What are they for? Do they serve any useful purpose apart from acting as as a permanently attached dining napkin? Is there any situation (apart from the movies obviously) where they're really necessary? Why, in Thailand, do they often come with a pigtail as an accessory?

Save shaving

Give the appearance of dirty, unpersonable scruffs, however neatly they trim their hairy disguises.

Give me a bare-faced liar every time, rather than these crooks hiding behind facial fungus.

yeah...I get out the battery operated clippers once per week and remove the length back to a manageable stubble...not so when I was younger as a wild mass of black hair and beard was always de rigour: 'I shall crush your bourgeios institutions and abuse yer wimminfolk!!!'...

having a beard in saudi is an advantage as the wahabs/salafist types with shaved heads and bristling facial hair figure that yer cool and ye get the odd 'al salaam malaikkum' when normally yer in their cross hairs as a westerner...but I fooled 'em....

Setting one on fire in a bar is one of the few things left to impress the resident ladies. (Make sure beer is on hand for dousing purposes).

yeah...I get out the battery operated clippers once per week and remove the length back to a manageable stubble...not so when I was younger as a wild mass of black hair and beard was always de rigour: 'I shall crush your bourgeios institutions and abuse yer wimminfolk!!!'...

having a beard in saudi is an advantage as the wahabs/salafist types with shaved heads and bristling facial hair figure that yer cool and ye get the odd 'al salaam malaikkum' when normally yer in their cross hairs as a westerner...but I fooled 'em....

where's Prof. Naam? he useta live in Jeddah an' knows what I'm talkin' about...

Setting one on fire in a bar is one of the few things left to impress the resident ladies. (Make sure beer is on hand for dousing purposes).

Save shaving

Exactly

I hate doing it. Started when I was much younger because of ingrown hairs. Caused blood shed when I shaved until I got an electric razor.

I have a had a beard on off most of my life. No pony tail.

yeah...I get out the battery operated clippers once per week and remove the length back to a manageable stubble...not so when I was younger as a wild mass of black hair and beard was always de rigour: 'I shall crush your bourgeios institutions and abuse yer wimminfolk!!!'...

having a beard in saudi is an advantage as the wahabs/salafist types with shaved heads and bristling facial hair figure that yer cool and ye get the odd 'al salaam malaikkum' when normally yer in their cross hairs as a westerner...but I fooled 'em....

where's Prof. Naam? he useta live in Jeddah an' knows what I'm talkin' about...

i know the feeling well - sitting in ras tanura as i type this wearing a 3 week beard. i grow a beard every 6 week swing in saudi (out of laziness), and it definitely gets me a slightly better reception from the locals who as you mentioned are often frosty, sometimes outright hostile. i've tried many times to retain it during my leave at home in thailand, but it never lasts more than 24hours before Mrs Goo sends me to the bathroom with orders to remove it.

^^ yeah when ye gots a beard ye gots to modulate and here is tutsi in a reclining position nearly 50 years ago with his girlfriend's mother (she taught comp lit at the local uni and was pretty smart as well as being sexy) who had advised after fondling me fronds: 'ye know if ye removed some of that ye might be quite desirable...che guevara be damned...'

hirsute and abused!

They seem to have become accepted since the loosening of social standards in the 60s.

I recall reading in a novel set before that time where a young man was considered a bit of a character when he grew a beard but was stopped from swimming in the public pool in case of beard contamination.

What was it now... one of Roth's?

Goodbye Columbus?

No, that was a collection of shorter works...

Curse my aging memory.

and I remember one of the unrequited loves of my life stating: 'I could never love a man without facial hair...'

and tutsi stood by scratching his luxurious bush and pondered...

^^ yeah when ye gots a beard ye gots to modulate and here is tutsi in a reclining position nearly 50 years ago with his girlfriend's mother (she taught comp lit at the local uni and was pretty smart as well as being sexy) who had advised after fondling me fronds: 'ye know if ye removed some of that ye might be quite desirable...che guevara be damned...'

hirsute and abused!

and the girlfriend's mom was quite a cookie...one afternoon after school me and the girlfriend were writing essays for our Advanced Placement english class as seniors in high school and then her mum snatched mine and reviewed and then tossed it aside in disgust and spat: 'beard or not, how anyone can write such rubbish is beyond my comprehension...'

and then me and her daughter sought solace in each other under the dining table and she was frightened and said: 'I know that you love me, tutsi...is that not true?' (she had just wowed the audience as Hero in 'Much ado about nothing')

her mom was known to be a raging brutaliser especially when it came to English composition...

and where was Hero's dad all this time when his beautiful daughter and his sexy wife were paying a lot of attention to tutsi?

he was smouldering with resentment and I didn't want him to resent me...I respected him, a local academic and a real 'can do' type of guy: he raised the biggest cabbages I ever saw in their back garden...

and then tutsi got busted for dope, in the wrong place at the wrong time with 3 joints in me pocket and it was: 'yer goddam lucky that yew weren't with my daughter then, you rascal! I can be a badass m.f. when I wanna be and then you would find that being torn limb from limb is not justa cliche!!!'

