This morning, I tried a Jack Black® Pure Performance Shave Brush. Its bristles are synthetic (the badger lives to see another day) and anti-microbial, but designed to perform like a silver tip badger brush (which is generally held to be the best sort).

I have a Burma Shave™ boar-bristle brush that I got before I learned that boars were killed for the bristles, and an Art of Shaving® basic badger-bristle brush given to me as a gift before the giver learned that badgers were killed for the bristles. Jointly, these could last quite a few years. But I was quite interested to try a synthetic brush, partly so that I would know whether they were good gifts, and partly so that I could write and speak about them from experience.

The thing that I always read about most synthetics is that that they don't hold water as well as do natural bristle brushes. Well, I've not yet done a head-to-head comparison with anything but the boar-bristle brush, but the Black® brush definitely holds considerably more water than does a Burma Shave™ boar-bristle brush. (So much so, in fact, that I ended-up with far more dilute lather than I wanted. That's a problem that I can easily address, by just shaking out the brush before I put it in the soap.)

The Black® brush also feels much nicer against my skin than does the boar-bristle brush, and certainly nicer than did the boar-bristle brush when it was new. And the boar-bristle brush smelled like a musky animal when it was new, whereäs the Black® brush naturally didn't. (Jack Black in fact gave it some sort of pleasant scent which I presume will wash away with use.)

I will probably, at some future point, try the genuine badger brush that I was given. The badger whence the bristles came isn't going to get any more killed; and, while I wouldn't thus have tested the Black® brush against a high-end badger brush, I would at least have tested it against a badger brush of some sort.

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While I am on the subject of shave brushes, I would like to mention the Burt's Bees® Natural Bristle Shaving Brush, found in their Bay Rum Men's Shaving Kit and sometimes sold separately. A little research confimed my suspicion that the bristles are boar bristles.

Burt's Bees proclaims

our goal is to help create a world where people have the information and tools they need to make the highest ethical choices

Now, reasonable people might argue over whether it's ethical to kill animals for shaving products, but one doesn't have the information needed to make the highest ethical choices if one isn't being told that these natural bristles were harvested from killed boars; plainly a significant share of Burt's Bees' customers would have concluded that the use of such bristles were unethical. And we may safely presume that the boars were killed (though there is a ranch in Spain that would happily sell them bristles sheared from boars who are not killed), because Burt's Bees, which makes a point of telling us that it doesn't engage in animal testing hasn't made a point of telling us that these bristles were sheared from live boars.

Possibly Burt's Bees just didn't know any better (much as I didn't know any better). I notice that the Bay Rum Men's Shaving Kit is presently listed as currently out of stock, and I can't find the brush itself listed separately at their site (though I can find it sold by Red Rain, a company that claims to offer the concientious consumer earth friendly, cruelty free products and services). But Burt's Bees has grossly failed its customers, either willfully or inadvertantly, and owes to them an explanation and an apology.

I still have a cough and some congestion, but I am otherwise feeling about as well as I did before I got flu.

I am still fighting the flu that I reported here on the 7th. The symptoms have varied somewhat, and have generally been less during my waking hours than when I sleep. Most days have seemed to represent gradual improvement, but this morning was very wretched. My throat was especially sore and it hurt quite a lot to swallow. I had other symptoms, typical of a flu: headache, fever, sinus and nasal congestion, and body aches.

Last night, I got some saline solution with which to flush my sinuses. Because I wanted to do that, instead of just to moisturize my nasal passages, I needed an ærosol. At the Hillcrest CVS/pharmacy, the only ærosol saline with the right sort of nozzle for spraying the stuff into one's nose was mentholated. I cannot say that I enjoyed the experience of a mentholated solution in my sinuses.

Also, the can had some blatting on it about homeopathic principles. I was especially amused by the note that, since the ostensible curatives were only present in homeopathic amounts, there would be no side effects. Indeed. I figure that, because of the hydrological cycle, if homeopathic principles were correct, then we'd all be in perfect health.

As I was buying one thing of saline to spray in my nose, it occurred to me to buy some saline for my mouse first-aid kit. Fortunately, I didn't need a special nozzle for that.

