If you’ll strain your brain, you may recall that I had mentioned (more than just in passing) that I had purchased some swords. Yeah. I did. Now, that was Thing Five of a great many Things in the Omnibus Post of Doom: one of my more word-intensive rants. Whatever. I totally get that more than a few people completely phase me out when I go on a tear. That’s fine.
But… I did say.
Some people, I am told, do not care for swords. Huh. There are, they say, people with no fondness whatsoever for sharpened bits of cutlery of any sort. “The hell,” you say. Yup. I’ve been told this is so. Incomprehensible, I know (to be sure), but these creatures not only exist, I’m told they’re quite common.
Well.
Should you be one of these creatures, do run off and play with whatever it is that could possibly be more entertaining than a sword. Don’t trouble yourself further.
So then… the swords. This escapade was not without some trifling bit of drama. No. As dramatics go, it wasn’t all that. Still, it seems untoward to say the escapade merely induced a little anxiety because… no, Sweeties… it was full-fledged drama, just not fledged with outlandish plumage. Nope: it was drab, sparrow-like drama, but drama nonetheless.
I am an old-fashioned sort. I like the Internet just fine… I do. I just don’t let it play with my money. I prefer my money to be played with by what are now considered antiquated institutions. The Internet is, I find, a most excellent shopping aid. Oh yes. Most excellent. It advertises, but in reverse. I quite dislike (yea… even hate and loathe) advertisements of the usual sort: some beastly and synthetic imitation of a somebody extolling the virtues of this, that, or some other thing that I couldn’t possibly want (not even a little bit). The reverse sort, where I root around and find merchants perfectly willing to indulge one of my flights of fancy in exchange for currency, that I like. I mean… it’s not like I don’t want stuff. I do want stuff. I’m what some people call a tad psychotic about wanting stuff on occasion. Finding it, then getting it is what I call a good day.
But we’re going to be communicating by mail, this merchant and I. Yah. “Snail mail,” I think they call it these days. Rumor has it that communications via Internet are covered under wire fraud laws. Huh. I don’t know anything about that. The mail fraud laws, on the other hand… those are old, and there are institutions set up to prosecute those who use the US postal system for fraud. Seriously… show me a merchant who will not use the US Postal service and I’ll show you a merchant that I immediately suspect of engaging in fraud. I really, especially dislike being defrauded.
We’re also going to be using the banking institution of my choice, more often than not, this merchant and I. It works like this: I write out a cheque, the merchant deposits the cheque, our respective bankers fuss over the details. Then I get my stuff. I surely would not expect to get my stuff before the merchant gets his money. It’d be nice if the exchange could be simultaneous, but I haven’t come upon a way to do that yet. Don’t take cheques? Some merchants don’t take cheques. That troubles me… it does. It reflects a fundamental distrust in the very foundation of modern commerce. Not that I’d not understand because I would understand. Oh yes… I know lots of folks who have a well-founded distrust of all kinds of underpinnings of civilization as we know it. I can do money orders. First choice would be Postal money orders and second choice would be Western Union. Why not? That particular institution might even be considered medieval. What’s not to like? But I just don’t do business with merchants who only take credit cards.
I mean… seriously… Henry VIII might be borrowing money from bankers to buy swords (I think he may have done more than occasionally) but that’s just not a reason to borrow money in my book. Not going to do it. Period. Money is illusory enough, and bank cheques are pushing the illusion a bit far but not so far that I can’t grasp it. Credit cards: those are as evil as coupons and for the same reason: it’s unregulated counterfeit money. It’s bad for the economy. I stick with “real” money… not that money is “real” at all. Whatever.
In addition to sharply limiting my shopping options (though avoiding people I believe to be fraudsters and scam artists at best is hardly an unwelcome limitation), my admittedly quirky approach to shopping is also uncomfortably slow. I get that.
It took a hair under a week for my mailed missive to reach my merchant. I expected that: the USPS was mediocre prior to 2001 and quite promptly after 11 September became nearly intolerable in that way that some drunken, dotty old uncle is nearly intolerable at family gatherings: this is to say completely intolerable, but technically minimally tolerable because you’ve gone and tolerated the intolerable because you’re fond of the old coot. Whatever.
It took my merchant a full week to decide I had, in fact, sent him the equivalent of US currency and not some piece of paper that resembled such a thing. Fine: it took my own bank one day longer to notice the same thing.
So that’s two weeks. I can live with that. Normally, UPS takes 3 or 4 days (with the grave caveat that Saturday and Sunday are not, by any stretch of the imagination, to be considered “days”). Yeah. Normally.
They didn’t. No. They took eight. Now… that’s way beyond my endurance. Four days is fine, but eight is not fine. No.
