I see we both used the same TOBS today..
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Sotd - Monday the 30th of March - I know - this is true - I have just checked my phone.
Prep - facial scrub
razor - ATT Calypso - M
blade - Gillette 7 o'clock - yellow (2)
brush - Semogue - 2012 LE - badger and boar
soap - OSP - Bay Rum - tallow
post - witch hazel
a/s - Mundus Bay Rum - witch hazel based
balm - none needed
scent - A&E - St Barts.
Result - superb. I could write a thousand words on how good this shave was - I have a lot of time on my hands - but I will not test your patience.
the razor - only my second use of the Calypso - this is a keeper - mild? - certainly - but that does not mean that it isn't incredibly good at taking my beard off - five days in this case - abundantly safe in use - I could let my mind drift and rely on muscle memory alone - without concern - I think the only way you could hurt yourself with the ATT - would be to poke the handle in your eye.
the soap - first use of the OSP Bay Rum won recently on a PIF - as ever the superb OSP tallow soap base - a lovely take on a bay rum scent - rich, strong, complex and not too heavy on the cloves - ideal. Face feel - during and after - pretty much faultless. Slickness - in my opinion - among the best.
the brush - my first mixed knot - third use - I suspected that the combination of soft tips and all the backbone you need to face lather - which is the only way I shave - would really be ideal for a hard soap - lightly bloomed - brush soaked in an espresso coffee glass while I showered - and I think I was right - the brush takes up the soap with alacrity - almost took the embossed OSP logo off it at the first go! See above. The soap sits nice and high up in the knot - accidentally loaded enough for four passes - I'll know better the next time. Incidentally - if you have not tried it - I find real benefit - particularly with a soap this good - to squeeze out the remaining excess lather from the brush - and apply it to my face - for a few minutes - as I do the initial tidy up - then rinse it off - warm then cold water. See what you think?
So - job done - I can't explain how much I enjoyed that - a truly good shave is better than the sum of its parts - it lifted my mood - in these harsh times - small things matter all the more - look after you and yours - enjoy your shaving ritual - yours - I.
Oh - today's shave enabled by @Blademonkey and @RussellR5555 - thank you both.
Arguments that Time Is Not Real
'We can see a clock, but we cannot see time, so how do we know whether time is real—that it exists? Someone might think that time is real because it is what clocks are designed to measure, and because there certainly are clocks. The trouble with this reasoning is that it is analogous to saying that unicorns are real because unicorn hunters intend to find unicorns, and because there certainly are unicorn hunters.
The logical positivist Rudolf Carnap said, “The external questions of the reality of physical space and physical time are pseudo-questions.†He meant these two questions are meaningless because there is no way to empirically verify their answers one way or the other. Subsequent philosophers have generally disagreed with Carnap and have taken these metaphysical questions seriously.
Some philosophers and physicists claim there are other reasons to believe time itself is not real. These reasons are that time is unreal because (i) it is emergent, or (ii) it is subjective, or (iii) it is merely conventional, or (iv) it is defined by an inconsistent concept, or (v) its scientific image deviates too much from its commonsense image. If time is not real, it may follow that there are no real events, no real change.'
TOBS shaving cream is awesome. It's so easy to get a good lather with that. It's my favourite cream, usually coconut or Mr Taylor.Well done!! Looking good...keep it up...!! Nothing like a nice creamy lather...I see we both used the same TOBS today..
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Sotd - Tuesday the 31st of March
Prep - facial scrub
razor - ATT Calypso M
blade - Gillette 7 O'clock yellow (3)
brush - Semogue Owners Club LE - mixed badger and boar
soap - Mickey Lee - Grand Havana - tallow
post - witch hazel
a/s - Extro Tabacco
balm - none needed
scent - Creed Tabarome edp.
Result - a difficult shave - only in the sense - it was hard work to find anything to shave off - after yesterday's stellar effort - at the moment - I've decided that - I need to shave every day for the foreseeable - a fixed point - to work around - let's keep things anchored - my normal reference points have dissolved - no work to go to - I can't work from home - income - shortly about to - mostly - dry up. At least I shall not run short of shaving products - and if you have to shave more often than necessary - the ATT is the very razor for the job. Nice.
You'll be delighted to know - no obtuse philosophical meandering in this post - instead - tonight's reading is from 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'
- the 'wave speech' - the whole point of the book is in the following extract - save you reading it.
Enjoy your shaves - one and all - yours - I.
“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history†it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.â€
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