Some things I hate (an incomplete list in no particular order):
1. The word “moist”
2. Being in the presence of anyone eating cereal in milk
3. Dr. Phil and all members of his obnoxious family
4. Talking on the phone
5. Shaving – I really, really HATE shaving

(I’ll certainly explain #1 & #2 in a future post)

No - this is not me.

As much as I hate the general face-shaving process, I find shaving the back of my neck to be an even greater hassle. To be honest, this also includes my shoulders and upper back since, of the traits that I could have inherited from my father, I received “hairy” & “prone to skin cancer”, whereas my brother received “tall” and “thin”. Every guy knows that trying to shave your neck with a standard razor is a painfully awkward process. I always feel like an uncoordinated imbecile whenever I attempt to do it – always trying in vain to arrange the razor in such a way that it actually shaves instead of bouncing limply along the your back while the hair mocks its inadequacy (back hair is mean, its like the Ann Coulter of body-hair – add her to that list of things I hate). Then, even if you do manage to scrape the hair from your back,  you can never verify that you’ve been successful without contorting yourself around to catch a glimpse of your neck via your peripheral vision – it makes me wish that I was an owl (although, losing my thumbs, sense of self-awareness and a whole host of other human advantages makes this a less attractive prospect – then again – flying would be cool).

So most guys, they end up saying “screw-it” to the whole neck-shaving thing and have their wives/girlfriends/whoever they wish to make suffer,  take care of it for them. In my case though, I hate to do this. I love my wife a lot, but I am one of those stubborn assholes that is convinced I can do things like this on my own. Also, I don’t like it when other people touch my back (yet another topic for a later post).

Enter – The Swerve. Courtney had seen mentions of this product on various sites.

The Swerve

After contacting them, Brian, one of the company founders, was gracious enough to send over a couple for us to try.

All I can say is that this thing is awesome. I’m a huge fan of quality design. Add to the list of things I hate – poorly designed products ( for example, the hinged door to the center console in Courtney’s awful Ford Escape cantilevers out over one of the cup-holders, rendering it generally useless for holding anything bigger than a small coffee – this would be fine in a Ferrari where some guy named Paolo needs only to carry his tiny cup of espresso, but it simply doesn’t cut it

The Swerve

here) – sorry for the tangent, back to The Swerve.

Like I said, good design = good product and this thing is very well designed. An adequate description of the way in which it fits your hand is beyond my paltry narrative skills, so I’ll fall back on a video from the company to explain it:

Get it now? As I said earlier, I was not granted a reprieve from being a hairy individual, so finding a product like this that makes the act of removing unwanted hair from the back of my neck a process that is not utterly unbearable is fortuitous.

My wife tried it out too (no, not on the back of her neck – I like to think that I am not completely superficial and would marry someone based on their personality and quality as an individual not based solely on their appearance, but I have to draw the line somewhere and there is no way I could marry a hairy chick). She found many things to like, such as the small form factor which makes packing easy and bla, bla, bla … here’s the bottom line, I no longer feel like an idiot when I am trying to shave my neck, so as a resulst, perhaps there will be less incidents where I have to decide between wearing a collared shirt or wearing a t-shirt with the understanding that people might wonder why a hedgehog is trying to crawl up the back of my neck.

It really is a great product, hell they even invented their own word for it – “groomtool”. I’m going to start making up words for stuff too. For example, you know when something happens that makes you throw up a little bit in your mouth – I’m going to call that “nastymouth”.

Anyway, The Swerve, here it is:

The Swerve 1 Pack – $4.99
The Swerve 3 Pack – $12.99

The Giveaway

Oh yeah, Brian also offered to give away a one pack of The Swerve to two of our readers(that means a one pack for each of you, not one to share, we’re not freaks here, we wouldn’t expect some complete strangers to have to share a razor – if you are into that kind of thing, I’m sure there is another site out there for you, this isn’t it).

We’re hosting the giveaway over on Courtney’s site, so follow this next link to get instructions for entering. Good Luck!

The Swerve Giveaway – Hosted by “The Art of Being Mom”