Stubble, Stubble, Goils and Trouble

SO, WHAT'S A GUY TO DO?

Story in our paper a few days ago:

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HOMER Simpson, sex symbol? That's the implication of a new study that reveals women overwhelmingly prefer men with facial stubble when seeking a partner for love, sex or marriage.





Researchers publishing in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (eds note: Huh?) found women are drawn to men who, like the ever-scruffy Homer, flaunt one or two days of follicular growth.





For brevity, I'll sum up by saying that the study said women find light stubble most appealing. Men who "boasted the smoothness of a dolphin or the hairness of Red Green rated lowest."





"Preference for facial hair is clearly a cultural thing," said the study's lead author, Nick Neave, an evolutionary psychologist at Northumbria University in the UK. "But I think the underlying mechanism is that it signals masculinity."





Now the kicker is that while the majority of women seem to like the 5 o'clock shadow look, a man's stubble sure doesn't feel good on their faces when kissing or other amourous activities are initiated.





In fact, that's when women want their men to have baby faces.





DOH! OH, OK!!!

So now that all us males are completely confused, that brings me back to me and my quandary.

I hate shaving.

I have blogged here before about all the cuts and scrapes and the various other outrageous misfortunes I have suffered whilst trying to maintain a clean-shaven look and feel just for nuzzlin' the cheeks and other fine surfaces of the female form.

And for what? What's the cause and effect? What's the point of having a 5 o'clock shadow if at 5:20, I have to shave it off to take advantage of any allure the 5 o'clock shadow might have had 20 minutes earlier?

Besides, I have lighter-coloured facial hair. And now, my beard has turned mostly grey. So my 5 o'clock shadow doesn't show up all that much until 5 o'clock the next day. Twenty-four hours is a long time to wait!

Besides that, professionally, I can't go around looking unshaven and unkempt. I either have to be clean-shaven or have a beard...I can't BE in between, unless I've decided I'm growing a beard.

To compound matters, my electric shaver broke down a while ago and they don't give you the close shave women want (in my experience) anyway, so it's back to the blade, the shaving cream and water.

So every day, I start with this...(and DO note the dour expression on my face)

And then I get this...

To transform into this...

Oh, the horror...

Finally, from an evolutionary point of view, there are lots of different theories about why men have facial hair and why women, for the most part, don't.

I actually tried to find this out, but there were so many theories out there, it seems the scientific world really doesn't know for sure.

There's the theory that men went out into the cold the most to do their hunting, so they needed beards for warmth. There's a theory that it's just a simple fact of hormones.

There's the belief that mens' facial hair is just another evolutionary development to attract females as a sign of masculinity. And there are more.

Whatever, to me it doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't women have developed our kind of facial hair instead or, at least, in concert with us?

Then they could have their own 5 o'clock shadows rather than the smooth skin they have now, and their faces would be protected from our stubble.

Wouldn't that have made more sense?

High Emotion, Mixed Morals

This was a spectacular, somewhat ironic and even funny news week when it comes to morals, the high ground, the gutter and everything in between, if you think about it and tie a few things together.

In the U.S., Senator Jesse Helm of North Carolina, one of the Far Right's most dangerous and powerful men and a staunch opponent of segregation and black equality and heroes such as Martin Luther King, died Friday of natural causes.

Helm, who appeared many times on Christian televangelist shows like Jim and Tammy Faye Baker's and Pat Robertson's, was also a rabid anti-abortionist and a dyed in the wool supporter of the U.S. military, whoever they were blowing to smithereens.

He was also anti-gay, anti-Communist and a whole bunch of other anti's, but you get the point. The scary thing is there are a whole lot more like him, especially in the U.S. south. But anyway...

His death at age 86 came at the tail end of a week in which Montreal's Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who fought and won to make abortion of unwanted pregnancies legal here, was awarded the Order of Canada.

This appointment, Canada's highest honour, is of course stirring a raging controversy up here as the anti-abortionists and the pro-choice groups battle it out. Oh, the horror. Here's the latest:

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A Calgary-based activist group has filed an official request to the Governor General, asking that she strip abortion crusader Dr. Henry Morgentaler of his membership in the Order of Canada.

The Canada Family Action Coalition, which bills itself as a group dedicated to restoring Judeo-Christian moral principles in the country, Morgentaler should never have received the award.

"Henry Morgentaler's conduct is unbecoming that of a member of the Order of Canada and thereby tarnishes all recipients of this tremendous award," the coalition wrote in its letter to the Order of Canada advisory committee.

Morgentaler, 85, was named a member of the Order of Canada on Tuesday after fighting for decades to have abortion legalized in Canada. His battle was won in 1988 when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the country's abortion laws.

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One priest who started up a school for boys and who also received the Order of Canada says he'll return his medal in disgust.

This priest, who just coincidentally also got into legal trouble as a priest and faced charges involving assault and sexual assault, received the Order despite those incidents, for which he was eventually found not guilty.

(Thought: so was O.J. Simpson)

Still, he said, if a baby killer like Morgentaler -- whom I've covered and talked to many times in the past when he tried to set up an abortion clinic here -- is getting the Order, this priest says he doesn't want his.

