Terrifying a poor Burmese girl with my sasquatch beard

There is an old adage that April showers bring May flowers.  But flowers are not the only things growing in May.  Not having a razor in April brings explosive, unchecked growth in Josh Weinstein’s beard.  Not much has changed since my last update.  The follicles surrounding my sole patch are still playing hard to get, despite fertilizing the badlands with some Filipino Rogaine (called Regroe), which I’m also using to stave off the grim realities of my hereditary future.  When I smile in pictures, it still looks like I have an abnormally large mouth because my John Waters moustache (my computer corrects for British-style English) frames the area as such.   Because my chin so closely mirrors the baldness of my forehead, my face is symmetrical, like an MC Escher painting.

Never surrender.

Lately, people have been telling me to shave the beard, but my answer is always the same: “never.”  I’m the salt of the earth, a real meat-and-potatoes kind of guy.  I like my pickup trucks with six wheels instead of four and my shotgun where it belongs: in the passenger’s seat.  I like lifting stuff, like boxes and rocks, going paintballing with my friends and learning paintball sniper basics, and drinking beer by myself.  If I got rid of the beard, these favourite (British auto-correction) pastimes of mine would be meaningless.  Installing floodlights on my Silverado while gutting a fish wouldn’t be the same without the satisfaction of knowing that I look like a real man, not some beardless pansy. Someone asked me the other day how old I am.   I told them to guess.  They said 35.  I owe compliments like those to the beard.

Keeping the beard for my country.

I’m even struggling with the decision to go to barber and get a trim for 40 pesos ($1).  I have the same mindset as Forrest Gump when he ran back and forth across the country: why stop now?  That analogy works on a couple of levels, since Forrest had a righteous mane and the movie itself is a piece of conservative propaganda, a movement that respects the bearded (see Joe the Plumber, Jesus of Nazareth).  Needless to say, I can dispel any rumours about an upcoming shave.  It is here to stay, at least for the next couple of weeks.