Rambling Rhodes

Just Call it a Guillotine

One of the somewhat unexpected aspects about my Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu training has been the surprising number of my fellow students who, like me, shave their heads.

I suppose some of them, like me, shave their heads because of a genetic propensity towards follicular depletion. Others, I suspect, shave their heads just because it's about the easiest hairstyle in the world to maintain; whereas you can occasionally have bad hair days, I have yet to experience a bad head day (*wink, wink* *nudge, nudge*).

At any rate, awhile back, while we were stretching before class, the topic of conversation centered around the preferred method of scalp blading. Now, I've always been a HUGE proponent of the Mach 3 razor, as it effortlessly glides over my phrenological landscape. There was a time, early on, pre-Mach 3, when I used a Schick Tracer, but in retrospect that was a far inferior blade to the Mach 3.

Anyway, somebody eventually asked if anyone had ever used a "HeadBlade." Now, I had never even heard of the "HeadBlade," but quite frankly the very term left me not wanting anything to do with it. I mean, seriously. . . HeadBlade? It sounds like something a medieval executioner would call his axe. "Me sharpen HeadBlade. Make clean cut! Hulk smash!"

Of course, having heard about the HeadBlade, I felt compelled to at least learn a little bit about the nasty sounding device by going to the HeadBlade Web page, where I saw a HeadBlade for the first time:

So, it's not that scary-looking, I admit but, really, all it is is a regular razor with an OptiGrab that loops around your middle finger, and Matchbox car wheels on the back. As head shaving innovations go, I'm really not all that impressed. Sure, the HeadBlade name is still impressive, but the device itself looks like a regular razor with training wheels. I've been shaving my head for well over a decade. . . I don't need no stinking training wheels.

However, it would be sort of neat, I suppose, to count myself amongst the ranks of the world's elite "HeadBladers." How tough does that sound?

RANDOM PERSON: So, what do you do?

ME: Oh, you know, I'm a HeadBlader.

RANDOM PERSON: A what?

ME: A HeadBlader. I dabble in a little HeadBlading, from time to time.

RANDOM PERSON: *swallowing hard* Um, how often do you blade a head.

ME: Usually at least once every morning.

I'm a little surprised at how many mixed martial arts practitioners are HeadBladers, although I imagine a shaved head offers some benefit whilst mixing it up in an octogon, although I'm not sure what that would be, exactly.

So, yeah, the HeadBlade. Not sure it's something I'd want to try out personally, but it has a pretty cool, Highlander-esque name, which may JUST be enough to get me to buy one, if only to say I'm a HeadBlader.

Not Sure Why I Suddenly Remembered This

As far as I'm concerned, this is THE reason why we have the Internet.

PANTS!

All right, I don't know how else to set this up, so I'll just come right out and say it: on the drive into work this morning, there was a pair of pants in the middle of one of the intersections.

Now, most of you are probably saying "so what?" Well, I'll tell you what: a pair of pants in the middle of a busy intersection encountered on the way into work is a subject of endless distraction for someone like myself.

I mean, seriously, it was a pair of pants. Jeans. In the MIDDLE of a busy intersection. How the heck did a pair of pants end up there?! There was no underwear or any other clothing that I could see, but then again I only had a few seconds to survey the scene. After that, I had about four miles of driving time to sit there and come up with all sorts of scenarios to explain how a crumpled pair of pants ended up being driven over by countless vehicles and, let me tell you, none of those scenarios left me feeling very hopeful for whoever left those pants behind.

Perhaps a sexually insatiable couple found themselves at an unacceptably long red light the night before and threw caution to the wind, giving into their coital yearnings right there in the intersection, with one of them absentmindedly tossing their pants out the window. At the very least, a man or woman had to sneak their way back into their home, trying to keep their private parts hidden from prying eyes.

But, maybe it was more sinister than that. What if the pants in the road were all that remained of a hold-up the previous night? A gunman perhaps bided his time until a likely vehicle rolled to a stop, at which point he rushed the vehicle and instructed the driver to remove their pants, and then cleaned the pants of any valuables, ditched the pants, and made a run for it.

Or, maybe, most confusing of all, someone just decided to get rid of their pants, right there in the middle of a busy intersection. This possibility is perhaps the most concerning to me, because it leaves more questions than answers. From my own personal experience with sudden bowel movements, I can see some scenarios that may warrant an emergency ejection of monumentally soiled pants, but the pants I saw this morning didn't look like they were the victim of such a sudden soilage. In fact, aside from probably being driven over for several hours, the pants in the intersection looked fairly intact and clean, which just made me think about them all the more.

It wasn't like I was looking at a crime scene, or anything like that, as far as I knew. But, still, those pants could have been a CLUE to something. Certainly, at the very least, there was a REASON they were all crumpled up in the intersection like that. Those pants had a story to tell. Those pants were reaching out to me, so to speak.

And the moral of this story is: don't throw your pants into a busy intersection, because they're more distracting than trying to drive and talk into three cell phones at once.

For some people.

And I Thought My Hooded Sweatshirt Was Bad

I don't care who you are, stuffing your head through a cat bed does not equal fashion.

I repeat, a cat bed around the neck is NOT a fashion statement.

Okay, seriously, even the model looks like she can't believe what she's wearing.

The Grim

Is anyone else both tired of AND curious about those ubiquitous ads asking "When will you die?"

It's a curious question; and I'm not sure I really even want to know the answer. What if I took the quiz and the answer came up "3:45 p.m. today?" Oh, CRAP!

On the one hand, I'd be dreading the clock ticking away to quarter to four, but on the other hand, if I didn't die at the calculated time, I'd forever lose my faith in online longevity calculators. It's an avoidance/avoidance conflict, really.

Let it Linger

Okay, the last stubborn remnants of this cold can leave my body any day now, lest I have to perform an exorcism using DayQuil as my holy water of choice.