Jorgenson, Nils C. (1858–1926), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper’s recent experience with facial hair ended with him shaving off his month-old beard and retaining only the mustache that he has lived with most of his life.
While the beard was beginning to make him look like an out-of-work Santa Claus, the keeper tried to analyze just what men are saying with various forms of facial hair; and he came up with such a variety of wild speculation that he grabbed for his razor.
Since he preserved the mustache, however, the keeper is still in the facial-hair woods: what is he saying by allowing hair to grow under his nose and above his upper lip? When taken as a stand-alone question that seems like asking why anybody would risk hair in their soup when prevention is only a handy razor away?
The keeper does not have an answer, but maybe it has to do with subliminal gender insecurity: “Look at this facial hair—I am a man because women do not have mustaches!”
It is all in there with self-imagery, which seems to have taken a recent hit with piercing and tattooing and dangling doodads, and facial hair styled in the manner of dog-show French Poodles.
The keeper would pursue the question with Phyllis but does not really want to know the effect of a mustache on kissing.
