I look scary now

 I have been gradually increasing my shagginess over many months.  My hair on my head was never going to look good, but I had some hopes that my beard would eventually be attractive.  That did not occur, and I am now quite sure that lots of hair is just a terrible look for me.

Yesterday, I finally decided I had to do something about it.  This is phase 1.  For years I had thought that maybe my hair was thinning on top, but I wasn't sure.  After letting it grow out though, that thinning is undeniable.  My dad now has more hair than me.

Phase 2 is me without the hair.  I saw a picture online of an older guy with buzzed hair and a huge beard and it looked fantastic, so I was wondering if I could successfully rock that look.  It turns out I cannot, and everyone who saw it was horrified.

It just doesn't do the thing I was hoping it would do.  Onto phase 3, which is just the same but with a less scraggly beard that has been trimmed down quite a bit.  People viewing my makeover were much happier with this look than the last - nobody likes the big beard on me.

This one is okay, but it just isn't great.  When the beard is shorter it doesn't fill in the way I want.  Also, a shorter beard isn't nearly as much fun to fiddle with, and it still requires maintenance.  Half of the draw of a beard is not having to maintain anything!  Time to take even more off.  Phase 4!

Back to my old look, the one I have been rocking for years and years now.

This is my best look.  I guess that is good to know, since I have had a goatee for about 25 years now, with a couple of six months beard growing stints that didn't work out.  I know this is just the way I should be, but every so often I have to test it out to be sure.

Now I need to endure a few days of Wendy and Pinkie Pie looking at me like I am an alien and walking around me staring whenever we pass one another.  They don't react well to extreme changes in my appearance.

Feel free to chime in about what look you like best, though it doesn't seem like I will be taking your suggestions unless they happen to fit the buzzed look at the bottom.

Better than expected

Covid 19 continues to dominate world conversation.  It actually has been a major factor in why I haven't been posting over the past couple of months, largely because all of my media is saturated by it and I find I don't usually have much to add.  It sucks, people are responding to it badly, life is weird now.  I can say those things, and they are true, but since everybody is saying that it doesn't feel like there is much point in me spewing the same things onto my blog.

But I do have one point to make that may provide a different take on the whole affair:  I am surprised at how well the world is handling the covid crisis.

Don't get me wrong - we could do much better.  The response from some nations and leaders in particular has been heinously self serving and nonsensical, and average people refusing to wear masks as a political signal is also deplorable.

But we are doing a lot better than I figured we would.

At the beginning of all of this I assumed that all nations would refuse any serious measure to contain the virus in the name of economic progress.  I was stunned that so many nations actually came around to policies that closed stores and halted consumption.  I had thought that this simply wouldn't happen.  I figured that leaders would happily sacrifice 50% of the elderly and 1% of the rest of us on the altar of profit.

My expectation, made back in February, was that by this point about 2% of the world population would be dead, and we could easily be as high as 5% by year end.  I didn't expect any sort of serious attempt to stop the virus until every municipality worldwide was digging mass graves, desperately trying to find places to put all the corpses.

There was a reason I stocked up on food in those early days, and in part it was because I thought that we would have a far worse lockdown period following a monstrous dieoff due to covid.  Instead most countries had a moderate lockdown much earlier than I expected and it seems like the deaths from covid will be serious, but shouldn't even come close to 1% of world population, much less 5%.

(So far about .01% of world population has died to covid, and while it is still rising, it seems like we will have a vaccine long before we threaten to have 1% of us die from this.)

We could do much better, yes.  But we already did an awful lot better than I expected of us, so humanity surprised me in a positive way.  I normally like to whinge about how terrible people are, but I figurd I should at least note when it goes the other way and they surprise me in a good way.

In more normal covid news, I have grown a covid beard.  I already got called santa claus by a surprised family member, and nobody thinks it looks good, but this is apparently what I am doing with my time.

A soft beard

People sometimes complain about my beard.  Mostly people who I kiss, who are occasionally attacked savagely by the ends of the hairs sprouting from my face.  Until recently I thought this a problem without a solution.  When I shave it off I get told I look freaky and ten years old.  When I leave it on, it attacks.  What to do with a beard?

But not so long ago I came across the idea of beard oil.  Many people who pay more attention to personal grooming than I do surely knew of this for their entire lives, but it only came across my desk recently.  I hesitated though, unsure if I was willing to actually put that much time into my routine.  Plus the cost!  Surely beard oil is expensive, and you know how I feel about that.

