By Mordain's beard!

I looked down and saw there were a few strange new stains on the carpet. Kneeling to look closer, I realised that my foot was bleeding and an ugly red rivulet had flowed from the top over to be trodden in. I had dropped my electric shears earlier, reflecting that it hurt a little bit. Weird.

I was using the shears to cut my beard, a symptom of the same situation that resulted in me foolishly promising you a sequel and not posting for a week. Yeah, Physics. Sorry.

There's got to be something ridiculous about a workload that causes your physical appearence to change. This is, I suppose, a natural process that all men go through, though damn if I don't seem to go through it a lot. As little as four days are enough to make the journey from "lightly shaded" through "dashingly rugged" and right on to "Is it full moon already?"

In my lifetime I'll produce miles of facial hair, almost all of which will be cut into millimetre lengths and washed down the drain. I can't help thinking it's a waste. Is there some specialised organ inside me that turns food and drink into keratin so that it can be squeezed out of my face? Maybe that's what the spleen is for, or the pancreas, for all I know. It seems like a lot of effort to go to just to make me look shifty.

I might even throw up my hands and decide to just let the damn thing grow. There are really only two things stopping me doing that.

The first is that in between being clean-shaven and rougish good looks lies a week or two where you look like... well, to be quite frank, you look like someone who's been skipping meals in favour of work for a few days. I can rise above such superficiality with an effort of will, though. In Moore's Utopia, everyone wore the contemporary equivalent of boiler suits. I can see the appeal in that.

The second thing, though, is the itch barrier.

I'd be prepared to wear a habit for the sake of defeating sartorial anxiety, but if my body makes me choose between bleeding on the carpet and feeling like I have a doormat under my chin then I'm afraid there's just no choice.

Song in my head: "Speed Trials" by Elliott Smith

Oh, and the promised sequel to my last post will follow- just not today.