When I have a beard, I look like a psychotic hobo. When I am clean-shaven, I look like a orphaned Irish waif who is dying of consumption. There is only one way to resolve this issue. You guessed it: stubble. When I have stubble, I have that highly magnetic “sexisticness” that young women so desire and crave. But there is only one way to achieve permanent stubble: you guessed it, an electric razor.

So I recently bought a new one. The Phillips Norelco Vacuum Stubble and Bread Trimmer Pro, with Lithium Ion Quick Charge Battery, and Integrated Vacuum System. According to the highly and suspiciously over-dramatic cartoon on the front of the box, the Integrated Vacuum System will suck all my stray hair shavings into a secret chamber inside the razor itself, with all the power and efficiency of a Death Star tractor beam. Yeah; right — if the Integrated Vacuum System was actually as powerful as the dramatic swooshing lines on the box indicate, I’d be dead by now, half my chin and face swallowed into the secret chamber. They’d find me like that, a desperate note scrawled out with pen and paper: “INTEGRATED VACUUM SYSTEM, FAR TOO POWERFUL, GOD, NO — WHOEVER FINDS THIS NOTE AND MY BODY, GIVE THIS PRODUCT ZERO OUT OF FIVE STARS ON YELP.COM, GOODBYE, CRUEL WORLD.”

Anyway, whatever, the f-cking razor was on sale at T.J. Maxx, so it only cost twenty-five bucks. The only other notable feature of my new razor is that it has a Turbo Button, or as the Phillips Corporation puts it, “Turbo Power Boost Button, boosts [sic] cutting and fan speed.” The button has a cool symbol that looks unlike any of the symbols I can type on this blogging system; for instance, it does not look like this: §. But it doesn’t look like any of the other symbols that I have available either. The symbol either looks like an angry whirlpool, or some aspect of radioactive glowingness, I can’t decide. Read More »