The beard-or-not donations seem to be fading…we’re at 86% of the goal. Clearly you need inspiration, and here it is: the fabulous Captain Nemo.

Notice also yet another reason for the beard: it expresses our yearnings for the glorious appendages of the cephalopod. We can’t have tentacles, but at least we can recognized the beauty of dangly bits hanging off of our heads.

By the way, I have to address a base canard that I have been hearing from many poorly informed women: that the beard is scratchy and unpleasant. Not true! This is a confusion spread by those men who shave, and who reduce their natural beards to a coarse stubble. It’s the bare-faced men who have abrasive chins! The beard, when allowed to grow, is soft and silky, like the pelt of a baby rabbit — soothing to the caress, gentle when cheek-to-cheek, and capable of feathery tickles when cheek-to-other-bits. The only way those clean-shaven scoundrels can achieve such softness is by slaughtering baby rabbits, hacking their skins off, and plastering the bloody fur to their perfidious faces. They are disgusting barbarians.

Save the baby rabbits. Help the children of Barnardo’s grow up to cultivate downy beards of their own. Donate and vote for the beard.