Tactical hair clip

Two comment responses first:

* I don't know what the deal with the challenge is. It was just presented as "Department X has challenged us to do this Friday." I'm really hoping that it's going to be a "Hey, let's get students who want to do this!" thing and leave us off the hook. (And I might approach my friend to see if he's of similar mind to me). I think we have faculty meeting later this week where we can find out more. I really want to just go Bartleby the Scrivener on this and say "I would prefer not to," full stop, no need to explain.

* It's not so much that I'm self-critical (though I am, I guess), it's that I'm just not as light-hearted as some and I admit I look on them with some envy. I guess part of it is I do take my responsibilities too seriously. And I don't know how to do otherwise (and, to be brutally honest, I'm not sure I really want to - one of my outstanding qualities is that I Can Be Counted On To Get Stuff Done and so few people these days seem to do that.) I guess I was serious even as a kid, which is what makes me wonder if this isn't somehow hardwired into me and therefore more of a challenge to change.

Anyway. Something I ordered finally came in the mail. I was grumbling about how long it took until I picked up the package and saw it came all the way from Israel. (I didn't notice the address of the website, though it was animacausausa, which probably should have told me it wasn't a USA based place). Rishon Le Zion, Israel, to be exact. I'm not up on modern Israeli geography so I don't know exactly where that is.

This was something I saw somewhere - online, or maybe linked on Twitter - and it caught my imagination so much I wanted one. At the time, I referred to the old caper-movie trope where the lady hands a hairpin over to her male companion (with the line, "Maybe this will help.") as he's trying to pick a lock or something. And that this item was the apotheosis of that:



It's a tactical hair clip. I LOVE this idea. The packaging shows all the things it can do - it has a couple of screwdriver blades, and a "trolley coin" (which looks kind of like an allen-wrench-in-negative) and a little cutting blade, and a short ruler (in cm, of course - this is from an Israeli company)

At first, when I tried to put it in my hair, I couldn't get it to go - it's very tight and the first couple times I tried I cut a few hair strands with the cutting blade. (I have lots, so it doesn't really matter).

Then, playing around with it, I found out it opened:



This way, you can easily slide it in and clamp it back so it's secure.

I originally ordered two, with half a thought of  "one for my office" (you never know when you need a small cutting blade) and "one for home/wearing in the field." But I might save the second one as a gift for my sister-in-law, this is the kind of thing she'd find both useful and kind of amusing.

Oh, and here it is on. Forgive the slightly manic expression; it's been a long day with lots of bad human interactions.



I call this "Slightly more dangerous than Amy Farrah Fowler [she is known for that one oddly placed hair clip] but considerably less dangerous than Ziva David." (I had to get Ziva in there, knowing where the clip came from. And yeah, I could see her with one of these secreted away in her 'do, just in case.)

More detail, and a picture showing all the uses: multi-tool hair clip