Any progress is good, right?

Today was the hangover from yesterday's zombie day, so don't expect any artistic miracles. I did manage to ink the rest of next week's Precocious strips, so that's good. I also pulled out my "fun" painting for some work, with not as good results. I blame the mental fuzz.

Today has been an embarrassingly fuzzy day for my normally beautiful mind. Most of the conversations involving me today involved a blank stare and weak vocal feedback. Yeah, this is not me at my best. Sorry, everyone I conversed with! With which I conversed? Bah.

If I succeed in sleep tonight, perhaps tomorrow I will return to my more eloquent self. Today's victory is that I got anything done at all!

How do you do that?

Today was a wasted day. Little to no construction meant my usual alarm clock didn't break my sleep cycle in the normal. I HAD TO DESTROY MY SLEEP CYCLE MYSELF! Every time I got up this morning, I ended up back asleep soon after. Didn't get out of bed until 1pm. Go me!

Anyway, no mountains shall be moved and no great feats shall be undertaken. Today I devote myself to catching up on TV and DVDs. Tomorrow, the world?

My offering today is Tiffany joining me in violating many laws of rationality. I destroy my life and body; she stacks blocks in strange ways. Then again, physics could be her friend.

The subconscious is one's worst critic

OR, how to start one's day in the most inauspicious way possible!

The culprit this time was a dream. Usually I have dreams of brain-numbing repetition or ones where I'm continuously hunting for candy. (Thanks, shameless sweet tooth!) When stress or gluttony dreams aren't in the rotation, it's usually mind torture in the form of anxiety dreams - where everything goes wrong for me. As noted before: My brain hates me.

In today's dream, I was shipped off the convention for people with personality disorders. The goal was to isolate us from society and teach us how to stop being drains on the world. My group was seemingly the worst of the lot. After all, our "invitations" were done in sinister black. The other defect groups had bright cheery colors linked to their disorders. Mine was black. Like, death and depressing black.

This awful group you see, was the COMPLAINERS! We were the cynics and sourpusses who lose their cool at the slightest irritant. We were mean, bitter and no fun to be around. If we didn't fix ourselves, we'd be doomed to a life of sad ostracism.

Proving the event organizer's point, I didn't take my invite well. I, well, COMPLAINED about being singled out as a bad person and admitted I felt persecuted because the black envelope let everyone else know (people who were just as dysfunctional as me - if not more so) that I was the worst of all! I was being avoided! The told me I didn't have to eat in the cafeteria with the rest of the nuts - I could help myself to candy in the guest room. (Yes, even in this dream I desperately needed a chocolate fix.)

The main reason I was upset was because they organization just didn't get it - there are two types of complainers: Zesty and bitter! I complain a lot, but I do it as a purge and I try to find some humor in it. I think running around proclaiming the sky the to be falling is FUNNY! My fellow black-labeled wretches were clearly on the bitter side. We had the old ladies who had nothing to do with their lives but yell at people for being noisy during their naps. We had TONS of repressed conservatives and Christian fundamentalists - who hate themselves because their values are so strict any deviation from them must make them horrible people, so they judge everyone else harsher in retribution. We had the general sad sacks who were so beaten down they'd lost their sense of humor. Basically, I was surrounded by BAD CONVERSATIONALISTS!

We had a private pool just for us sourpusses, but it was very unfriendly. The old ladies wouldn't get in the water for fear of getting their hair wet. The conservatives all inched dangerously close to each other in the hot tub, filled with sickening tension. The sourpusses would dog-paddle around by themselves. I was the only person to take a leap into the water and make a splash. The rest silently walked into the pool from the shallow area - doing all they could to be silent and keep the water calm. I splashed around and tried to get the people to play a game. No response. This was went I went off to complain about my "peers."

At least my brain was telling me I don't belong on that group. As the dream went on, it became clear I was the star of my crew. My fellow complainers - while still hating each other as much as themselves - all warmed to me and my charming ways. I had become a leader and I was fairly respected by everyone in the reject convention.

The next morning, I got a visit from Dana - who was wearing adorable jammies for some reason. Seems she was taken away too, as part of the "obsessive" camp. We happily chatted about sneaking off to get breakfast away from the rest of the wretches. Conversation then turned to the old lady in the bed beside mine. She was frustrated with inconsiderate people making too much noise as she slept. When Dana asked if I was causing problems - as I'm an insomniac and I toss and turn like mad - the old lady said I was the only one she liked. I was never a problem and I didn't make any noise to disturb her. It was a good self-esteem boost.

Eventually, I found some kin in the complainer group in two women. One was a pushy New Yorker whose tongue was sharp enough to disarm all those not tempered to absorb "New York charm." The other was a tall woman - well over six feet - with a loud voice and a pushy attitude. She seemed like the lawyer type. Together, we decided to write a letter to the organization explaining the two types of complainers. We might bitch and moan, but the others in the program are not our people. Line by line we laid out why they suck and why we are simply misunderstood. At one point, I sat back and wondered if what we were doing was too self-serving or something that would make us far more irritating in the organization's eyes than the wretches we found to be vastly inferior. The New Yorker could see it happening, but the other lady (who seemed less self-aware and probably wouldn't be in our group if there had been anyone else slightly worthy) got a bit self-righteous, claiming truth is truth.

