So, Gilette gets the big slap-down...

because apparently you can't design a razor that buzzes and vibrates pointlessly, and then claim that it lifts hairs off the skin for a closer shave.

I have only one question: what morons actually thought these fancy razors did anything of the sort?

Marketing is marketing. We need salespeople, or else nobody would know what was out there. This isn't about to be some bizarre anticapitalist screed. But a certain kind of marketing man should really throw himself off a building for the collective good of humankind.

Our society has matured to the point where we can crank out little tiny pieces of sharp metal, for dirt cheap. There's just no big money to be had in shaving any more, unless you produce custom straight razors... and even those aren't real hard to crank out any more.

So now when you go to shave you have:

The Archaic -- the man who likes his straight or safety razors. This is me.
The Techie -- the man who likes the convenience of the electronic razors.
The Apathetic -- who shaves with whatever he happens to find in the store that day.

But there needs to be a fourth category, The Dumbass, for whoever is so hare-brained as to think that one disposable razor is actually better than another, because it has three blades rather than one (so that it gunks up that much more easily), or because ti has a rotating shaving head (as opposed to a rotating safety hand), or, Lord help you, because it vibrates while it shaves. What is this thing, a marital aid? It shaves, and vibrates your earwax loose?

Are that many people unclear on the mechanics of cutting? You don't cut bread by waggling the knife sideways and humming, do you? Then why on earth would you want your razor blade to do the same thing, as opposed to neatly severing hair?

If there's that little margin in razors, maybe these guys could go into some other line of business, and just let cheap, crappy razors be cheap, crappy razors. For instance, how about a Yo-Yo (a sort of brush tool that looks like an overgrown razor) that's actually outfitted with hard, sharp blades? I'd use the hell out of that, since I have a small but very bumpy yard that is a true pain in the ass to mow. Or failing that, why don't these guys devote that BrainTrust(tm) to developing a pair of serrated, nasty scissors that vibrates its way through whatever I need to cut.

Vibro-scissors. Yeah. Now that's a household product I'd buy.