For the benefit of Nick, a repost of the Sideburn instructions and, ahem, deadline:

Sideburn #1

Gentlemen, start yer engines. The first Sideburn is gonna be a wee thing -- a skinny bit of facial hair as opposed to a mutton chop -- since there's only 3 of us: Shamus, Nick, and me. That's okay, though -- something small to kick things off.

Mindful of Nick's griping about me choosing the theme, this morning I decided to generate one randomly. Before presenting the theme let me outline the methodologies that led to its creation.

First, a random URL generator was used, which kicked out a webpage devoted to "time travel." Then, the phrase "time travel" was used as search criteria in the quotations section of Bartleby.com. This produced 20 results. A random number generator was used to produce an integer between 1 and 20. It gave 17. The 17th result from the Bartleby search was a quotation from the poet Robert Graves. Note that it has nothing to do with "time travel" per se, but contains the word "travel" and was published in Time Magazine:

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and—if he is lucky enough—know the love of an honest woman.

At this point I decided to chuck randomness and extract the part of the quotation that appealed most to me. Thus, sideburners, your theme is:

EXPERIENCE THE HORROR OF SORDID PASSION

You have until Aug 29 to mail it out. Let the burning begin!