Courtesy of Sportys.com

Here’s a tragic event that recently befell Techeye – on our way to work one morning, a thuggish blind man stabbed us in the crotch with a rolled-up magazine. Undeservedly, we might add.

This malefactor was headed the wrong way through a turnstile, hunched over and attempting to find his way by jabbing forward with the magazine, dragging a slack-jawed “guide dog” along behind him. Not that Techeye saw any of this until after we’d pushed through the aforementioned turnstile and suffered a tremendous blow to our dignity.
It’s funny how many details you notice when you’re doubled over on the floor of a crowded subway station.

Our assailant never apologized and by the time we stopped moaning and recovered enough to stand, he had already fled the scene. The police were no help, claiming that a vision-impaired man poses no threat to the public. They became outright hostile when we began unbuckling our belt and demanded that someone document the evidence.

Since that day the sound of periodicals whistling through the air has plagued our dreams and our waking hours have been spent plotting revenge. Our first plan was to get some Blast Knuckles (sportsmansguide.com). After all, 950,000 V of electricity-covered fist sounds like an effective way to deal with a stab-happy antagonist, no? And when the $50 price tag includes a holster and two batteries, revenge makes economic sense, too.

Courtesy of Sportsmanguide.com

But then we watched a couple of YouTube videos in which future Darwin Award winners used the Blast Knuckles on themselves and their friends. One woman (whose parents are most certainly first cousins) simply laughed every time she was shocked, unless it was on the buttocks.

Now, Techeye has no qualms about tousling with the handicapped. We’re soft and weak, like a jellyfish on valium, so it’s usually a fair fight. But sneaking up to punch a blind guy on the rump – that would be dishonorable. So we decided that pepper spray might be a better alternative.

That’s how we started researching products from the industry champion, Mace (mace.com). The firm has plenty of flashy self-defense options, but Techeye took a liking to the “pepper gun with flashing strobe.”

For a little less than $80, you get “the most accurate non-lethal self defense spray available” and it’s equipped with a disorienting LED strobe light. The pepper gun will deliver a stream of pepper spray to a target up to about six meters away. There’s a water cartridge to help you practice shooting too.

Eventually, though, we realized that the strobe light wouldn’t help much against a strobe-proof arch-nemesis. It might give the guide dog an epileptic fit, but the dog was just an unwilling accomplice.

Disappointed, Techeye considered a number of other self-defense gadgets, but none seemed fitting. Sword canes are out of vogue this season and ricin-tipped umbrellas are hard to come by. Exploding gerbils are apparently frowned upon these days.

In the end, we decided that the best option is to fight fire with fire. Meaning, in this case, a thoroughly dangerous, rolled-up magazine. A tech magazine, of course.

After much deliberation, Techeye chose Wired as our weapon of choice. There’s just something threatening about the paper it’s printed on.

Courtesy of Wired via Halo3planet.com

Anyway, a year’s subscription to Wired will set you back $70 (for international subscribers), but that’s a small price to pay for something you can read on the way to work, then use to smack your foes around. Pictured is the last issue we actually bought (way back in 2007), but the latest issue has James Dyson on the cover.

In other words, our arch-nemesis is going to get smacked upside the head by “the king of suck.” The best part? He’ll never see it coming.

Ever seen a gerbil explode? Let us know: techeye.wbj@gmail.com