But at WBC this year EpicBeard expounded on the joys of beard oil.  He waxed eloquent about the benefits.  And he is a convincing sort of person, so I gave it a go.

The price nearly killed me.  75 ml for 10 dollars?  What is this stuff made of, uranium?!?  And this is the cheapest stuff in the store!

I kind of hope not.  Uranium is pretty dangerous to put on your face, or so I have heard.

So I put the outrageously expensive stuff on my face; the test is underway.

The results so far indicate that beard oil is smelly.  Not to me - my nose hardly works at all.  Other people though, the kinds of people who were hoping that my beard would be less stabby, report that beard oil is unpleasant.  This does not bode well for the beard oil industry getting any more of my money.

Whether it will make my beard any softer is yet to be determined.  It does seem to reduce the itch factor of my beard though, so at least that portion of it works.  To find out about the stabbiness though I will need to conduct many tests and kiss lots of people.  You need lots of data, you see, in order to science properly, and science is extremely important.  As such, a great deal of kissing must commence.

Apparently I look bizarre

Earlier this week I decided to cut my goatee off based on Wendy's complaints about being stabbed.  Here is a before and after set of pictures:

So here I am, looking as I have pretty much all the time for the past 16 years.  I have been clean shaven for about 7 days since I was 17 and the last time was in 2002 I think.  I don't know exactly how it is that shaving regularly changes one's face but it sure as hell does.  Shaving the sides is a simple zip zap done but shaving the goatee area was nothing but catching and ripping and going over the same spot five times and bleeding and pain.  Minor bleeding, mind, but still the difference was profound.  Somehow the skin really does become accustomed to a razor.

And here is the sight of my face being exposed to the light of the accursed day-star for the first time in nine years.  I know I look different but the reactions I got were really something else.  People at Elli's daycare stared at me and gasped and told me with faces full of disbelief "You are so YOUNG!"  Yeah, I guess I should have expected that when I saw all the grey in the beard as I trimmed it off but I didn't think I would find half the people I meet with their jaws on the ground.

I remember running away and hiding from my Dad when he trimmed his beard off when I was very young.  Elli didn't do that though, she took a little bit longer to recognize me but thought that the trim was quite exciting and told all her friends to touch my face.









I was hoping that Wendy's reaction would be much more heartening.

"Oh my God."

"You have no upper lip at all!"

Ouch?  I mean, clearly there is more to my lower lip than upper but I gotta say that reaction isn't doing much for my self esteem.  Not that this sort of thing is new, she does like to talk about how grotesquely enormous my nose is too.

She spent the whole evening staring at me and wandering around me giving me extra space saying things like:

"I can't believe your voice is coming out of somebody else's face."

"Is it cheating if I sleep with you even though I feel entirely sure the person I am sleeping with isn't you?"

"I feel like 'you with a beard' is going to show up and beat you up for kissing me."

So much for gratitude for me sacrificing my beard on the altar of matrimonial bliss; first thing that happens is she starts cheating on me with me.  I'm going to have to get that other guy somehow.

Mustache attack

Last night I went to kiss Wendy and...

"Argh!  Your mustache crawled up my nose and stabbed me!"

"Ummm, how is that possible?  It isn't that long right now."

"I don't know, but it attacked me."

"Okay, how about kissing like this instead..."

"Ow!  It did it again.  Why have you set your mustache on Aggressive?"

"Fine, I will set it to Passive."

"Why is it attacking me?"

"Should I trim it short?"

"No, then it will just stab me in the lips instead."

"How does it even do that anyway?  Also, why did this never happen until a few years ago... I have had this goatee for 16 years."

"I don't know but keep it away!"

Given that my mustache is apparently engaged in savage assaults against my wife's lips and inner nose?!? I think it is time to try out the clean shaven look for a while.  I have had my goatee since I was a teenager with only two very temporary reprieves as far as I can recall and both were on Hallowe'en.  The first was to dress up as Mulder from XFiles to be part of a Mulder/Scully costume team and the other was to dress up as Hobo to be part of a Sky/Hobo costume team.  Now boldly I go to the land of the whipped man where I shave my precious facial hair to please my lady.  Next thing you know she will be wanting me to get a job or something...

Lookin' Ugly

Recently I decided to grow a beard.  The initial plan was to just grow my goatee out and let the sides fill in as time went by.  I was looking forward to having a ZZ top style beard that would be enormously long and luxuriant but I have given up on that... I was just too ugly.