These days, with the weather colder and often wetter, when out-of-doors I generally wear my Peterman duster and my Jaxon nubuck leather safari hat. Throw-in the L.L Bean Wellington boots, and you have what the Woman of Interest calls my mouse-boy outfit. (I am not, never have been, and never plan to be a cowboy, but I have had mice and plan again to have mice.)

Meanwhile, I still have the Wolverinesque sideburns.

To-day, I was walking past the Hillcrest CVS/pharmacy, with the sideburns, duster, and hat (but wearing Skecher's trainers). A couple of fellows, in all seriousness, asked me if I were Amish. I told them that I was not, but one said to the other He's one of those. and asked me what I was. I'm an atheist. The fellow seemed to take that as confirmation of what he'd thought. Perhaps he uses an odd taxonomy.

I managed to scald the lower front of my right thigh to-day.

Most of the length of the hose to my shower-head was made of three concentric layers: an inner-most layer of a relatively soft plastic; a middle layer of plastic mesh, apparently designed to keep the inner layer from expanding outwards; and an outer-most layer, apparently designed to protect the inner two layers and to help the middle layer contain the inner-most layer. Some weeks ago, the outer layer started to fail near the shower-head, where the hose was most stressed. Then the middle layer began to fail. The inner-most layer began to bulge in the area of failure, like something out of a Hal Roach comedy.

Relatively early in this process of decline, I stopped at the Hillcrest Ace Hardware and bought a new hose. But I decided to keep using the old hose until I I expected it to actually rupture. Yester-day, I told the Woman of Interest that I thought that I should replace the hose before my next shower.

But, to-day, I procrastinated, not wanting to delay my shower. Well, as you anticipate, the hose ruptured. In fact, it ruptured as I was rinsing the shower stall with the hottest water that I can get from the tap, which is really quite hot in my apartment. I got sprayed various places, but the part that hurts most noticeably is that part of my thigh.

I guess that I should have got a flu shot earlier. In any case, the minor congestion and sore throat of yester-day is clearly flu to-day. The throat is much worse, with the lymph nodes in my neck sore and swollen, and I have a fever. I hope that this illness is something that I can throw-off within a day or so.

One of the significant gaps in my classic horror movie collection has been that I haven't had a good copy of the Lon Chaney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). Because this movie has slipped into the public domain, there are many different editions, which raises the obvious question of which one should get.

Over at Silent Era they have a review of various editions. They are quite certain that the version to get is the 2007 edition from Image Entertainment.

However, while the 2007 edition includes something like 40 seconds of footage not found in the 1999 edition from Image Entertainment, the the 2007 edition omits about 12 second of footage that is in the 1999 edition.

I ordered a copy of the 2007 edition, but growled and fretted about those 12 seconds. Finally, in the context of the reviewer having pin-pointed where the missing footage would go, I decided to get also a copy of the 1999 edition. I am going to rip these two DVDs, splice those twelve seconds from one file into the other, and burn a new DVD from that.

I'm not sure just what I'll do about the sound-track — I'll probably just let it go silent during the intervals from the 1999 edition.

I went to the La Jolla PetSmart to-day, planning to buy yet another habitat module to include in my mouse complex, and hoping to find the mouse for that complex.

In the event, there were no mice at that PetSmart, and the cashier said that she didn't expect them to get any in the near future, as they have many other rodents in stock. (I'd not bothered to call ahead, as I was expecting to buy a module in any case, and also wanted to stop at the World Market in the same shopping center.)

I did buy a module. I'd originally been thinking of getting another CritterTrail Mini 2, but ultimately decided on a CritterTrail 3, which just provides a lot more space.

This morning, at the post office, the fellow immediately ahead of me in line was a Germanophone, wrapping a surf-board in bubble-wrap and tape, in preparation for mailing it to Germany. A postal employee came out to examine the situation; and, when last I knew, the Germanophone was being told that the item was too large.

Where does one surf in Germany?

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I have complained in the past of the electronic Amber Alert signs at the sides of the highways being used to preach, as this causes people to develop a habit of ignoring them, which defeats the ostensible primary purpose of the signs.

On top of that, here was the message on the signs that I saw along I-805 and CA-163:

DONT TEXT
WHILE DRIVING
JAN 1ST

So, apparently, they're cool with people texting while driving for at least the rest of the month, and possibly again starting on the 2nd.

I received this offer by e.mail yester-day: Every little bit helps, as I s'pose.