Burnside Was a Pussy

I‘m 24 now. Two dozen and one day. I am absolutely positive that this is supposed to mean something. At this age, my stepfather was coming home from a war in which he spent most of his time being shot at by people whose language he didn’t speak; My mother was just about to start this whole ‘me’ thing, married and future-bound.

In the Civil War, the average life expectancy for a kid like me was 19. You know, the shooting and stabbing and all that. If you made it through the ‘bang bang stab’ agenda you would likely drop from one of many available, and fairly fashionable, health complications. The kind even the Romans figured out a way around. (tuberculosis, pneumonia, major cardiovascular renal diseases, diphtheria, measles, small pox, typhoid and paratyphoid fever, it goes on like this?)

To celebrate my 24th was to celebrate not kicking can from some third-world ass-backward bug-suck involving gnats or air-born bacterial whatever, successfully evading bayonets and four-pounders and never once needing to even consider amputating any of my limbs. As a matter of fact, to celebrate my 24th was to celebrate the utter calm that my life seems to be when juxtaposed with that of those historic vecks with that whole colonial deal.

I guess given the choice between computer programmer and rat-assed kid with one arm, typhoid and a fatal case of the shits I’m going to pick the keyboard over the cannon truck every time. I think it has to do with CRT radiation or something, because it has been made plain to me in any number of Civil War epics that the chicks back then, though likely toting a case of the pox, were pretty hot.

I reeled in a Coolpix 4300, a TV and DVD/VHS from my parents and from myself’ Well, I didn’t want go all redcoat on American history this year, so I decided that I’d gift myself with genuine, all out, totally unbridled and hardcore ‘Van Burens’. What is a ‘Van Buren’ you ask? The 8th president, though his life, times and general presidential hooting about mean little to me, his facial hair was just so totally badass it makes me sick.

Take, like, the biggest beard you can imagine – not one of those stringy old white guy beards like ZZ Top sported sunglass wise (because remember, these guys didn’t last that long. They started the facial fro at, like, 12.), but one of those full on Stonewall Jackson dealies where it looks like the thing was carved out of a goddamned block of polystyrene, one of those – you take that and you rake your ‘bizarro-superman’ style goatee area completely off, shave your neck and come about 5/8 of an inch up your cheeks. What you have left is a site to behold. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, the more contemporary among you might have heard of Wolverine from the X-Men. The rest of you need only look up a picture of Martin Van himself or, if you’re Christian, see your friendly neighborhood English Cardinal. It might just be a movie thing, but it seems that if you are English, over 40 and into the God thing, you have to sport the Burens. Though the beliefs we may disagree on, the facial fro is where we connect, those Cardinals and I.

The key to a good Buren, it would seem, is topography. You need some distance between the cheek and the end of the thing. The missing goatee is vital, otherwise you like a total motard. Don’t believe me? Take a trip to Google and look up ‘General Burnside’. Yeah, inspiring the term ‘sideburn’ doesn’t buy you an ‘I Don’t Look Like a Total Git’ pass.

Granted, The Burens I nabbed for myself this past weekend are only, in actuality, potential Burens; But I see it as, like, getting someone a Chia-Pet. You don’t get them a fully fuzzed up watercress ram, right? You hook them up with a little clay bit, a pack of salvia columbariae seeds and let them do the rest. It’s kind of like that. Sans seeds. No, I take that back; I see my cheeks as having been spread with the slightly goopy seeds of hope. Seeds that, if loved, cared for and given plenty of water and sunlight, may someday sprout and grow into these, and I shit you not, 2-3 inch totally colonial Van Burens.

I’ve got a digital camera now. That means pictures of the progress. Just you wait.

[addendum :: 12:08pm]
I have been informed that a ‘goatee’ is actually confined to the chin, and the chin alone. Bizarro-Superman has what is called, apparently, a ‘van dyke’.

As well, I was alerted to the existence of this amazing site.
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