The Mo is starting to attract comments. Some random dude in the lift told me he tried to grow one for Movember a couple of years ago but it got too itchy, which is… a lot of information to share between floors, I think. A guy who used to be on my project at work did the whole “no that is WRONG you can’t DO THAT you look WRONG” tirade, notably doing so for several seconds before I even realised what he was talking about, which was mildly amusing. So to him and all those like him I say: just ’cause you can’t grow facial hair…

Let no one say I don’t suffer for my art.

(Yes my art is sculpting facial hair.)

Had to re-shoot today’s because I forgot I still had a fragment of toilet paper stuck to a shaving cut.

I’ve never been very good at the tiny-square-of-toilet-paper thing. No matter how long I leave it to heal, the act of pulling it off invariably rips open the wound and it starts gushing again. The cut today wasn’t even really bleeding; I just put it on there in case it opened up again at some point, which it did, as soon as I tried to pull it off, because apparently we’ve bought some brand of toilet paper that welds itself to your face.

There used to be a little stick of stuff that you could dab on wounds to stop them bleeding. I remember trying to buy one a few years ago and not being able to find it. Does anyone know what happened to it (or, indeed, what I’m talking about)?

(Alternate title of today’s update: Things You Didn’t Want to Know About Dave’s Blood and Toilet Paper)

Week 2 begins.

Tina got back from Melbourne last night, so it was the first time she’d seen the mo since early on day 2. She didn’t veto it, which is good. Although she did say I look Mexican.

Still having issues with symmetry. Part of the problem is that shaving is an asymmetrical process if you do the whole thing with the razor in one hand. But then, if I tried to shave half of my face left-handed, the left side of my face would be a jagged bloody mess. I wonder if ambidextrous people are more likely to even out their goatees correctly?

Random almost-related observation… The classic conversation-at-the-driving-range scene in a movie or TV show amost always implies that one of the characters is left-handed, because they’re usually facing each other (and I’m pretty sure nobody would swing with their off-hand by choice).

I noticed this in the third season of Dexter – and Dexter was the one driving left-handed. This struck me as interesting because (a) it’s an ironic contrast with his name (”dexter” being Latin for “right”, from which we get “dextrous”), implying that he’s not what he seems to be; (b) the negative stigma of left-handedness would be a useful thing to associate with his character; and (c) I hadn’t noticed it before, and unfortunately I didn’t pay attention to it afterwards, but I’m about 80% sure he’s portrayed as right-handed everywhere else. On the other hand (pun strictly unintentional), I remember noticing that Brian from the first season was left-handed. But maybe I got that wrong too. Google was no help here.

It’s taken this long to work out what the conclusion of this aside is, but I think it’s that it’s annoying that they could have either made a slightly bigger deal all along about Dexter being left-handed, as a metaphor for him being more “sinister” than he seems on the surface, a possible direction that his name seems to set up but not explore; or, if he’s not left-handed, not randomly and inconsistently implying that he is. The most annoying thing is that if Miguel had been driving left-handed, they still would have been facing each other in that scene, and it would have implied those things about him, while also subtly setting them up as opposites, which would have been awesome.

Sorry, I’m overthinking this. The point is…

Um…

I’ll never have symmetrical facial hair.

Edit: Of course Dexter is right-handed. Ten points to the first person to leave a comment pointing out the completely obvious and umistakable clue that I just noticed.

It’s a real struggle to keep it symmetrical.

Here’s a random piece of beard-related silliness…

Definite progress. Yesterday I played around a bit with aligning the photos… so there’ll be a video at the end. Presumably it will be creepy.

It’s still early days, but if you’d like to make a donation, then don’t look at my crappy profile page before doing so. It’ll probably put you off. (I’ll fix it up soon.)

Didn’t notice the droplet of blood until just now. That wasn’t intentional. I’m not trying to gross people out here.

It occurred to me that I’m not actually doing Movember – I’m doing NoBeardvember. Isn’t that a much bigger sacrifice? I mean, look at the blood! Look at it!!!

No, okay, don’t look at the blood. Seriously, it was unintentional.

I’d been meaning to buy shaving cream, but hadn’t gotten around to it. This morning I found some that must have been around since last time I shaved, which was… um…

Hang on. I know this one.

…

Last August, I think. That is, August last year. 2008.

Anyway, now I have shaving cream.

Slightly visible progress. I lost a fair bit of blood shaving this morning – now I remember why I decided to grow a beard in the first place.

The face asymmetry thing is definitely a result of sitting at a weird angle. (Check out my shoulders.) And because I’m obsessive and want the shots to roughly line up, now I have to reproduce said weird angle every morning. Great.

Technically it’s Day 2, but I hadn’t quite talked myself into it yet last night. (Shaving is quite a production for me.) So “first weekday in November” will have to be close enough.

Is my face asymmetrical? Maybe it’s just the way I’m sitting.