Lunch today with the Villainous Uncle Kridley was the usual pleasure, exhibiting as it did the customary bouncing from topic to topic. Somehow we went from a friend’s new cat to the subject of dogs to the asymmetry of the human face in just a few short steps. Eventually we reached the disturbing question of what Dick Cheney would look like were he the subject of a symmetric portrait. Surprisingly, a Google search did not immediately turn up any relevant results, though I could swear I’d seen such images before.

A quick download from Wikipedia of Cheney’s official portrait, a few minutes of work with the ever-reliable Acorn later, and voilà.

(Since Cheney’s head is slightly tilted in the original image, I rotated it a few degrees clockwise, to make the nose vertical and glasses horizontal.)

Left Cheney looks benevolent enough, if at the same time vaguely and disturbingly reminiscent of a leaner Karl Rove. Right Cheney, however, is clearly up to no good. What’s interesting — to me, anyway — is that left is the vaguely smirky side in the regular portrait.