What a beautiful, beautiful animal

Certain circumstances require selecting a photograph of oneself and providing it to the Authorities. For online dating sites & author book jacket photos, I'd imagine that this experience is rather painful. When harassing the NSA by sending in cockshots, I'd imagine that the experience is rather enjoyable. Somewhere in between these two lies the passport photo or the academia-related photo.

Sadly, I had to send in a photo & "profile" of myself for the purposes of some bullshit academic promo brochure thing today. [Among other inanities, I was asked to "Paint a 'word picture' of yourself doing your favorite activity." Ah, yes... you can imagine. This is such an obvious layup that I would sully the purity of the blank slate by making any jokes here whatsoever.]

So, yes. I'd ignored the deadline for a couple of weeks, then finally put the shit together a day late (today), and tried to find a jpeg of myself. Mind you, this is the kind of brochure that I hate; people tend to select photos of themselves that say "Look at me; I'm a fancy traveler out here in the mountains/jungle/desert, keepin' it real, clutching smiling starving kids." So I wanted something simple & unpretentious, like a photo of me riding a giant scorpion wearing only jodhpurs and an ascot.

Unfortunately, very unfortunately, I was only able to find one digital photo of myself to send. Who has jpegs of himself? I mean, among those without digital cameras. I got nuthin'. The photo: it's mortifying. There I am, atop a mountain in Mongolia, staring soulfully into the sun's waning rays. Look at me! What a douchebag.