I was disappointed but when his daughter came to the county jail and visited me (I was only in for the 8 days of my Easter vacation) I got me own back...

(hey...being caught with a couple of joints in 1969 in California was not joke, a felony offense that carried 1 - 5 years in the joint (but I was a good student and got it reduced to a misdemeanor), big time hard time and I was a pretty young lad that the ladies liked so that one could imagine my future in the CA penal system...)

Really do not like beards.

But during the revolution in Iran I grew one as a means of getting around Shiraz on my bike.

Trouble was, it grew out a dark red against my black hair. Looked strange, but I assume the locals thought it was hennaed.

When we got out and I eventually got home, my eight-year-old daughter opened the door and burst out laughing. She couldn't stop until it was shaved off and I'd had my first hot-water bath for a couple of months.

Never considered growing one since.

and here is tutsi in the slammer, alone in a cell and then the bulls came by and said: 'ye gonna cut off that hair and that beard?' and I stood firm and said: 'do I gotta?' and he said: 'if ye don't then it's 'O' tank fer you, pal: no work privileges, no TV and no reading material!'

and then here's tutsi in 'O' tank where they had put alla the dopers where good vibes abounded and ye didn't need to ask 'what did they do ye for' as it was obvious...

and we provided our own entertainment; one afternoon when we were let our of our cells some guy put a paper bag on his head and set it on fire and started running around 'the beach' in front of the cells shouting 'I am the god of hellfire!' in respect of Arthur Brown and his hit tune...the bulls got out the fire hose and it was hilarious...but they did lock us down for 24hrs after that; oh, well...

then later as we had no TV we watched the reflection from the TVs above our block as Joan Baez sang about Joe Hill being banged up before execution in Utah many years previous and we were all silent...

and I thought to mesef: 'jezuz, this isn't a prison...this is like a church fulla believers...'...all we needed was Mahalia Jackson and the rattle of tambourines...

an epiphany of sorts...

some years after here's tutsi in Cochabamba and his mum just got killed in an accident (she stepped in front of a pick up holding a parasol and didn't see him coming - strong sunlight at them high altitudes...the dumbest way to die that anyone could ever imagine) and I needed to dispose of her goods...the idea of mortality was at hand and I was drinking heavily and at about 7 one morning I was down at the plaza by local church at 'la recoleta' having my boots shined after buying vodka at the local bodega and there were a lot of folks going into the church and I thought: 'hmmm...middle of the week at 7am? there must be something special going on...' and I paid the lustrabotas and headed in after them...

it was dark and quiet in there and the place was packed and tutsi stood by the wall in the back as the priest read the mass...and I was in the presence of something intensified by the parishioners and their devotion...and I sneaked a slug from the vodka bottle under my jacket, totally confused...

and I left the church thinking about what I had observed and surmised: 'one may disagree with what they believe but there is no doubting that their devotion is real...' and I never then ever put down anyone fer what they believed in as what's in their hearts is not of the observer's business...and cannot be known or evaluated...

what about that old woman that covers herself in black mourning clothes for the rest of her life or a murderous jihadi with his finger on the trigger?...it don't make no sense but who are we to judge?

these epiphanies are tiresome when I just wanna mind me own business...

There's still beardists around, they forget the great murderers of history were all clean shaven, Hitler, Stalin, Mao... while the often maligned beardies like Rasputin and Bluebeard were relatively harmless by comparison.

A conspiracy by companies like Gillette to make people buy stuff they should neither want nor need.

DeBeers has a lot to answer for.

and here is tutsi in the slammer, alone in a cell and then the bulls came by and said: 'ye gonna cut off that hair and that beard?' and I stood firm and said: 'do I gotta?' and he said: 'if ye don't then it's 'O' tank fer you, pal: no work privileges, no TV and no reading material!'

and then here's tutsi in 'O' tank where they had put alla the dopers where good vibes abounded and ye didn't need to ask 'what did they do ye for' as it was obvious...

and we provided our own entertainment; one afternoon when we were let our of our cells some guy put a paper bag on his head and set it on fire and started running around 'the beach' in front of the cells shouting 'I am the god of hellfire!' in respect of Arthur Brown and his hit tune...the bulls got out the fire hose and it was hilarious...but they did lock us down for 24hrs after that; oh, well...

then later as we had no TV we watched the reflection from the TVs above our block as Joan Baez sang about Joe Hill being banged up before execution in Utah many years previous and we were all silent...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbAoXw_DqvM

and here is tutsi in the slammer, alone in a cell and then the bulls came by and said: 'ye gonna cut off that hair and that beard?' and I stood firm and said: 'do I gotta?' and he said: 'if ye don't then it's 'O' tank fer you, pal: no work privileges, no TV and no reading material!'

