The Guy With the Handlebar Moustache

Today is the first day of Decembeard. While many males will celebrate this day by shaving off the hairy caterpillar that has taken residence on their upper lip and grown heartily over the last month, I use today as a reminder that November need not be the only month of the year in which men can assert their neglected masculinity. Strident ownership of a 'stache, and the proud displaying of, can make a man feel (and look) truly invincible. And I've come to accept that I will be stared at, even ridiculed at times. These are facts. But those who feel it in them to point and/or laugh behind my back: the joke is on you.

I found a short story when searching online for some beard wax, and  I will reproduce it here. Please note that while this is a work of fiction, it speaks from the heart of every man with a handlebar moustache.

I don’t know you, but you know me.

I’m that guy with the handlebar mustache.

When you spot me, you nudge your buddy and say “Hey… look.” (While talking to your brother the next weekend you recall my face and say “you should’ve seen this guy with a handlebar mustache who was working at Chuckwagon Charlie’s.” And he replies, “oh yeah, remember that guy with the handlebar mustache playing horseshoes at the company picnic?” Indeed you remember. I do too.)

You see me at the grocery store. We pass going opposite ways down an aisle and you spot my handlebar mustache. When we pass again on the next aisle, you’ve prepared your kid for my handlebar mustache. He silently points at my face as you pass.

But I’m used to you and your kid. I’ve heard all the jokes, all the remarks.

“Hey look, it’s Rollie Fingers!” you say to your girlfriend, just loud enough for me to hear.

She notices my handlebar mustache, giggles then turns to you and says, “what’s Rollie Fingers?”

Sometimes you even stop me.

“I love the mustache; what do you call it?” you ask as your index finger makes a swirling motion up around your mouth.

“It’s a handlebar mustache,” I say, calmly, politely, recognizing your intended sincerity.

Do you really love my handlebar mustache? Would you grow one yourself?

You probably like its oddity. 

I’ve thought of shaving it 25 times (usually upon waking up from the dream where I’m trying to run but am held back by the handlebar of my handlebar mustache hooked around my waist.)

More than once I’ve thought that instead of being that guy with the handlebar mustache, I could be some other guy. Like that guy who always has a toothpick in his mouth. Or that guy with the beret. Or that guy with the long white beard and the bushy white hair who’s constantly getting the Kenny Rogers treatment.

But I always find myself stuck to the handlebar mustache.

I’ve thought of ways to better utilize it. I’ve thought about walking around on stilts at an amusement park, smiling and handing out plastic handlebar mustaches to youngsters. Or I’ve thought of customizing a bike to have handlebar mustache handlebars. I could ride around state fairs and be that guy at the state fair on the bike with the handlebar mustache handlebars.

I look in the mirror every morning and know that I could end it at any moment and become just a guy with a mustache.

I can live with the jokes, the comments, the stares. I can live with a style that — let’s face it — hit its peak in the mid-1800s.

Two snips and it would all go away. An insignificant amount of hair would lie unknowingly innocent on my bathroom sink. I wouldn’t feel a thing. But in the end I would no longer be that guy with the handlebar mustache.

by David Holub

(retrieved from http://www.johnnyamerica.com/archives/2005/08/03/14.49.07/)(edited 1.12.2012 Stewart Wallace)

I couldn't have said it better myself. Particularly, the "two snips" idea, that we have it in us the power to end it all in a matter of moments. But it is the fact that we do not choose to end it, despite weathering the slings and arrows of a judgmental public. When the handlebar returns to the front of the fashion pack, you saw it HERE first. 

We are the children of the Revmolution.

Another day, another outrage

Victims, of any kind, have a right to absolute justice and I and many welcome the Royal Commission into the Catholic church and the perennial sexual abuse of their younger and more vulnerable charges. To my surprise, some bishops have actually welcomed the inquiry. If we are serious about tackling this execrable scourge then no doubt it is the right thing to do and should not be confined to an investigation into the Catholic church only. It should be broad and far-reaching. But it has finally come to this and I'm concerned about the over-representation of abusers and pedophiles in the CC. Maybe it's because CC leaders find it too easy to "pretend" to be celibate. Perhaps they were deviants prior to entering the CC and did so because they saw their victims as easy-pickings, as abhorrent as it sounds. In which instance the royal commission must extend to any institution where children are left at the mercy of groups of male figures of authority and are, essentially, unsupervised and unregulated (boy scouts, juvenile detention centres, boarding schools, etc). And as a result of non-reporting, the culture has managed to exist for....... well how long is a piece of string (or a string of rosary beads)? The culture has begot a culture of its own. The church has taken it upon itself to turn a blind eye to the cruelty and dehumanization inflicted on these victims, in the name of God. If this isn't a glimmering sample of how religion poisons everything then I haven't grown an overly-manly-man mustache this month. 

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Without any segue I'd like express my opinion on the government's plan to have all Australian students speaking an Asian language by what was it, 2015? 2020? 2050? I can't remember because I like to shelve things that are ludicrous into the less accessible recesses of my memory. Business conducted in any other language (not just an Asian one) works up to a certain point, but BIG business is always conducted in English. I read somewhere that to become a fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese would take a student 20 hours a week for their entire schooling life. In other words, torture. Given the chance I'm sure only a quaint percentage of students would elect to study it. We should instead be giving a massive bloody Gonski and look to fix up our own English education in schools. But it's the Asian Century, our beloved Media has been telling us lately. Umm, no it isn't. It's been the Asian Century ever since Asia existed. Again, Australia needs to get over itself: we are not better than these guys and all we can ever hope for is to play catch up and not fall too far behind. The rollout of the NBN should go a long way to support this game of catch-up. Both major parties as well as the Greens agree with it. If we show a lack of conviction to embrace communications technology then we lay bare our ignorance and complacency for our intellectually superior neighbours to see. We need to be able to show them that, as a rich and imaginative nation, we are at the forefront of thinking and of business transformation. I can hear you sniggering. The total blowout cost for the plan is now over $30 billion and we've yet to see it in most places. Say that again slowly.

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