I’d never listened to a podcast before getting this job. Now, it’s my commuting ritual.

From Radiolab to How Stuff Works to Bill Simmons, my 45 minutes to and from Seattle is neatly organized with information and banter. This portion of my life sat neatly stored inside my car until a recent program on “Freakonomics” that dove into the topic of beauty.

The show dissected the science behind how attractiveness relates to overall life success — money, job, crime, etc. The economists also discussed a website that would rate a picture of your face and give a score about your beauty. This, unfortunately, caught my attention.

I didn’t recall the name of the specific site, but once home, I immediately typed “Face beauty calculator” into Google and found a site that seemed to fit the description: Anaface Beauty Analysis — Score your face.

My girlfriend Laura quickly saw the pitfalls of this venture and warned me of the likeliness of a lose-lose scenario for my pessimistic-leaning mind.

I agreed.

Thus, when she walked into the kitchen I started the simple task of finding a picture of my face, uploading it to the site and placing numbered markers next to each curve on my oval head, as noted on the site. The podcast had described how the most attractive NFL quarterbacks are actually paid more than their counterparts and how Russell Wilson had more than a 99 rating. Even Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler rated as a 98-point-something.

So, while I wasn’t expecting a 100, I was anticipating a, well, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought this all the way through.

Turns out the Anaface calculator gives ratings out of 10. So, although a single digit number was expected, when I clicked “NEXT” the number 5.7 was a bit surprising.

“You’re a 10, Hunny,” said Laura, trying to both reassure me and sneakily close my laptop at the same time.

I read over my issues: “Your face has poor horizontal symmetry…Your ears are too long for your nose…Your inner ocular distance is too small for your eyes… Your nose is too narrow for your face width…Your mouth is too wide for your nose.”

A prouder man would have laughed off this unflattering setback and left it at that. I, apparently, am not that man. I blamed the picture.

I took a new snapshot, with my face firmly filling the whole screen, uneven schnoz dead center.

I inputted the new photo, this time making sure to be more accurate on the placement of each marker. And by “accurate,” I mean hardly bothering to put each marker on each of my actual features as much as carefully lining each up equidistant from one another.

Voila, 7.2. I knew it was the picture. Then again, that was still a C-minus in my inner-ocular deficient eyes.

I tried a new site, called simply “Am I pretty or ugly? on scale of 0-100.” With my new picture and all my tricks, this time I landed an 82.

“CHECK OUT THE PRETTIEST MAN IN THE WORLD,” I screamed, dancing on the couch.

The excitement eased Laura slightly. So, she decided to rate a picture of herself.

“No way,” I responded. “You’ll be too dramatic about it.”