Monday, February 7, 2011

Stachtisfactory -or- Absence Makes the Stache Grow Longer

Nearly a year's worth of implausible hi-jinks have conspired to keep me from posting about any exciting developments in mustache habitation. I regret this.

I, in a manly fashion, admit that my grief was so great at this extended absence that I've spent much of the last twelve months wearing a series of contraptions designed for the purpose of keeping tears out of my mustache. The devices ranged from a simple headband or the more elegant bow-tie to increasingly elaborate concoctions as I attempted to remove all shortcomings in their utility. At one point I was at an auction in a city I've since been emphatically assured doesn't exist bidding on black market merry-go-rounds against former presidents, professional athletes, and a couple of eye-patch sporting villains; all the while I'm handicapped by the two glove-fingers I've duct-taped to my face to catch the tears so insistent on tamping down my mustache's majesty. On another occasion I placed tiny funnels under each eye which fed hoses that drained first into a large rubber bladder, then when I became weary of the bladder's heft, the ground, and then after I was reprimanded by the judge of and participants in an underground floor-tiling-death-match competition, again into the rubber bladder. While hunting Robert Duvall clones at *name redacted*'s massive compound in Thailand I attempted to protect the mustache with a portion of tarp but this method concealed the bulk of the mustache and so was too ludicrous for continued implementation.

Eventually I decided that if my grief at not web-logging was going to diminish my life perhaps rather than house a pair of initially thirsty meerkats in the vicinity of my tear ducts I should simply resume web-logging. But then, after composing a rant longhand on my trusty writing stump I realized that I didn't recall the password for this website. Listing the contents of my mustache proved somewhat relieving but I needed the catharsis of sharing and I really wanted to eat the cake batter I'd used to scrawl the inventory in. It wasn't to be. I mean, I did eat the cake batter but I could not recall the password.

I tried everything: MustacheKing, KingMustache, Stachtisfactory, and Password. I'd spend hours daily reentering these same passwords begging cruel Gods to show some mustache-mercy and grant me admission. Days went by and the drugs I'd been forced to consume some weeks earlier for the amusement of a cadre of CEOs at a retreat on an island that is absent from any public map (all while wearing a harness fitted with two butane torches to facilitate the rapid drying of my tears) began to flee my system in disturbing gushes. My head started to clear and I remembered if not my password then at least the key to finding it.

Between my newfound reliance on the internet and my time away from home it'd been months since I'd comforted myself with a glance at my favorite dictionary entry. So I opened deep into the Ms and found my secret storage spot for important documents. I shuffled through receipts corresponding to pleasant shopping experiences and sketches of animals with mustaches and finally found the sucker-wrapper I'd stored my web-logger password on. I gasped, and then chuckled at how foolish I'd been, and then gasped again because the password, even in all of its perfect uncrackable glory, is nearly too horrifying to comprehend. You see, after many incidents of identity theft many different identity thieves have informed me that I should pick a password no one will ever be able to guess. They suggested that I'd be less likely to waste their time if I put a number in it and didn't always use the password platform as a vehicle to promote a certain portion of beard.

I'd used their advice. I still remember that night, shaking from the scotch it'd taken to work up the nerve, when i first typed in that fateful unbreakable web-logger password. I wish that I did not.

SmoothUpperLip4Me

Now that I had the password I could return and of course change the password and resume my all-important chronicle. Now I simply needed to come up with a reason for why I'd been away so long.