At that point the dream trailed off and fell into the standard surrealism/stress dream stuff, such as me trying to reach the pool on the ground level from my floor and managing to end up hanging off a balcony a few stories up. This happens all the time in dreams, of course. Instead of going into the elevator, I ended up outside it and I had to strategically drop down floor by floor, getting me in tons of trouble for the disturbance. During this, another dream standard was at play: I was trying to travel with a gal (generic hottie) and no matter what I did, we'd be separated. I reached the pool and jumped in, only to find she had made it down with me... but forgot her suit. Once again, the pool symbolized isolation!

Overall, I think the meaning is fairly straightforward. The dream was more of a highlighter and exaggerator of stress than one hiding it in symbols. At least it was creative in handling it. I take it as failure when my brain only offers up cookie cutter dreams. Anytime I'm flying or my teeth/hair fall out, I wake up embarrassed for my brain.

Still, it's rather depressing to wake up after a dream where you are officially labeled a black-level asshole. Hey, maybe something reassuring could happen as soon as I wake up to make me feel better about myself.

I woke up to see a GIGANTIC FUCKING SPIDER on the ceiling directly above me. It waited until it was sure I saw it, before it scrambled into a vent. Thus, this arachnophobe now knows there is a GIGANTIC FUCKING SPIDER in my room that is just WAITING FOR ME!

There is no way this day can go well now.

I command you to listen to "Hello In There" and start crying

I used to have the most beautiful red hair. The color was perfection - a glowing copper one projects onto the fetishized, fantasy Irish woman of one's dreams. It was a natural red hair without the consequences of the "redhead face" that non-fetishied, actual Irish women have. This quality of this hair was a Hollywood interpretation of what red hair should be.

Now I know you're puzzled, seeing as there's a picture of me over on the right. While I am Hollywood sexy - they still film low-budget porn in Hollywood, right? - my hair is clearly non-copperish. Perhaps I am referring to my childhood hair, from a time before the ravages of age stripped me of my cuteness. This is also not the case. A mere child could not appreciate this hair. This hair, friends, was on my chin.

Normally I despise facial hair. It is my curse in life to have a dinkly beard that turns hideous when allowed to grow out and is incapable of ever achieving an acceptable level of bushiness. Should I forgo shaving for too many days, my face rapidly degrades into one that those who are kind would describe as of a degenerate slacker and basement-dwelling loser. Those who are unkind would instead think of a back woods molester or a 16-year-old that tries too hard. I hate facial hair and it hates me. For normal people, this is a conquerable demon. I, however, am severely wrong in the head. I hate shaving almost as much as I hate my beard - if one could call the mange-ravaged dog look of my chin a beard.

Shaving is a morning thing. It requires time and planning to do. For normal people, that's fine. Get up a few minutes early and use the razor blade on the face instead of the normal cutter actions. One of my corrosive abnormalities, unfortunately, has my circadian rhythm firmly set in a non-Eastern time zone mode. In my 9-5 job, 99% of the time I am at least 5 minutes late. Doing something extra like shaving is just not an option. Shaving is a weekend-only task, and even then I can be so lazy that I miss my window of opportunity. When my beard is allowed over a week to grow unchallenged, disaster strikes.

But at least I had that red hair. Among the brown, straggly horrors was this shimmering symbol of awesome. That my malformed and grotesque jaw could produce something so perfect gave me hope. I did have potential! I was capable of creating something wonderful! If my chin could do it, maybe my fingers and brain can join that club. THIS HAIR WAS INSPIRATION!

As it is Friday, it's been almost a week since my last shave and the hair has begun to assert itself. I've gone past "clean shaven" and "somewhat sexy" (even I, with my pathetic hair production, can achieve the seductive stubble - if only for a short time) and into the beginnings of the "lazy grooming practices" phase. As I viewed myself in a mirror earlier with dismay that shaving must soon commence, I sought comfort in the red hair which was my only source of facial pride.

I couldn't find it.

Instead, in the place normally red, was a stand that also boldly stood out on my face. This strand was bright white. Oh. Oh fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

THIS ISN'T HAPPENING! Please tell me that hair - THE ONE HAIR ON MY FACE THAT I LOVED - has not succumbed! I just missed the copper hair, right? I was so shocked by the white hair I overlooked it, right? Right? RIGHT!?

And so I examined my beard further. As always, it was a multicultural garden of colors and shapes. The beard always had its representatives from the hair rainbow milling among the flat brown majority. The random blonde strands reminded me of my Scandinavian roots. The less-interesting reds still reminded me of my inner sexiness. They spiced up a joyless jaw while never being too conspicuous - with exception of that one, glorious hair. But something was off this time. There were far more blonde stands that I remembered. Some of the blondies were awfully light as well. They *were* blonde, right? Hmm.

Only time will tell if this panic is justified. I've spent a lot of time in the sun recently and many of those hairs *do* look more blonde than gray. But still, this is a grim reminder that I am time's bitch. In a week when my life has begun a dramatic - and hopefully positive - shift, my face has become symbolic. I'm growing up by the hair of my chinny chin chin.