I am a sexy man

A few months ago I was working alone in the lab one afternoon when there was a knock on the door. I answered it, and standing there was the chair of my department along with three other people that I didn't recognize. He introduced them to me as people from the public relations department here on campus, and told me that they were going around trying to get pictures of people in our department doing research. I was actually getting ready to leave the lab at that point, but I had to wait another five minutes or so for some stuff to cool enough to place into the cooler. Since I was the only one working in the lab at that point, I couldn't really pawn them off on someone else (plus it looks bad if your department chair asks you for a favor and you flat out say no) so I decided that I would oblige them in their quest. They asked me what I was working on right then, and if they could take pictures of me doing that. I told them I was waiting for a gel to cool and that was about it, so they asked me if I could fake something while they took a picture. I thought that would be a waste of time to just act like I was working, so I looked around to see if there was anything I could do rather quickly. That would allow them to get their pictures, yet also allow me to leave the lab shortly thereafter (I didn't want to try starting a DNA extraction or something that would take another hour or so). After glancing around, I saw a jar of fish on my lab bench that still needed to be assigned museum numbers. There were only 10 fish in the jar, so I knew that I could tag them in a matter of minutes, get something accomplished that actually needed to be done (rather than faking work), and they would get their picture.

Little did I know how much time and effort goes into a photo shoot. Even an impromptu one such as this ended up taking more than a half hour. First of all, there was the matter of setting up some kind of lighting. Then we had to rearrange a bunch of things in the lab so that they could get their pictures from the proper angles. It was about all I could do not to just crack up at how ridiculous the whole situation was. I felt like some kind of model. I would grab a fish to tag, and the photographer would call out things such as:

"Oh, hold that fish right there. Perfect."

"Drop that fish and pick it up again, except this time tilt your head a bit more to the left."

"Ok, now do that again, except this time try not to smile. We want you to look serious."

On and on it went. I swear they took about 50 pictures of me, then wrote down my name, the fact that I was a Ph D student, and a few other things about me. They told me that they might be including these pictures in a university publication at some point, but if they did they would come get me to sign a form giving them permission to do so. I never did hear back (or sign a form) but the picture above came out in the latest issue of the University's magazine. Now I'm a star.

A few weeks after the 'photo shoot' a friend of mine printed up my star chart. She knows a guy who is supposed to be really good at interpreting these things, and a group of us were going to meet with him and have him interpret ours. If you don't know, a star chart is supposed to tell you stuff about yourself based on the positions of heavenly bodies at the exact time of your birth (for the record, I don't believe in astrology, but it is kind of fun to read horoscopes and stuff like that). My star chart includes about two pages worth of things about me, my favorite of which is "you protray an earthy, physical sexiness that others find quite seductive."

These two lines of evidence may not be enough to prove that I am a sexy man (surely having your photo published in a magazine is a sign of sexiness), but the evidence is mounting.