Far From Refuge

I really don't like April fools. I never have. I can never come up with anything believable. Furthermore, I'm usually duped because I forget its April 1st. I remember being in like 1st or 2nd grade and having my Dad tell my sister that he sold the Cricket, our pony, earlier in the day. I don't remember the whole thing exactly but I think I was in on it. I honestly don't even remember if she bought it or not. But I look back on that now and think, "How cruel?" Sorry Dad, I know you are reading this. But what if my sister did buy it? I just don't get much pleasure out of tricking people like that. I'm going to give you guys a little "i.e.", a "for example" if you will. Despite my dislike for April fools I decided I would try to trick my roommate Jeff earlier. In a nutshell I told him our other roommate Donnie was getting kicked out. It actually worked and Jeff believed it. After I had him hook, line, and sinker, I got bored and genuinely felt bad that I had tricked him. So I cut the line and told him "April fools". I can honestly say I got pretty much zero satisfaction out of it. I think its funny that even though much of our day to day life is full of little white lies or mild exaggerations, someone felt the need to start April fools, an entire day designed to lie to people. Thats like setting up a national holiday called "Con man's Day" to celebrate the great con men of history. I digress...

Speaking of criminals, a week back my friend Mitch was begging me to grow the "playoff beard" after posting the pictures from the BBQ and seeing my gross facial hair. The story of the "playoff beard" dates back to the summer of 2006 when I sold satellite dishes door-to-door with Mitch in Oregon. Yes, i know, it was the worst job of my life. More important was the playoff beard I grew while seeing some success. Mitch and I had been going to the ghetto part of Portland to sell. That fateful day Mitch had been making fun of me for a few reasons. I had been wearing a XXL shirt because for some reason the office only had one XL. So I'm wearing this absolutely huge, baggy shirt and all my ankle socks were dirty so I wore my other socks that went halfway up to calves. On top of that I had a growth of about a week and a half due to laziness. As you can see in the pictures provided here and in my BBQ post, my facial hair is gross and makes me look hispanic. So the hair, the shirt and the socks made me look like I was from East LA and Mitch would make little comments such as, "Hey, Hector, pass me the wire cutters!" But in a very "Cheech-esque" voice. I must admit it was funny. So this particular day I ended up selling 3 accounts on one street in about an hour. That was easily the best I had ever done, so I joked with Mitch that I was going to grow my "playoff beard". "What?!" was his response. I went on to explain like how in baseball playoffs the players are very superstitious and often do things like wearing the same underwear multiple days in a row and not shaving in order to not curse the winning streak. So in the playoffs you see a lot of guys with beards because they won't shave until they lose or have a bad game or stop doing well whatever they are doing well. When I explained this to Mitch he of course laughed his head off. He then agreed that must grow my playoff beard in order to keep on with the success with the day. So i decided to not shave to keep the selling streak going.


After my post last week featuring the dirty 'stache, Mitch exhorted me to bring back the playoff beard. I decided that it was a good time and that I must grow it out in order to succeed this semester and graduate. As you can see from these pictures its absolutely disgusting. I should never attempt this. You know how sometimes you look at families and you think, "Some people should just not be allowed to pro-create."? Well i think when I was walking around the past week, people were thinking, "Some people should just not be allowed to grow facial hair." I really think that I should have driven around a old Chevy pickup and gone to some Monster Truck rally's. I also pose another question, why is crappy, thin facial hair synonymous with trashy people? Even white trash guy on The Simpsons has a thin mustache like mine.

You might be asking yourself, "What happened that fateful summer? Did you grow a beard? Were you successful the rest of the summer?" Well I don't remember exactly what happened first. Either I got sick of the beard being gross, disgusting, and itchy, and the sales subsequently stopped. Or the sales stopped and it gave me an excuse to shave the thing off. Regardless, I ended up coming home early because door-to-door summer sales sucks. And I also ended up shaving this week because I realized that gross facial hair is only funny for a few hours and then its just disgusting. Also, superstitions are for ignorant people. The end.

Stay tuned next for my next topic of discussion, "Where do people learn to drive?" Its going to be an exciting discourse.

Also please enjoy this song by Valient Thorr. They have awesome beards that I wish I could grow.