.

Yes, you too can own a lucite toilet seat embedded with real razor blades and barbed wire. For only $14.99 or fourteen-hundred and ninety-nine easy payments of just one penny, you can take a load off at the end of a busy day running a major corporation, competing in an Olympic athletic event, or taking a horse-drawn carriage ride through Central Park with a beautiful woman, on this luxurious "King of Toilet Seats and Toilet Seat of Kings"!

The scary thing is, I know one guy who will absolutely buy this and install it in his bathroom. Doesn't every blogger have his or her own fanboy/stalker in the Lambs of Osiris militia in Missouri who buys everything he's "told" to and one day walks up to the blogger in a crowd wearing the exact same outfit and dreamily puts a .45 to his temple?

I've been thinking about razor blades lately. I'm very happy with the Swedish Gillettes I order from the UK, but recently I got some new razors in that I wasn't sure about. So I did what I always do with a new score -- I stick a "no-name" unlabeled Israeli Personna blade in it for a test shave. I figure these 15-cent blades (I buy them in boxes of 100 for 15 bucks on eBay) are good guinea pigs since they're cheap, excellent, and very forgiving. If a razor shaves well with one of these Israeli blades, it's a good bet things will get even better when I load it with a Swede.

The thing is, I got such a good shave with the Israeli blade I kept shaving with it all week. I get scary-close shaves with the Swedes, but in the this dry winter weather they can be a tad too much for my puss. The underside of my chin has been feeling kind of raw lately, but man, what faceturbatory shaves I get from these Swedes loaded in my 40's Gillette Super Speeds. I play with myself all day long, stroking my chin and cheeks and marvelling at the total lack of feelable stubble.

The Israeli blades don't give me this kind of shave. It looks exactly the same to the outside world, but if I rub my fingers against the grain on my neck I can feel the tiniest bit of stubble. Still, my neck actually looks and feels better after a shave with the no-name blades. So it's a choice between a shave that feels so good to my own fingers I faceturbate, and a shave that leaves my face feeling and looking better to everyone else.

Was Fernando right after all? Is it really better to look good than to feel good?

I thought I was done scoring razors on eBay. I thought I'd seen it all. Gillette 50s fatboys, Eversharp bakelites, Schick magazine repeaters, and then finally 40s Super Speeds, my main razor these days. I yoinked 'em in nickel and in gold, and always in multiples of at least three, for reasons I'm ashamed to go into. I've got problems. Big problems. But no matter. I did like Noah-and-a-half and got my mitts on three of each of these razors, and then I felt like I was, finally, over it all.

Then the Fisher King pounced.

"I just picked up a _______ and it's the best razor yet," he told me.

Sure it is, old boy. Every new thing you shavegeeks try is the "best yet". That's the whole trip in a nutshell, isn't it? Well, I'm through, you follow? Through. I'm done. Finito. End of the line. Last stop. Stick a fork --

Er, what did that razor look like, anyway? (I said as I opened eBay in a new tab and searched "_______" as beads of sweat took little swan dives off my forehead and landed with a nice, tidy splish on the keyboard.

So now I have two of them. Fisher King Specials. Maybe I'll spill, and maybe I won't. Depends on whether I want to score a few more before letting loose the dogs of whore on them. Just let me get my beak wet and then I'll let you dogs at the rest of the carcass. Maybe.

I will show you one of my other recent scores, though. The only shorty Super Speed I've even seen, in gold no less. That's it at the top of the blog, alongside a Simpson Wee Scot brush and a tiny travel jar of Nancy Boy shaving cream.

As far as I can tell, it's the only one-piece TTO (twist to open) travel razor Gillette ever made. The company's 3-piece take-apart travel razors are much more common, and you can find these mediocre shavers on eBay for a song all day long. I get 'em for peanuts and give 'em to my kids to play with.

Not with a real blade in them! God, what kind of parent do you think I am?! I would never give my kids razors with sharp blades in them!!

