Todd Stadler's blog

oops, i didn't shave again

I recently found myself unshaven and growing a beard. This is the tale of what happened.

It's not that I intended to grow facial hair. I don't really like the stuff. It's scratchy. It catches food. And, between you and me, it makes me look older. Bah.

However, it's not like I enjoy the act of shaving much more. If, as they say, men were intended to draw sharp razors across their faces, they'd have been made with sharp blades on their hands, like in that Johnny Depp flick. And we all know how that ended.

And even if shaving were a simple, natural act, it would still be unnecessary for the unemployed or anti-social man. I am not, per se, anti-social, but I do spend most of my weekday hours sitting in front of a computer screen. And on the internet, no one knows if you've shaved (except you priveleged webcam users, darn you!). They can't even tell if you're naked (ditto).

So it was that I found myself unshaven for a period of several days. As such, my facial hair had progressed beyond mere stubble to that particular level where people asked me if I was intentionally not shaving.

With this critical hair mass, I moved from the growing stage into the shaping/shaving stage. This was, for reasons that now escape me, a rather exciting prospect.

After all, the ability to rapidly change my appearance from day to day - now I am a bearded sage, now I am a goateed beatnik - put me on the level of the most clever international spy.

In the past, I have always chosen to whittle my beard away in small chunks, allowing for a maximum number of different appearances, and therefore maximum fun.

I refer to this as the "bonsai beard". As you well recall from your cultural diversity lessons, the bonsai tree is to be trimmed such that you cut away everything that shouldn't be there. The same applies to the bonsai beard.

The problem with this analogy is that what I always want trimmed is the whole enchilada. Because, as I said, I don't like facial hair. I suppose the fun is in ridding yourself of that which annoys you.

Anyhow, those intervening days of increasingly less facial hair - hoo boy, were they wacky!

As seen in the pictorials at right, I chose this time to avoid the more complicated jawline elements and focus mainly on the goatee and its subsets, the soul patch and mustache.

Many will tell you that research into goatees is overabundant and unnecessary, and that new areas need to be explored. What of the rare neck beard, they ask. What of the waxed mustache? And these are important questions.

But just once in his life, a man has his time. And my time is now...

I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought there. Anyhow, my point is this: I grew some facial hair. I took some photos. And I put them on this web site.

I think there's something we can all learn from that.