I had a great idea for today’s blog post, but by the time I got up from the breakfast table I’d forgotten it. Seriously. One minute I was thinking, “Oh, that’ll make a good blog post”, and the next minute…

*blank*

I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I know my memory is shitty, but this was ‘way over the top.

I spent the next twenty minutes racking my brain for the wisp of genius (after I forget an idea, it always seems like the most brilliant thought ever conceived). Finally I recalled it, but I couldn’t figure out what was so great about it.

So, in the absence of genius (which, to be realistic, was unlikely in the first place) I’ll fall back on my usual weirdness.  Today’s topic is nostril hair.

The thought came to me a while ago, when I was talking to a woman whose nostrils were, erm… a significant facial feature. Huge and completely round in a slightly upturned nose, they looked like twin mineshafts in white limestone.

But it wasn’t their size and placement that caught my attention. No; it was the fact that they were smooth dark abysses, completely hairless inside as far as the eye could see (and I was at an unfortunate angle that allowed me a full view).

It took all my willpower to focus on her eyes. My gaze kept getting dragged down to the Nostrils of Doom. And while my mouth made idle chitchat, my brain was boggling. How did she get rid of every single hair? Most people have at least a few hairs ‘way up there to act as a pre-filter for bugs and dust.

Nostril hair is the final privacy frontier. Nobody ever talks about it. Even TV commercials and spam emails don’t go there. They’ll offer me ‘discreet bladder protection’ and a half-dozen ways to remove ‘unwanted body hair’; each more barbaric than the last. They’ll go on about ‘feminine hygiene products’ that are inexplicably linked to white frilly dresses and white horses in fields of white daisies, or at the very least, white pants and a lot of jumping around. Or worse, they offer me ‘feminine freshness’ (with more daisies). Ew.

For the guys, it’s razors that look like race cars, with some dude caressing his smooth manly jaw and smirking at the camera. Or it’s Viagra and Cialis ads (which would be considerably more entertaining if they featured a dude smirking and caressing a manly body part, but I haven’t seen an ad like that yet).

One way or another, it seems the entire advertising world wants to get all up in our bizniss and attack our body hair. But despite the fact that no topic seems off-limits… have you ever seen an ad for a nose hair trimmer?

I haven’t.

That’s when the questions began in my brain: Is nostril hair so shameful that even TV ads won’t tackle it? Do people secretly buy nose-hair trimmers in plain brown wrappers? Is laser nostril-hair removal a ‘thing’?

And most importantly: Without the constant badgering of advertisers, how do we even know we should be depilating our nostrils?

I dunno. It seems to me that this is a major untapped market in personal grooming. I foresee a whole batch of cringe-inducing ads as soon as the industry realizes its omission.

Alert the media, but remember: Nostril-damus predicted it first, right here.

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My readers have spoken!  The survey from two weeks ago showed that 48% had no preference for which day of the week Spy Away Home should be released, and 33% preferred Friday.  So we’ll probably have a Friday release day… I just don’t know which Friday yet.  🙂 When I get the last of my beta reader feedback and I know how much work is left for me to do, I’ll choose a release date and set up the pre-orders.  Fingers crossed that the feedback is good…