Back to Helm.

If he would have just waited another two weeks to croak, he could have been part of all this and maybe been saved, who knows:

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---

I guess my final reference to something I read or heard recently is more about the question of morals and values and integrity and the choices we make as so-called advanced societies (I'm talking North America, Europe, Australia, etc.)

It was a column that dealt with some big fancy-schmancy rescue of a pet dog, I think it was, in California or somewhere and this generated a huge media buzz for its cost and scale and heroicism and all...

And the columnist made the point that hey, we can go to these lengths to save a pet dog or any other animal in our own back yard and yet we can't spend a small amount of money per day to help keep an African child from starving.

Ugh.

These ARE confusing times. And I realize this is a negative post.

Stories and sound bytes ravish our minds every millisecond from every conceivable corner of the planet. Images on TV or on the Web over-stimulate brains that weren't evolved to handle the overload.

It's information, but it's always got a spin on it. CNN is ALL about spin. The information is instantaneous and we get that immediately, we know what has happened almost as it's happening.

But it's all the follow-up and analysis that's so rehearsed and so spun and so designed to not let us make up our own minds about what's B.S. and what isn't. CNN and the rest of the mass media make it too easy for us.

Actually, they're making it too hard.

Obama-Clinton and now Obama-McCain, all they do is throw on professional spin doctors from either side to cough up their rhetoric on the latest issue or CNN-made controversy to drive their ratings.

We as viewers are like a lost spaceship, plummeting out and spun out of control in orbit.

There's no objectivity any more. We're saturated by opinions and lobbying and bullshit. The airwaves are filled with so-called reality shows that are so far from reality we don't know if we're coming or going.

We watch crap like Celebrity Rehab and Entertainment Tonight and with a flick of a button we can switch to televangelism, then we can switch again to an all-sports channel filled with airheads glorifying steroid-taking man machines making millions.

Man-made and natural disasters seem to happen with increasing frequency. Everyone seems to have their own little cause or persona in an era of complete craziness and chaos as we speed along at a zillion miles an hour.

It's all so disjointed, almost fictional, impossible to fully comprehend. I'm buzzed about it.

Information overload in the Wonderful and Wacky World of the Web is one thing, but the Sanctity of Sexy Spin that accompanies it all is difficult. The spin doctors are leaving my head spinning.

Am I the only Human Been to feel this way? Or is the answer just to tune it all out and not pay attention?

Or is this just more spin on top of the spin?

"Old and Decrepit"

THIS LITTLE GIRL...

WHO BECAME THIS LITTLE GIRL...

...Sent me this postcard from Greece.

I received it Wednesday.

She's in Italy again now, part of a 2 1/2-month trip through Europe with her best friend.

I tried scanning what she wrote on the other side of the postcard, but it didn't turn out very well. So here it is:

Hey Daddy what's up?

So we're in Greece now, which is amazing! Everything about it has been fun. The ferry over (from Italy, I think -- ed.) was like a cruise ship, the water is grogeous and we have a gorgeous view of the Acropolis right from the hostel.

When you get old and decrepit you should definately (sic) come to Greece, it's so peaceful.

Next we'll start travelling around the Greek Islands Crete and Santorini, so it'll be fun.

Love you Daddy, see you soon.

Love Monica

AHEM! Old and decrepit? We exchange emails about every day too. So this morning, I raised this point of contention with her.

Her response?

"Well seeing as how u won't be able to really travel until u retire, i called u old and decrepit, because well 60 is kinda old."

But I'm not 60. I'm only 52.

I'll just go buy my casket now.

I've lost all my red spots...

OK, I KNOW I'VE BARELY BEEN BLOGGING LATELY...

But is that any reason to for the blogging gods to be so harsh and wipe the slate so completely clean?

BEFORE

AFTER

THE DEAR JOHN LETTER

Dear ClustrMaps user,

Many thanks for being a loyal ClustrMaps user for the past year.

Now that a year has elapsed since your account was registrated or archived, we are writing just to let you know that an annual automatic 'archive' of your red dots has taken place, meaning that all your 'other' (previous) red dots are safely stored in the Maps Archive.

Although the map archive has already happened, your existing map will stay displayed until the NEXT update of your map. This helps to avoid displaying a totally empty map until there are fresh dots to show.

We sincerely hope this has not caught you by surprise, BUT we fully appreciate that it may have come at an unexpected moment! You may not have been aware of this.

We know that people always like to have ever-more-dots, but the regular archive is the only way we can avoid having the maps turn into a 'giant red smear', and continue delivering the scalable service that everyone has come to expect.

The good news is that all of your totals are stored correctly, i.e. the new maps include the old archived totals in the grand 'running' total.

If this has caught you out by mistake, then we apologise and will endeavour to make this action much clearer in the future.

In the meantime, here is wishing you all the best, and thanks again for using ClustrMaps!

-The ClustrMaps Team

YIKES! NOW I FEEL NAKED.

I WANT MY RED SPOTS BACK.