2015 Cyberweek Shopping Guide

And so this is Xmas

Inspiring this post, there was an infotainment program on Link TV that was just perfect for the week after Black Friday, and the guy wrote a book, too. Beyond Consumer Capitalism: Media and the Limits to Imagination...for the man who has everything.

If you don't have too much croap already

Buy a bottle of Kiss My Face moisture shave, and the whole family will shave in luxury. Ladies can smear an entire leg with just a squirt, conveniently standing in the shower. The man of the house can pick up the least offensively scented Van der Hagen from the pharmacy, melt it (20-30 seconds) in the microwave, and stir in an equal volume of KMF, using the conveniently provided VDH mould cup to measure. All you need is some fancy bowl to pour it into before it hardens to a margarine-like consistency, and maybe some scent ingredient of your preference. The scented KMFs are already sufficiently smelly, though, and I like the pomegranate-grapefruit especially.

Razors

I trawled forty pages of Amazon "Price: Low to High," and picked the Merkur 1904 open comb, discounted to around $21. I haven't seen any Gillette Old Types at the local antique stores, and I know I'm going to like that handle because it's shaped like the Long Feng DF-813. I'm not saying its the greatest razor ever (yet) -- it's just what I'm asking Santa for, personally.

The DeFitch DF91 razor got good reviews from YouTube's "Frugal Shave," and an Amazon reviewer mercifully provided better photos than in the listing. It appears to be an update on the excellent Schmidt R10, with blade posts that are actually finished round. I'm not a huge fan of that type of razor, but it is exactly what a lot of new shavers are looking for. That level of quality is a steal at $16, a price which you can be sure will not last.

As always, your local antique stores should be able to provide some kind of Tech or Super Speed. A reader of the Shave Like Grandad blog recently vouched for Doug's source of the supremely cheap and effective Rimei 2003, a sort of Tech clone. (I'd still use a credit card, just in case.) Actually, for that money, why not go for the original, with Bluebird blades? That was my last successful retail purchase.

Tech

My wife got me a $300 ASUS Transformer some years back, and the damn thing is chipping apart. Just like the Apple crackbook before it. But I got a $30 RCA tablet from Wal-mart last year, and though it isn't as fancy-looking in terms of case details, it performs fine, and has been repeatedly dropped by children without incident. Putting 1+1 together, I recommend this $79, 10" Android tablet with keyboard. I picked up one for the kids, looked at it (without powering it up), and bought two more so they can't fight over it.

UPDATE: The soft, non-brittle plastic approach only works well over a certain span. Someone crushed the touchscreen of last Xmas' Wal-mart special HP laptop by accident  today. I'm not so much mad that I didn't buy the $50 protection plan, since a new digitizer costs around $70, as I am that the tech manual suggests repair isn't even possible! Oh well, maybe $50 will buy a small monitor.