Sean Chittenden sean@chittenden.org $Version$ $Date$ $Id$ Fuzface... The Internet's a big place and here's some proof... I think it's a tragedy that I'm going to start off my new commentary by talking about facial hair and the Internet. Something about that just screams pathetic, but whatever: it's humor and that's life. I've been working at home for a while now, which has been great. I've been doing a lot of reading, good work, contributing to the FreeBSD project, and living life at my own pace. The problem? I don't have to interact with people, so I've let my appearance slide a bit, most notably I've gone two weeks without shaving and I have an awful hairy face. Nothing is worse than going for a hard run, coming back, and then bending your head down so that the hairs under your chin touch the hairs on your neck. This has to be one of the most disgusting/gross feelings I've experienced in a while. While today wasn't the first time I'd experienced such a slimy tangled mess, it is the first time I seriously considered shaving part of my face, but not all of it: I was considering a beard. Alright, so it's 5pm and I'm a sweaty post-run mess (it was 110 degrees in direct sunlight according to my thermometer) and considering the possibility of growing a beard. Swifty nift? Maybe. This is something I'd never done before, let alone seriously consider. Normally I'd call my dad for such manly advice, but he is: a) normally in another state, and; b) in another country right now probably growing a beard (he's notorious for coming back from a trip with a gnarly unshaven face, sometimes he'll shape it into a decent beard). So, what's a tech-junkie to do? Hop on the Internet and see if Google's able to provide me with some inspiration. Sure enough, I typed in "pictures of bearded men" and I was able to find something: 14,000 pages of something to be exact. Anyway, so most of these were rinky dink sites, a few of them had some promise. One guy was trying to start a tradition where everyone grows a beard for New Years. As I was scrolling down the page trying to find some pictures, my mind was having the following thought process: This seems like a dumb idea... New Years provides a perfectly good excuse to kiss some total stranger that you've had your eye on for the duration of a New Years party. Why waste such an opportunity with a crappy kiss? And at about this point I said this page sucks, and flipped back to my search results. Since I'd never done this before, I didn't know what was fashionably correct in terms of where a guy should shave under his neck, or what the deal was... I knew there were lots of styles out there, just none that I could picture in my mind (save maybe Santa Claus and a few really gnarly beards that are long enough to be used as full-body covering. Oooh! And don't forget the Russian and Amish beards, those stand out in my mind too.). Google, being pretty comprehensive, and the Internet being huge, found the exact screwball page I was looking for: http://fuzface-gallery.tripod.com/ I don't know if I really should be amazed at the sheer number of entries that Google returned, or that the Internet is big enough to house such random gallery of crap, but it is and it never ceases to amaze me... it's almost as amazing as the fact that some bozo spent the time to create such a page. Don't people have lives? Oh wait, I just visited his page... so back to my diatribe... There were tons of faces, lots of men, lots of hair, and plenty of styles to choose from. Page after page of faces and hair. Ugh. This wasn't getting any where and I was now entertaining the rebound though of shaving my head. Time to close my browser and hop in the shower: I reak. So what'd I do? Well, after looking through enough of those pictures, I decided a few things:
  1. I'm amazed that the Internet is big enough to foster the creation of such random and utterly useless information. Then again, I've been on and using the Net since '95, so this shouldn't surprise me that much.
  2. There are a lot of guys out there with varying tastes in, shall we say, "facial hair styles," most of which I find pretty unappealing.
  3. I don't like beards. After one clogged drain, two reapplications of shaving cream, and a few pases with the razor, it took me about 5-10 minutes to get a nice cleanly shaven face.
  4. <crass comment>And - back me up here fellas, you can sympathize with this feeling after you get done looking through a magazine for a hair-cut style (ladies.. just smile and nod and pretend you care) - after looking at a few dozen pictures of men, I was able to safely reaffirm my desire for heterosexual relations (translation from Bill Clintonese: have sex with a woman). And with that thought in mind, I began to pine for the college porn collection of old. Mmmm, Playboy.</crass comment>
::grin:: Until next time. -Sean P.S. To the guys out there with beards, this is just my opinion: take it with a grain of salt.