and then here's tutsi in 'O' tank where they had put alla the dopers where good vibes abounded and ye didn't need to ask 'what did they do ye for' as it was obvious...

and we provided our own entertainment; one afternoon when we were let our of our cells some guy put a paper bag on his head and set it on fire and started running around 'the beach' in front of the cells shouting 'I am the god of hellfire!' in respect of Arthur Brown and his hit tune...the bulls got out the fire hose and it was hilarious...but they did lock us down for 24hrs after that; oh, well...

then later as we had no TV we watched the reflection from the TVs above our block as Joan Baez sang about Joe Hill being banged up before execution in Utah many years previous and we were all silent...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbAoXw_DqvM

and here's tutsi who was picked outta the audience by the Indonesian MC who announced: 'and here is the fabulous 'tutsiwarrior' who shall entertain us with a song from his homeland!' and then I dragged me arse up onto the stage and picked me teeth an' murmured to the filipino band leader: 'Cotton Fields' and then the audience went wild with tutsi running and shouting all over the shop...

George Thorogood is a puss...

the indo girlfriend wasn't with me at the time...she liked to have sex but was embarrassed to be with me in public...

the indo girlfriend wasn't with me at the time...she liked to have sex but was embarrassed to be with me in public...

A very sensible girl, then.

I've known a few like that - and a lot more that weren't to keen on sex and were surely embarrassed to be seen with me in public.

the indo girlfriend wasn't with me at the time...she liked to have sex but was embarrassed to be with me in public...

A very sensible girl, then.

I've known a few like that - and a lot more that weren't to keen on sex and were surely embarrassed to be seen with me in public.

yeah, humph... them indonesian girls were a bit weird about appearances...sorta like if they were seen with some westerner that was obviously a degenerate folks would then presume that they didn't pray regularly and then be accused of being an apostate...

the Christian women didn't care much as bein' a Christian in a muslim country carried a lot of disapproval anyway...but they could be a real handful as I found out...

and here was tutsi with one of his Christian girlfriends when we finally 'got down to business' as we hadn't had sex the first time because she was drunk and I didn't want to be accused of rape...

her: 'you didn't expect this, did you?' and then tutsi who was almost in tears: 'I don't understand...you are wildly sexy and desirable, why do you go to extremes to appear otherwise?' and then her: 'oh, good gott! you stupid men don't know anything...' and then she grabbed me and said: 'kiss me, you fool...' and she always smelled very pleasantly of garlic...

later we relaxed and I had my hand on her thigh and she said: 'not bad eh? better than any 20 y.o. stuff that you could find...' and she was 45 years old and useta be a chinese gangster's moll in Jakarta...

mercy...

and she liked dancing...and here she was with 'My Sharona' on the box and going crazy and I salivated and looked at her and her moves with her wild hair, t-shirt and little shorts and long brown legs and she grabbed me with a snarl: 'don't freeload offa my energy, goddamit! get up and dance!'

and I had to admit that my girlfriends in California were all very demure and properly anglo-saxon and that I wasn't as experienced as I had thought...

the indo girlfriend wasn't with me at the time...she liked to have sex but was embarrassed to be with me in public...

A very sensible girl, then.

I've known a few like that - and a lot more that weren't to keen on sex and were surely embarrassed to be seen with me in public.

yeah, humph... them indonesian girls were a bit weird about appearances...sorta like if they were seen with some westerner that was obviously a degenerate folks would then presume that they didn't pray regularly and then be accused of being an apostate...

the Christian women didn't care much as bein' a Christian in a muslim country carried a lot of disapproval anyway...but they could be a real handful as I found out...

and here was tutsi with one of his Christian girlfriends when we finally 'got down to business' as we hadn't had sex the first time because she was drunk and I didn't want to be accused of rape...

her: 'you didn't expect this, did you?' and then tutsi who was almost in tears: 'I don't understand...you are wildly sexy and desirable, why do you go to extremes to appear otherwise?' and then her: 'oh, good gott! you stupid men don't know anything...' and then she grabbed me and said: 'kiss me, you fool...' and she always smelled very pleasantly of garlic...

later we relaxed and I had my hand on her thigh and she said: 'not bad eh? better than any 20 y.o. stuff that you could find...' and she was 45 years old and useta be a chinese gangster's moll in Jakarta...

mercy...

I found a similar girl - but a 25-year-old. Absolutely beautiful, good English, well-educated, etc., etc.

Then our steelwork engineer came over from Bandung and took the girl off me. And our steelwork engineer was a Gauloise-smoking French girl! (Well, woman of about 30)

I've only ever grown a beard once, my mates told me that it made me look like the Laughing Cavalier portrait.

So I stopped wearing the hat.

Hats make the man, I was a great hat wearer once but gave them up because they were making my hair fall out.

I certainly wouldn't have stopped because I looked like the laughing cavalier.

Hansum is as hansum does.

I didn't have a horse at the time though, the whole look just fell apart.

Thad, Thad, oh ye of little imagination.

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