Have you noticed how ads for Gillette’s new Mach 3 “Turbo” say that it now gives good results “whether you shave up or down”? Cleverly not mentioning what shave direction then non-turbocharged version was designed for? Thereby giving both the up-shavers and the down-shavers the impression that the “Turbo” will enhance their shave?

Hey check out my new jacket! I got it for US$30 from Benetton in San Francisco! Its zip, though, I can’t quite figure out. The jacket does up with buttons, but it also has a zip, whose two halves are set about four inches from the edge of both sides of the jacket. Such that when it’s zipped up a sort of peak forms in the front, where the two pieces of excess fabric come together.

What is this zip for?! Even Benetton don’t know. (My mother was curious enough to call and ask them.) There was some speculation that it might be used to hold the jacket in shape whilst hanging in storage—the material is quite heavy and the zip is not quite sturdy enough to be the main fastening—but this explanation doesn’t seem right either. (And it’s not the sort of jacket to have zip-in parts.)

Je ne regrette rien. I regret nothing. We were talking about this last Sunday night. I do regret lying to parents or teachers on specific occasions perhaps, and I regret taking this or that when I wasn’t supposed to, but I don’t regret any potentially life-changing action taken or not taken. I don’t regret going to the school I did, the subjects I took, the university I went to, or the degrees I did there. I don’t wish I studied more or studied less; or travelled more or travelled less.

I think I should have regrets. (One of the implications of having no regrets is that, if given the chance, you’d live your life again in exactly the same way—and this cannot be right!) So, where are they? There’s a few possibilities: (1) I’m not yet old enough to be able to figure out what my regrets should be (i.e. not enough perspective); (2) I don’t take a chance on things I might regret; (3) I’m in denial.

There’s a good chance these are all true. Particularly (2): I do fear regret, and perhaps I do make the easy, safe life choices. Well, I guess we’ll see.

Oh! what fun it is to discover the flaws of the thitherto irritatingly flawless! On this subject, Faustus, M.D.:

Last night, while catching up on blogs I read, I got to one that I have always secretly hated with a white-hot passion because I think it’s funnier than mine.

Then I caught not one but two grammatical errors in recent posts.

This filled me with an ineffable, almost palpable joy. He may be funnier than I am, but he is guilty of both hypercorrection (he used “whomever” when he ought to have used “whoever”) and a subject-verb-mood disagreement so egregious it could only have been committed by mistake or by a madman; either way, whether he’s careless or insane, I win.

(I know this feeling well—pretty much exactly this feeling, in fact.)

A not-quite-equivalent example: I do not claim that this is a noble response but relief is what I felt when I discovered that Donald Knuth—great computer scientist, author of the definitive The Art of Computer Programming, cheeringly inflexible aesthete—was not, in fact, a good lecturer: he mumbled, he moved too slowly, he wasn’t engaging.

“But there are no such men as we fable,” said Emerson. “There is none without his foible. I believe that if an angel should come to chant the chorus of moral law, he would eat too much gingerbread, or take liberties with private letters, or do some precious atrocity.” (From “Nominalist and Realist.”)

Men, I’m terrificly behind on email. I’ll get there.

This is depressing:

(“The Life You Lead,” Michael Leunig.)

Great. So whatever happens, I’ll pace the streets of doom and gloom, thinking of the bright “life I could have led”?

Not depressed yet? Maybe this will help:

(“To Those Who Fell In War,” Michael Leunig.)

(Making some life changes, dammit.)