I loaded them with Derbys.

So how small is this 1940's Gillette? Look at the photo again -- the razor's shorter than the Wee Scot, for god's sake! Don't bother surfing over to Appleby's site -- you may as well eat at the man's restaurants for all the info you're going to get on this rare specimen. And in gold, in mint condition? Forget it. I'm not even sure it actually exists, and I shaved with it.

Speaking of which, the lather was courtesy of Taylor's new Lavender shaving cream, which I like quite a bit. Like the venerable UK firm's Avocado shaving cream, the Lavender has been modified slightly to meet new EU regulations going into effect in April. Taylor's Barry Klein tells me the only changes made to the Lavender cream were a different colorant and the use of real lavender essential oil intead of the old version's synthetic lavender fragrance.

The new Taylor Lavender looks a little lighter purple in color, but the real difference is the scent. The new cream's aroma is pure lavender essential oil, nothing more, nothing less. I've got a vial of lavender EO from Body Time and the new Taylor cream smells exactly like it, as well as other EO-based Lavender shaving creams like The Art Of Shaving's and Truefitt & Hill's new Ultimate Comfort unscented.

Is this a good thing? Shavewise, yes, very much so. Lavender EO is very skin-friendly and a natural antiseptic. It also smells nice. I got a fantastic shave with the new Lavender cream, and its smoother, creamier consistency made building huge, thick, meaty lather almost comically easy, even with a tiny brush like my Wee Scot. If anything, I'd say the new Taylor is even better than the old version, and that's saying something -- Taylor's Lavender has been a shavegeek fave for a long, long time.

Still, I have to admit to having a soft spot for the old version's scent, fake though it may have been. I've still got some tubs and tubes of the stuff and I'm surprised to find that I'm more attached to its scent, which is sweeter and more its own thing than a straight-up lavender EO trip, than I'd thought I was. Like Taylor's old Avocado scent, it's entirely fake and entirely yummy, and while the new version's all-natural essential oil scent is more pure and shave-beneficial, I'm sort of sad to see the old scent go. The new Taylor's Lavender shaves better, but I'm going to hold onto my old tubs for when I want to catch a sniff of that old purple magic.

As reported here last week, Taylor of Old Bond Street has updated some of its classic English shaving creams, to meet both new EU regulations over there, and FDA regulations over here. So I had Taylor send me some tubs of the new versions of Taylor's Avocado and Lavender creams to compare with the old versions.

The new Avocado cream's green logo appears on a clear sticker on the jar's lid, replacing the bronze-inked logo that used to be printed directly on the lid. As you can see from the photo, the old Avocado's inked logo had a tendency to smear off over time, a problem the new stickers should eliminate.

But the real differences reveal themselves when you crack open the tub. The new Avocado is creamier and smoother than the old version, and its surface has little of that glisteny shine I always assumed was the skin-friendly avocado oil that set Avocado apart from all other Taylors, even though the new version still has avocado oil.

In fact, Taylor's Barry Klein tells me the cream itself is largely unchanged, but that the company had to turn to different fragrance ingredients to comply with new EU regulations going into effect in April. The new scent includes citronellol, an oily liquid with a sweet, floral odor that's a naturally-occurring substance in black currants, certain fruits, edible plants, wines, beer, and black tea, and geraniol, another oily liquid with a sweet rose-like scent found naturally in flowering plants including geraniums and roses.

Sure enough, the new Avocado smells quite different than the old. It's a greener, lighter, fresher scent, more of an outright floral than the woodier scent of the old version. It reminds me a bit of the "Fern" type scents from Trumper and Penhaligon. That said, neither the new or the old Avocado cream smells anything remotely like a real avocado, but I never considered this Taylor a "sniffer" anyway -- the old version certainly smelled pleasant enough, but it was the extra comfy and moisturizing shave that set this cream apart from the rest of Taylor's line, not the scent.

