I can stare, too!

If this thing was called "How Not to Grow Nose Hair Month", I'd be losing. Big time. I swear, it's like trying to trim a hydra up in my nostrils. Did you need to know that? You did not. At all. Are you wishing you could erase that knowledge? You may well be, but I know from painful experience that it's awfully hard to un-know something.

You know what might help, though? Donations. The warm fuzzies you get after making that donation—and you will get warm fuzzies—will go a long way toward wiping that little bit of unpleasantness from your mind. Probably.

It's worth a shot.

I would like to address the detractors who have called into question the masculinity of those contestants with the good sense and decency to shave their neck hair early.

Gentlemen, you are meddling with forces you cannot possibly comprehend.

Though you may scoff, there is more at stake in the taming of the neckbeard than mere comfort or comeliness. Unchecked, the neckbeard elicits feelings of dread and horror. Women are gripped with paroxyms of primal terror, children flee screaming and even the most stalwart of men may be shaken to the point that he seeks comfort and guidance from sources without himself.

I offer Exhibit A, a photo of my unshaven neck taken late in the month last year; a photo so horrifying that one of our own contestants—a contestant who has less than a year later called me to task for trimming this area early in the contest—invoked a deity in response.

Don't look at it!

— Henry Walton Jones, Jr., noted Man of Science.

[P]ut that thing away or you'll get us all killed!

— Excerpt from a decree issued by a member of the Alderaanian Royal Family.

It is a simple matter to look upon us with scorn, for the unchecked neckbeard instills an inflated sense of self-worth in the man whose folly is to wear it. But I beseech you to look past your own ego and have some consideration for those around you. It is right and decent and merciful to shave the neckbeard; I would go so far as to say that it is your solemn duty as men to do so.

The neckbeard is not to be trifled with, gentlemen; it is a thing to be squelched at all costs. At stake is not mere masculinity, but humanity.

I know what you're thinking: where have you been for the past three days, Johnson?

Well, it's a bit difficult to take photos of your beard when you've had your face shot off. I blame the Olde Fartz, my group of beechwood-aged PC gaming buddies, who spent several hours Thursday evening blasting my dashing avatar to bits.

I got better.

The photo here shows that I've already undergone a vital neck shave, necessary to ensure that the few scattered hairs that sprouted in the region didn't drive me stark raving bonkers with The Itch.

The photo also shows, in shocking detail, precisely the problem I have with growing a beard, even given thirty days to complete it: sparseness. My chin and cheeks are not covered with a dense mat of hair; rather, there are several minor follicolonies—each ultimately as doomed as Roanoke—spread out over the vast, pink plain that is my face. I fear they will not survive the harsh winter ahead...

In other news, I found one mutant, albino mega-hair lurking just beneath my chin before I shaved. It was unnerving, to say the least.

Uphill! Both ways!

You kids today, with your Mach 3 Turbo razors and your lubricating strips and your ultra-frothy, hypo-allergenic shaving foam with essence of eucalyptus and aloe...it makes me sick.

Why, in my day, we shaved with the edge of a rusty scythe after working sixteen hours in the field cutting sorghum and horseweed! And aftershave! Boy, we didn't have any fancy smelling "Stallion Rut" or "Loin's Pride"; if it was a special occasion, we'd splash some grain alcohol on our raw, bleeding cheeks after we were done so we'd smell like something other than sweat and agony! It drove the ladies wild, let me tell you.

And when we turned twelve, we stopped shaving altogether! The naked face was a sign of weakness, and the first thing a young buck did once his voice started crackin' was to grow a beard. A beard thick and dense enough to deflect a Bowie knife and fearsome enough to stop a charging bull elephant dead in his tracks. And it didn't take no month to grow the thing, neither. In the time it takes a...what? Eh? MATLOCK!

Want to know a little more about the people behind the beards you're sponsoring this month? Here's the first in my eleven part series, "Better Know a Beard".

Wesley Clifford is the creative force behind the Planet Retcon Radio and Volcanicast podcasts. Planet Retcon Radio featured fully-dramatized science fiction tales authored by Wesley and performed by Wesley and several of his extremely talented friends. The flagship of Planet Retcon was "The Stargate Cafe", a Parsec-Award-winning series that followed the adventures of the staff of an eatery located in the bowels of an interstellar transit station.

Planet Retcon—along with its second series, "The Log of the Crimson Lien"—is on indefinite hiatus, but Wesley can still be heard every week on Volcanicast, the weekly roundup of trending Google search topics. It's an irreverent and definitely adult-oriented exploration into what people are looking for...and why.

Not at all Idol-like.

If there's one thing I remember about 1985, it's the cover of the January issue of Rolling Stone magazine. It's not so much the image—Billy Idol wearing little more than a leather jock strap and his signature facial expression—but the title that accompanied the photo: BILLY IDOL: Sneer of the Year. Every time I hear an Idol song, I think of the phrase "Sneer of the Year", and so, when I prepared to perform "White Wedding" in Rock Band with my niece and nephew (on drums and bass, respectively) this evening, I curled my upper lip into a pale approximation of Idol's expression.

