Sunday's French swashbuckler is Monday's sex criminal

I guess the WorldEmpress wanted to know about my moustache. I think you do, too. And you might as well toss me into that camp while you're at it, because as little as I understand how it started, I understand even less how it's managed to continue.

So sit back and let me tell you about September 2007 ...

September 2007 was a fun Limbo that really wasn't that fun at all. I'd just had a terrific couple of weeks in Europe with the fantastic Laura, but had returned to a house in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York that was without Laura and without employment, but packed to the gills with late-summer satellite television. (The new Fall shows had yet to premiere at this point, and when they did premiere they all pretty much sucked. Even 30 Rock, the best 30 minutes of tv (19 minutes without commercials, hey hey!) was not as good as it had been the previous season.) My current employer was not yet my current employer; despite initial interest in my application, they took weeks to answer my emails. And Laura was back in Saskatoon, finishing school (but not at finishing school, the lack of which would come to haunt her in later years). I did what any boy with neither paycheck nor playmate would do: I took lots of pictures of myself.

I'm not going to post most of these pictures, since the majority of them clung to the theme of "Let's see what hat/prop combination I can come up with tonight!" (I was 32 at the time. Did I mention that? 32.) The first night it was fez/hunting rifle. Another night it was rice farmer's bamboo hat/frying pan. And one fateful night, it was sombrero/moustache.

There was one picture in particular in that last series that I liked. Looked like some creepy intense serial killer about to bathe in blood, or maybe a French novice pirate captain getting to raid his first Spanish treasure ship. For the purposes of this blog entry, let's pretend we only see the latter.

Fig. 1: Laura claimed to like it, too.

I shaved the moustache as soon as I was done taking pictures and didn't give it much thought.

That was September 2007 in a nutshell.

I eventually got hired at the newspaper and moved away from the Catskills and satellite tv, and 30 Rock eventually got better.

But then malaise set in. Since October 28th I'd been photocopying my face every day to make my quotidian existence less figuratively quotidian. But I was getting unsatified. What's a fella to do?

Clearly, the answer is "Quit your job and join the Peace Corps." The rebuttal to tha answer is "The Peace Corps can take over a year to process an application, so find something else to do in the interim." How about growing a moustache? "Sure, that'll do." I was borderline pretty sexy in that French pirate photo. "OK, that's plenty-" A few weeks in the gym and I'd be Magnum, PI. "Great. Good. Interior monologue out."

So with the memory of

in mind, I took to growing a moustache. Except it didn't turn out like

it turned out like

which is creepy intense without the French pirate thing going on ... and I'm mystifyingly OK with that.

Laura was here for a visit last week and seemed supportive of the moustache. (You can examine her photos at laurakeil.com/blog for any traces of disgust.)

I keep meaning to shave the moustache, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather spend my time napping. Lately I've had a cold that refuses to go away, y'see. I nap instead of shaving, and the moustache grows unabated.

Growing a moustache: Even easier than napping!