One of the things Taylor's doing differently now is allowing its cream to settle for a week after it's been mixed, and then for another week after it's poured into the tub. These extra stages are said to make for a creamier, less dense product that resists forming a thin, dry crust on top that's led some shavegeeks to think their tubs of Taylor have dried out and otherwise gone bad. The new Taylors have the consistency of Philly Cream Cheese, while the old version of Avocado was a looser, goopier glop, and the other Taylor creams have been as thick as cake icing at times. The extra settling time is designed to standardize the creams' consistency across the board, and I can report that the new Avocado and Lavender creams have exactly the same consistency, which I could never say about the old versions.

Using a Simpson Wee Scot and plenty of hot water, the new Avocado cream lathered up big and beefy in no time flat. I've rarely been able to get the old version of Taylor's Avocado to whip up into that really thick, meringue-like lather -- it's a looser, oilier cream than my other old-school faves like Trumper's Violet and Taylor's own Rose and Lavender creams, but the new Avocado quickly lathers up into that dense, peaked lather the English creams are noted for. Even with a teeny tiny brush like the Wee Scot, the new Taylor made a ridiculously large amount of lather from just a schmear of cream on the brush tips.

Shaving with the new Avocado cream was a pleasure. My 1940's Gillette Super Speed DE razor glided over my skin smoothly and without a hint of skip or drag, never once leaving a dry patch for the blade to scrape over. Even though the new version doesn't glisten as much as the old, it feels and shaves exactly the same, and after an exceptionally close and comfortable shave my face felt perfectly smooth and moisturized, even in this dry winter weather. New scent aside, this new Avocado cream shaves just like the old version, which is a very, very good thing.

Fans of Taylor's Avocado shaving cream can rest easy -- the new version shaves just as superbly and lathers even better than the original. As for the new scent, it's a greener, fresher, more floral trip, and to be perfectly honest I find it no better or worse than the old version, just different. I'm just happy Taylor kept its Avocado cream as special and unique as it's always been, and I'll be happy to switch over to the new formula once I run out of the old stuff.

See? I didn't make fun of shavegeeks once this time, not even the guy who got so hysterical about the new scent he almost stopped taking photos of himself and sending them to other men so they could see what nice skin he has.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It's not even the second week of February and I'm already breaking my New Year's resolution to stop making fun of the hapless flailers on the shavegeek forums.

I want to be good and leave the geeks alone, really I do. But 30,000 Shaveblog readers can't be wrong. You people want me to make fun of shavegeeks. You need me to make fun of shavegeeks. You demand that fun be made of guys who think up stuff like "International Shave Day" where they all use the same shaving cream one morning in a show of jeez, I dunno, capacity to ick the rest of us out?

This past week the geeks all lost their shit over Taylor of Old Bond Street, one of the UK's oldest and most well-respected manufacturers of traditional English shaving cream. A longtime shavegeek fave, Taylor makes some of the very best old-school shaving creams available, and they're priced at less than half what most of the other top-shelf English shaving cream brands cost.

But last week, a forum geek thought he saw a piece of the sky falling, and before you could say "lemmings", suddenly there were Rooskies under every doily.

Seems one of these guys was eyeballing his tub of Taylor's Avocado shaving cream and was startled to discover (mistakenly, as it turns out) that skin-friendly avocado oil wasn't listed in the ingredients anymore. Rather than simply ask Taylor about it with the same lack of hesitation these geeks show when demanding the company send them free samples from the UK of a shaving cream that costs ten bucks a tube, he posted his observation on a forum.

A warehouse full of children's fire-retardant Barney jammies couldn't go up in flames faster. Angry hands grabbed torches and pitchforks, and the wholly uninformed accusations began to fly. One geek cried the "new" Avocado doesn't shave as well as the "old" formula! Another geek opined about the beginning of the end for Taylor (a week ago, these same geeks were loving this brand, but now it was DEAD to them).