I think we can all agree that I completely failed to capture the rebelliousness that Idol embodies. I think we can also agree that I ought not, under any circumstance, attempt to take further steps to replicate Idol's January 1985 Rolling Stone cover; if for no other reason, then for the sake of the children.

Now that we've settled that, let's move on to the matter of my beard, or what passes for such. I think, after a mere four days, I've achieved what, on most men, would normally be called a five o'clock shadow.

That's just sad.

Taking a nod from Jeff, my Sponsor of the Day is Ivan, of The Video Game Show. Though he hates all things, I think even Ivan loves boobs.

This photo was taken shortly before the rogue follicle reached my eye. It was a calmer time, then, and I felt...aloof.

I think I have an ingrown beard hair.

In my right eye.

It itches. Man, does it itch. And I know you're not supposed to rub your eye, but geez oh man it itches like crazy. I'm pretty sure one of my follicles went all kinds of bonkers in a desperate bid for attention...

C'mon, you guys! We can do this! We can be a beard again right now! I'm not waiting around here anymore! I'm going through the dermis and beyond! To the moon, boys! Follow me!

Then things went horribly wrong. Instead of thrusting outward, the crazy motherfollicle sped off in entirely the wrong direction, blazing a haphazard course along the surface of my skull, through my sinus maximilaris and into my tear duct, where it has since been masquerading as a rogue eyelash.

Well, I'm on to you, buddy. I'm soooo on to you.

So...much...face.

I got a little sidetracked yesterday, so there was no post and—more tragically—no photo of my progress. My son assures me that my beard is "starting to come back", though he expressed some displeasure that it did not immediately spring back into being when I removed my Joker makeup.

What do you mean, "Oh, you've removed your Joker makeup?"

Very funny.

I think if you examine my photograph closely you'll see that (1) I'm definitely not wearing Joker makeup and (2) there's a liberal dusting of...something...over my lip and on my chin. Oh, and I'm molting, too. My chin, in violent protest to being suddenly rendered unprotected against the elements, has decided to shed its skin; as though being skinless is better than just being naked.

Stupid chin. This is why I keep you hidden eleven months out of the year: because you're irrational and stupid.

Now then, I would be remiss if I didn't mention all of the fine folks who have donated to Beards4Boobs thus far. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. It's a great start, and already you've exceeded any expectation I may have had when I first learned that we were dedicating our follicular efforts to charity this year; now I'm curious by just what fantastic margin my expectations can be exceeded.

Smile and the world smiles with you.

It's becoming something of a tradition for my son and I to wear matching Hallowe'en costumes, and I've worked this tradition into a sort of synchronicity with How Not to Grow a Beard Month. In 2007, on the eve of the first HoNoToGroABeMo (when it was just me and my blog), I shaved so I could be The Red Skull to Kyle's Captain America. Last year, my naked chin was necessary so I could play Luke Skywalker to Kyle's Yoda.

This year, Kyle wanted to be Batman.

He wanted me to be Robin.

While Robin is certainly clean shaven (having not quite reached puberty), there's just no way I'm going to don yellow tights and green short-shorts. I have my...well, it's not dignity, but at a glance it bears some passing resemblance to dignity.

I offered up what I felt was a more appropriate solution: The Dark Knight's eternal nemesis, the Clown Prince of Crime known as The Joker. But which Joker? Heath Ledger? Jack Nicholson? No, I decided my costume would be an homage to the greatest Joker of all time and—not coincidentally—a man who appreciated the value of facial hair: Cesar Romero.

It's no secret that Romero prized his own moustache so much that he refused to shave it before assuming the role of The Joker, arch-villain to Adam West's Batman. And that's why I'm sporting a moustache with my Hallowe'en costume, a moustache that I have just now removed (along with the rest of my Joker garb).

My face is cleanly-shorn and November is here. Let it begin.

Look at you! Never a sorrier bunch of scraggly-faced "men" have I ever seen! What's that on your face, son? Is that feeble growth your miserable excuse for a beard or is your pet squirrel shedding?

And you! My sweet Aunt Louise has a mole with a better beard than that pathetic scrap of chin fluff!

I've seen some sad facial hair in my day, boys, but you really take the prize. If this country was full of men like you back in the day, old man Gillette would have died in the poor house! That chin would go crying to its momma if a five-bladed powerhouse like the Fusion came anywhere near it! Hell, three blades is two too many for your worthless cheeks, and I only say that because I'm feeling generous! There's not enough growth on that jaw for even a single blade; you might as well shave with a baby spoon!

Get outta my sight! I don't want to look at your sorry mugs anymore. I'll give you thirty days to show me that your face isn't a barren wasteland, devoid of not only hair, but of any form of manliness. Go shave off those wimpy wisps and report back here in a month!