The Hat Trap

With winter rolling in here in michigan, it has become once again time for me to concern myself with avoiding frostbyte. For the most part this is accomplished by simply not going outside. This works for about 99% of my life... but unfortuantely there is at least a few hours during each witner when I'm forced out into the cruel elements to deal with the outdoors.

So what this really means is I need a new hat. I own a few hats, but I've realized that at age 23, the hats that I own fall into 3 catagories:

1. Baseball hats loudly proclaiming tacky corporate logos. I have no problem with hats of this nature, but they tend to function more in the "Keep Sun out of Eyes" capacity then in the "Prevent Wind from Ripping large chunks of ear cartilidge off while temperature is antarctic".
2. A red fedora. Ok, its a cool hat. It has significance. And I wear it during christmas. BUt if you wear a red hat at any other place besides a Linux convention or a christmas party, people think you're a fruit loop.
3. Wool hats that feature convenient eye holes. This is of course the best winter hat of all time, however it bears with it the stigma of also making anyone within a 30 foot radius brace themselves for a "Stickup". Besides that, I don't ski. I don't engage in snow fights. And quite frankly it looks dumb.

So I do what I always do when it comes time for me to buy something: I turn to the internet. I shop. And shop. And after a pretty solid amount of time, I realize that I want a black leather fedora, but the statistical probability of me guessing the correct size of my own head. Hemos would say I have a big head, but I'm not sure that constitutes an accurate measurement for hat size. And I guess this is where the eCommerce buzzword collapses. I don't know how to measure my head any better than I know how to measure my own bra size. There are many variables: Head Shape (Oval? Circle? Wide?) and the actual circumfrence (measured in hecthairs of course).

I'm a college graduate, but I am positive that I am incapable of getting this right without help

At a store, I could either ask the surly teenage staffer manning the register to assist me and measure my head, or I could brute force the task by merely trying on hats until I find something that neither slides off during a light breeze, or sits so high on my head that people think it has religious significance.