One particularly pedantic geek began immediately doom-spewing -- if Taylor was changing its formulas, it had to be for the worse, because change is always bad, and then what if all the other English shaving cream brands might change theirs, too?! Panting and out of breath, he finally fell to his knees and shrieked like a girl, his pale, outstretched arms raised above his head as if to both implore God to hear him in this time of need and to shield him from pieces of the heavens which were surely falling toward him at frightening speed.

"WHAT WILL BECOME OF XANAXDU?!!!"

Me, I like getting my facts straight before I smear the reputation of a company whose products have served me fantastically well over the years. So I emailed Barry Klein at Taylor, and he called me shortly thereafter to answer my questions about what, if anything, was going on with Taylor's shaving creams.

Turns out the geeks were all wrong. Taylor didn't remove the avocado oil from its Avocado shaving cream. It's still there. It's just that six months ago, Taylor brought its creams into compliance with new EU regulations that take effect in April, and that entailed making some slight changes to a few of the scented creams. The changes are as follows:

1. Taylor's Avocado still has just as much avocado oil as before (it's listed in the ingredients as persea gratissima) -- the only change to the formula was a different scent. You can tell the new Avocado by its new green-colored label, which, like all of the Taylor creams from now on, is a decal stuck on the tub lids instead of the inked lids the company used to use. The old Avocado tubs have a brown label that's printed right on the lid. The new labeling system was designed to let Taylor use the same generic lid for any of its creams, thus speeding up the company's ability to deliver whatever creams its customers want, instead of running out of inked lids for a certain type of cream and having to wait while new ones are made.

2. Taylor's Lavender is now a slightly different color due to FDA regulations regarding certain coloring agents, but the real difference is in its scent -- Taylor now uses real lavender oil to scent its Lavender shaving cream, replacing the synthetic lavender scent used in the old version.

3. All of the Taylor creams are now allowed to settle for a week after they've been mixed and whipped, and the company now fills its 150-gram tubs with 160 grams of cream and lets them settle for another week, to eliminate the "shrinkage" which has caused complaints in the past when shavegeeks cracked open a new tub of Taylor's to find it seemingly half-full.

In addition, Klein says these extra stages of settling before the creams are shipped to dealers make for a creamier product that doesn't "crystallize" on top and make the cream seem dried-out or hard (Klein advises that any such "dried-out" tub of Taylor's can simply be stirred to restore it to normal consistency, as it's only a thin layer on top of the older creams which had a tendency to crystallize if it sat unused for a long time.

I took the opportunity to ask Klein some questions about Taylor I've always wondered about.

Q: Why do Taylor shaving creams cost less than half what Trumper, Truefitt & Hill, and D. R. Harris creams cost?

A: Even though all four brands have their shaving creams made by the same source, the UK toiletry maker Creightons, the hard plastic tubs are one of the most expensive components, and Taylor buys its plastic tubs in bulk orders of over 100K/year, so it pays less for each tub and can charge less for its creams.

Q: Why does the Avocado cream come in a metal tube while all the other Taylor creams come in plastic tubes?

A: All of Taylor's creams used to come in metal tubes, because that's what the much larger toothpaste industry used at the time. As toothpaste manufacturers began switching to plastic tubes, Taylor phased out the metal tubes as well, but since Avocado has always been its slowest seller, the metal tubes of this particular cream have still been available long after the other creams began shipping in plastic tubes. New tubes of Avocado will be plastic just like the other Taylor creams.

Since all of my tub'n'tubes of Taylor's Avocado and Lavender are the old versions, Klein offered to send me some tubs of the new versions to compare them with. I look forward to getting in the new batch and seeing how the updates to this venerable company's shaving creams fare.

Now I feel bad for making fun of the geeks again. I promised myself I wouldn't. It's a new year, I said to myself. Live and let live, I said to myself. They're people too, I said to myself. People who eat Crunchwrap Supremes --

Okay, New Year's resolution begins.......now!