Whether or not you think the rest of me is attractive or not it is hard to deny that the scraggly, long beard looks bloody awful especially with the sides being short.  I am not the sort to be desperately worried about how I look to the rest of the world (in fact I find it greatly amusing to be bizarre in ways that are pretty much the opposite of 'hip') but I ended up deciding that I should stop looking like a frothing, ranting hobo for Wendy's sake if nothing else.  The undeniable truth is that I like it when she looks hot.  I think high heels are bloody ridiculous and I have no attachment to makeup so I am not exactly the most demanding sort of person in this regard... but I am exceptionally fond of tight and revealing clothing, as nearly all men are, and if she decided to wear an Amish style dress all the time I would be disappointed.  I figure I should do my part and at the very least try not to be actively embarassing.

I am a little torn on this issue though.  For one, it seems like your mate should be someone around whom you can simply be yourself and which does not require high maintenance and carefully chosen facades.  On the other hand if you are going to try to look good for someone why wouldn't you do so for the most important person in your life?  Maybe the best strategy is to generally try to look good but every so often do something silly to look awful to remind them how much worse things could be.  :)

I did get the beard long enough that Wendy was able to braid it though so I figure my mission is accomplished.  Time to do the unthinkable and let her demolish it with a trimmer.

And there is the after photo, 20 minutes later.  I was slightly nervous as I don't even let barbers touch my beard... it has always been something I want to do myself.  Nonetheless I have cleaned myself up to something resembling respectability and hopefully I will be thoroughly rewarded for my herculean efforts.  Unfortunately now I lack a beard that is suitable for thoughtful beard strokery while doing other things so I will have to go get a bunch of pens to put on my desk so I will have something to fidget with while I think or read.  I don't know why some people can sit calmly and others must relentlessly twitch and fiddle with nearby objects but I am undoubtedly in the second group; every girlfriend I have ever had has been driven mad by my relentless leg bouncing if nothing else.

A Beard: Not a real project

I have tried three official projects since Brightcape started up.  The first two which were to read the Bible and go around barefoot for a summer were completed and I would call them successes; I did what I set out to do and learned a bunch in the process.  The cheese project was a total failure as I have not learned to like cheese and am not making any noticeable attempt to stay on schedule.  I want to have a project to talk about but my latest thing simply isn't project worthy - I am going to grow a gigantic beard.  The updates for this theoretical project would go something like "Beard 2 millimeters longer, morale is good but food residue is a problem" and that isn't much of a post.

Ever since I was 16 or so I have had a goatee.  I chopped it off twice in the intervening years but grew it back right away; by this point it is as much a part of me as my ears.  As in, if it were gone it would be really weird but I could still go on with my life.  Lately I have been attempting to go ZZ top and just grow the goatee extremely long but I seem to have a real issue with doing so in that I am a fidgeter.  I noticed this first when I looked down at my desk right in front of my keyboard and found a bunch of tiny bits of hair a couple millimeters long.  I couldn't figure out what was up with it until I realized that the bits were right below my chin and I had spent much of the day tugging at my beard while I wrote and thought.  Now that I actually consider it I constantly twist, pull, rearrange and style my beard while doing other things... it has replaced fidgeting with a pen or bouncing my leg as my twitch of choice.  Beard strokery while thinking is an old and well respected process of course and now that I have enough beard to do so properly the desire to engage in beard strokery constantly is nearly undeniable.  Growing out the goatee is a fairly seamless process though compared to growing the rest of the beard which follows some strange steps.

Unshaven
Really unshaven
Slovenly
Itchy itchy oh my goodness must SHAVE NOW!
Ugly
Really bad beard
Poor beard that is enough of a beard to make fun of but not good enough to admire
Mediocre beard
Good beard

On my first attempt I had just gotten to Ugly when I had to go to a funeral.  There was a terrible internal struggle between my desire to look good and avoid family issues and my desire to refuse to moralize on the amount of hair on my face.  In the end I shaved, though not without some remorse.  I have gotten back to Ugly again and I must say that going through Itchy itchy twice in a month is not a course I recommend - if you are going for a beard you need to go whole hog.

There are some unanswered questions.  First, is Wendy really serious when she says that she is going to braid my beard?  Second, what do I do about the border between the beard and my hair?  I like to keep my hair buzzed really short and I want to grow an enormous beard so how do I handle the transition?  I have seen people with shaved heads and big beards and it looks quite strange... a tricky conundrum.