Aug. 5, 2022 - Science!
#GEMsOfWisdom / #RawHoggin
Today's shave was pretty good.
Starting Austere August and having to return to face lathering, I forgot how effective the Another Cut Above lathering method is, and finally remembered to use it today. So I squeezed out the brush a bit, loaded a bunch of soap, worked the pasty protolather into my stubble, and then gently brushed in dips of water until it went transparent on my skin. From there I started "splaying" the brush (this Scrubby has zero give so far) to work up a lather, occasionally adding a dip of water until my lather passed The Swipe Test™. I also discovered my chin can take a lot more abuse than my cheeks or neck can, so I'm going to do a lot of splaying and scrubbing and swirling there to accelerate the break-in progress. This knot still has a ways to go.
I'm still yielding far less lather than I'm used to (scooping a 1/4 teaspoon of soap) while eating up a lot more soap. I usually end up with enough extra for at least enough for a full pass, and Austere August lathers are giving me about half that, if not less.
Out of curiosity, I weighed a 1/4 teaspoon of Stirling Sheep shave soap to confirm about how much it weighs, so I could then compare my typical routine's soap consumption to what I'm using now. This Sheep tub is dried out and in the Mutton base, so it might be a little different than my Austere August Lime tub in the standard Stirling base. Still, my rigorous scientific method suggests a level 1/4 teaspoon of shave soap is equivalent to about 1/5 grams of that same soap, give or take a few tenths of a gram. Right now I'm using about 3 grams of soap a day—double what I would be with my usual brushes, scooping and starting my lather in a bowl. I'm curious how this changes as the knot continues to break in.
Also, not much to share on the MMOC. I'm used to it, it's a little more aggressive than I'd prefer most days, and the new GEM blade has been tamed a little. Only once weeper on my chin—but that skin was kind of used and abused from trying splay the knot. Worth it.
| Date |
Soap Before (g) |
Soap After (g) |
Consumption (g) |
| 8/1 |
235.5 |
232.5 |
3 |
| 8/2 |
232.5 |
228.0 |
4.5 |
| 8/3 |
228.0 |
227.0 |
1 |
| 8/4 |
227.0 |
223.3 |
3.7 |
| 8/5 |
223.3 |
220.3 |
3 |
⁂
#sidetracked u/Teufelskraft
I started writing today's Sidetracked blurb thinking I'd introduce a few people to a hidden gem. Unfortunately, when I searched for a YouTube video of Adriano Celentano's famously weird "Prisencolinensinainciusol," I discovered that the Fargo show (which I haven't seen) used this song to soundtrack a bridge tournament scene in season three. So now I'm officially less in the know then I ever used to be. It's a disappointing development.
That being said, you should still go give this uniquely-weird pop song a listen. The story here is that "Prisencolinensinainciusol" is a popular Italian rock musician's idea about what American English sounds like, spoken entirely in gibberish (with the exception of Celentano and company occasionally exclaiming "all right!"). It's weird and the classroom-themed music video is even weirder. And yet...it's great. The main chugging melody is a real earworm; there's a fuzzy guitar track, some funky horn jabs, and four looped drumbeats giving the song a never-resolving tension. "Prisencolinensinainciusol" was never intended as a novelty, and it deserves to be appreciated as the oddball rock-disco-funk-rap amalgamation it is.
“Ever since I started singing, I was very influenced by American music and everything Americans did. So at a certain point, because I like American slang—which, for a singer, is much easier to sing than Italian—I thought that I would write a song which would only have as its theme the inability to communicate. And to do this, I had to write a song where the lyrics didn't mean anything.”
– Adriano Celentano
YouTube: Adriano Celentano - Prisencolinensinainciusol
sotd.djudgement_invitations: [<DjudgementInvitation 293>, <DjudgementInvitation 2671>]