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I'm dragging ass. It was like this the last time I came back from Japan. The whole week I was there, I never adjusted to local time, and then tack on a 14 hour flight home and you just get messed up even further.

I'm really tired.

I find when I'm sleep deprived, what little patience I have for optimizing the various parameters in my life goes right out the window. Usually I'm a stickler. My whole day is one long series of optimized rituals. But when I'm this run down, I just don't have the energy for that crap. If I'm hungry, I eat jelly out of the jar with my fingers, standing at the open fridge. I did this daily when our little guy was born and we had two munchkins under the age of 2. For six months I stumbled around and ate Polaner's All-Fruit out of the jar with my fingers while leaning up against the fridge with my eyes closed.

My stupidest, most embarrassing ritual is shaving. I know I've said that the traditional wetshaving ritual is a pleasant and relaxing one, but I was wrong, and probably even lying. I really do see that now. 20 mins for a @%#$ shave? Some really gone shavegeeks take 45 mins or an hour in the bathroom, a'stroppin' their blade, a'workin' their cube, a'smackin' their puss with a big-ass shaving brush fulla lather. I know. I used to be one of them, roughly a week or so ago. No more. It's stupid, and meaningless. It's like when everything was DOS and if you wanted to show off on a computer you'd type 10 type Fill In The Blank, and then 20 goto 10, and then hit Enter, and the screen would fill up with Fill In The Blank forever. Wow, cool! And that plus a quarter buys you a Chinese lead toy out of a gumball machine where I live.

I just want a clean face. I don't wanna be Winston Churchill (by the way, shavegeeks -- that whirring sound you sometimes hear is the Great Man's coffin spinning at 300 RPM because the only thing you know about his life is that he liked cigars and booze). Shaving is less important than washing your junk. Why make it more than it is?

God, I am so tired.

Today I did the shaving equivalent of eating jelly to stay alive. Hand-slathered Taylor's Avocado shaving cream and a few simple swipes of the Injector. Not even the Feather-loaded Injector. Just the Injector, with a (gasp) bog-standard Personna blade, right out of that flimsy plastic magazine that drives everyone nuts. A quick swipe down, then up, then rinse off.

Best shave I've had in days. Looked perfect. No red. Felt great. Sure I could feel a bit of stubble in certain isolated zones on my neck if I rubbed my fingers against the grain. But it was invisible, even up close. I'm too tired to faceturbate today, so I didn't obsess over it. I just shaved and moved onto the next task at hand, trying to stay awake. Also I was fasting, which didn't help either my insomnia or my mood. No sleep and no food, and you think I care about silvertip badger hair and water mix ratio?

Someday Polaner will make a jelly that's all natural and also dissolves facial hair if you wipe it on and wash it off. No brush, no blade, no poultice afterward. Just jelly up your puss and you're clean. I don't care if I have to farm my own clones just to live off the organs -- I will live to see that day, and I will EXULT.

I really need some sleep.