Work on Your Hair: Robocut

I think infomercials are great: they linger in the memory even better than a Werner Herzog film. For many years I have been haunted by: 1) moronic hair cuttists who ask you all kinds of questions and then ignore the answers. My favorite is "How do you want the back?" I have never seen the back, thank you very much. And even a cuttist to whom you return will ask the questions again, and who knows if they will do as well as they have previously. 2) an infomercial for Robocut.

This, so the story goes, is the brainchild of an HP engineer who had my kind of complaints. It involves whirring blades (!) that are kept a strict distance away from your scalp and brain pan by plastic attachments. Hair is drawn up to the whirring blades by a vacuum cleaner (I could not make this up) and then cut hair is drawn into the vacuum cleaner. It is claimed that any cut is possible; Reality Man can only vouch for the "all one length" cut, which can be achieved in a minute or less. Hahahahahahaha. The picture is of the way the unit over my toilet sees me. (No, I'm not doing that. The bouffant look is courtesy of the air drying provided by my new electric scooter, about which, more, later, probably in a different place.) The cost is probably comparable to a couple trips to the cuttist, with tip. The savings in time and aggravation: priceless.

Work on Your Pet: Boomerang Tags

You may enjoy "driving" the pet tag engraving machines at the big box pet stores, but beyond immediate gratification, what have you got? A thinly-engraved, thin tag of some metal or other that quickly either becomes unreadable or just plain tears off. Give Boomerang Tags a try. Choose from a variety of sizes, materials, colors, and shapes--I chose medium red plastic bones, and they're cool, very easily readable, and, we're told, unbreakable. The price you pay--very reasonable--includes postage, and the tags arrive in a few days.