I had, in fact, spent a most surly day at the bake-shop mentally composing the really very stern (edited down repeatedly through the stages of threatening, obscene, hostile, and harsh) missive I was going to send my chosen merchant regarding this escapade.
However… upon my arrival home to scurry off to do just that, I could not help but lay eyes on my much expected package propped up where I could not possibly miss it. The spousal-unit did that. He’s sweet that way. It was still freezing cold from sitting for… oh… eight freaking days… in one or another conveyance of UPS.
I mean… eight days is reasonable if the package comes from California and has to cross an entire continent and two mountain ranges… not to mention a more than slightly impressive river that, last I heard, was missing one or possibly more slightly vital bridges. (We’re ignoring the fact that UPS owns airplanes because… oh yes, Sweeties… airplanes can circle the freaking planet in eight days so surely it was trucked.)
I had ordered something from South Carolina, after all… not California. I’m still more than half boycotting California. South Carolina… that’s totally just three days… maybe only two. Seriously.
Then I look at the package: It came, in fact, from California. Whatever. Eight days is not satisfactory but it will do, since my package did travel much, much further than I had anticipated. After all… I have my package. Not, mind you, that I did not promptly scour the Internet for evidence that this unexpected third party had, to even a trivial degree, supported California’s Proposition 8. I’d have sent the package back, in that case, swords or no swords. The verdict came back “not guilty” so all is well and I have swords and am well pleased.
That would be this sword on the top and this other one on the bottom. For their price, they aren’t bad at all. Nope.
The wakizashi, at least, does differ from the manufacturer’s description in one respect: it most assuredly does not have two pegs, one bamboo and the other brass. It has but one peg, a brass one. That’s fine. I think the two-peg thing is silly.
The hamon (which is what I was properly buying) is right nice. This is the shorter sword. The katana has a nicer hamon, but… the Kaze Katana has been reviewed more than occasionally on the Internet… and excessively harshly. There just aren’t that many pictures of the Kaze wakizashi out there, though.
I’ll grant, the ito does bear a striking resemblance to shoelace. It may even be shoelace. The problem isn’t so much that it’s not silk… it’s the weave. I can live with that, though. I can. I’m even going to get to handle these swords with what might just pass for wild abandon without fussing over whether I’m going to get the ito dirty or not. Besides… I get to spend many months, maybe even years, plotting on just what I’m going to re-wrap them with. The options for shopping are… just dazzling.
While others have found less than pleasant scuffs and scratches on their new blades, I have not. The polish… well, let’s just say that a proper polish on a katana costs $800 (it does) and I totally did not spend that much on the pair of them. I’d not have expected more. I am, however, quite likely to improve matters. The hamon will be much better for it.
The only real issues are the tsuba on the katana is loose and both the tsuba and the fuchi are loose on the wakizashi. That can be dealt with, however.
But there’s this word: yokote. In theory, that would be a transverse line on the blade just short of the tip, the angle where the plane of the tip meets the plane of the blade. I say “in theory” because these blades have no such angle. Nope. That’s just scratchiness on the tip… scratchiness that just cries out for polishing out. That being done, there won’t be a line there at all. That would be because these blades don’t have yokote, they’ve just been made up to look like they do. And we’re not talking drag queen make up here. No. Maybe Halloween costume make up. Sure. Folks have called this a “fake” yokote and that’s just way too charitable by far. This isn’t fake… it’s an imitation of fake. Fakery suggests a counterfeit, a more than passable attempt to approximate the real thing. This is… those steel-brushed stenciled hamon-like designs they used to (and, regrettably, still do) put on nasty-ass stainless steel thingies.
I can understand not having a yokote. A sword is allowed to not have one. Soon enough, these swords will look like they don’t have one rather than looking….
They just look scratched up this way. This is misplaced effort. They should stop doing that.
Not, mind you, that I don’t like my swords. Oh no. I’ve been far too busy cooing over them for that. I mean… I got them on Wednesday afternoon and here it is Sunday morning.
There remains, however, this issue of drop-shipping. I do not approve. When a merchant says “I have this thing,” I quite expect that to be literally true. This is not at all the same thing as saying “I expect to be able to procure this thing.” No. I don’t need mysterious third parties in my meager business relationships. I can just go to the third party and give him my money directly. If I’m going to pay a middleman (and I surely do not begrudge middlemen their pay), I quite expect that he will have actually done something. Phoning my snail mail order in to California does not count as “something” in my book. No. I mean… $50 for a phone call? Seriously? I’ll not be paying that again.
So then… as a reward for your patience, have a picture of a fat kitty.
Look… no swords of any sort. Just an 11 kilogram kitty.
