That’s what I’m calling it. A slump. Just a string of unfortunate results. Accidents, even.

I don’t actually look like that.

A little down period on the mugshot front. It began the other day. 2005, I think it was.

I got a photo to renew my passport. In January of 2005. I might have gotten the mug taken at a Walgreens. But that would suggest someone else took the photo when, in this case, it seems far more like one of those “stick out your arms as far as possible and take your own picture” things that, I’ve heard, are sometimes the resort of loners or people momentarily traveling by themselves. Why I thought that I wanted a picture — that is in my passport until 2014 — that appears designed to show as much of the interior of my nostrils as possible … well, it was an accident.

Things of late have really gone downhill. In February of 2009, I had to get a new driver’s license because I had lost my wallet in Hong Kong. As I posed for that one, at the DMV in Long Beach, I apparently wanted to project that “I have a gun and might use it” look. It’s in the eyes. Plus, I still had on the homeless guy beard I was rockin’ for eight months or so. All I can say is … I hope I’m never pulled over because it might scare the ticketing officer.

It gets worse. I was keen to get a Metro pass in Paris in August of 2009, and I used one of those “sit in a booth and pull the curtain” photo kiosks, and that never, ever turns out well. The only saving grace is that if you’re leaving Paris anytime soon you just chuck the Metro pass and hope the guys who pick up the trash don’t catch sight of it.

But for a reason I can’t explain, aside from “too lazy to walk out and get a decent mug,” I had saved the other three mugs from the Paris mugshot booth … and when I sent off all the information to Abu Dhabi  while applying for a job it never occurred to me that they might actually use that ridiculous mug. Like, on a document. I guess I thought they were keeping a collection.

So,  when I got my ID badge at The National … there it was. That same horrible mug, and now I’ve been carrying it around for 40 hours a week for 13 months.

What is bad about it? Well, start with the five-head. No, make it a six-head. Plus, the lighting was such that the left side of my head seems to disappear into some sort of bright light. But it least it has some contrast … and that would be the two enormous, black caterpillars that appear to have died on my eyebrows. Oh, and the loser beard is still on.

My consolation was, I couldn’t possibly take a mug worse than that. Not even while lying in a coffin. (And not for ghoulish fun.)

I thought I was making a comeback when the domestic soccer league asked for a mug to attach to a “good for all games” credential. One of the professional photogs at The National took it. He gave me two or three chances, and in one of them I am smiling. And that basically never happens because I’m one of those people who believes he is smiling but isn’t.

Now, in this case, yes, I look as if might be one of those really happy “simple” people. But at least my forehead isn’t as bright and shiny as a supernova, and the caterpillars seem to have slunk off and the “what died on your chin” beard is gone.

Then came consecutive disasters of the “how did that happen” sort.

I want to get a driver’s license good in the UAE. Which requires mugshots. I went to a place across the street from the paper that will generate four mugs for, like, $5. Clearly not having learned yet from all my previous bargain-basement passport-size-photos disasters.

They took me into a studio put me on a chair. Hey, this is professional. But the guys running the place did not have a mirror, and neither were they polite enough/rude enough to tell me that I might want to comb my hair — as well as take off the newspaper ID badge hanging around my neck.

So, I have a small tuft of hair sticking up over the middle of my skull that looks straight out of clown school. And my lips are jammed together in such a way that it looks as if I’m attempting to break my own jaw — or demonstrating that, no, I will never, ever taste your sushi,  and you can’t make me.

I still can do something about those mugs. I still don’t have my license. I can go back for a reshoot. Ask for a mirror, maybe.

And, finally, the piece de resistance. The mug I had taken for my national identity card, here in the UAE. It’s the law. Everyone must have a national ID card.

The final step involves fingerprinting and a mug. On the second floor of a weird building on the outskirts of town where bored government workers manage to turn what ought to be a 30-second event into an “aren’t we done yet?” form of torture.

The most lasting damage, however,  came when the guy doing the prints and mug began fiddling with the little camera on the desk as I looked at it impassively. Wondering when he was going to say, “OK, now the photo.”

But all he said saw, “OK, finished.” No warning. No flash. Nothing.

Then he printed out a copy of my records,  and I stuck the papers in my backpack and walked out. And two days ago I pulled them out and saw … The Worst Mug Ever.

He took it at a moment when I was 1) unaware that my hair looked as if I had just emerged from a wind tunnel; 2) when my face appeared to be melting, Indiana Jones style, and 3) when I thought it might be fun to make the sort of face you associate with a mass murderer — emotionless but scary at the same time.

It’s been a rough time. And it can’t be me.

Well. OK, it is. I have always taken bad mugshots, even when advancing age and a receding hairline weren’t at work. Throughout my life, I’ve sat for mugshots that apparently all came as a complete surprise to me. Oh, you think I might want to consider this mug might be in my pocket for the next decade? Always.

But now? I have a series of mugs that would make anyone say, “Oh, yeah, I would have spotted that guy as a madman.”

I would attach one or two of these but some of you might be eating breakfast.

So, all I have to do is … look at several of these pictures every day until I leave the country and try to get some new ID. And take my own mirror, and a comb, and perhaps take a shot at trying to smile and not clench my jaw — and ask for multiple shots at getting it right. It can’t be me. It must be the process.