When you have an ugly hair day, conventional wisdom says to put your hair into a ponytail or wear a hair accessory. The other option is to wear an invisibility cloak.

Scientists at UC Berkeley have taken a major step toward making Harry Potter’s disguise of choice a reality. They’ve engineered two new materials — one using a fishnet of metal layers, the other using tiny silver wires — that neither absorb nor reflect light, causing it instead to bend backward.
Quotation from Time Magazine

I’m fine but you’re obviously having a bad hair day.
Quotation from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992 movie)

Everyone thinks they know themselves. After all, we live in the back alleys of our minds smelling the same soup every day. But how self-aware are we really? Are we like my Uncle Clem who seems mindless that his house smells like dog urine? Do we get so used to ourselves that we can’t smell what is obvious to everyone else?

While Washington poured billions into propping up the banks and financial institutions that brought our economy to its knees, the Chinese spent their stimulus billions on an epic 19,000 miles of new railroad track. Nearly half of that total will go towards completing a web of more than 42 inter-province hyperspeed rail lines that will link almost every major city in the country. The fastest of the new trains travel at 229 miles per hour. So China comes out of the economic crisis with a rail system that will be the envy of the world.
Quotation from Graydon Carter, Wild on the Street, Vanity Fair

People should come with warning labels. “Use at your own risk.”

But I’m a creep, I’m a wierdo.
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here.
She’s running out again.
She’s running.
She runs runs runs runs
Runs.
Lyric from Radiohead, Creep

I have no sense of direction. I know the sun sets in the west, and I can locate the North Star by following the Big Dipper. But going from Point A to an unknown Point B by myself usually involves drifting, unplanned side trips and lots of frustration. If you find a trail of skittles, please come and get me.

And I am willing to come to you now, my dear,
As a pigeon lets itself off from a cathedral dome
To be lost in the haze of the sky, I would like to come,
And be lost out of sight with you, and be gone like foam.
Poem by D.H. Lawrence, Elegy

I’ve added some new widgets to Encore Seraphine, including a Search function and a Tag Cloud. I hope you like the changes and decide to try them. The current publication pace of a new comic roughly every other day is working great for me. In about a week, I’ll be presenting my 700th comic. Thank you for your encouragement and wonderful comments.

We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction. There are many voices of counsel, but few voices of vision; there is much excitement and feverish activity, but little concert of thoughtful purpose… It is our duty to find ourselves.
Quotation from Woodrow Wilson, 1907

I’ve felt i could do anything, even with one hand tied behind my back. If i put my mind to it. If I worked hard enough. If i got the chance.

I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,
Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.
He married me when drunk. My life was wretched.
A year passed and one day they found him dead.
That made me rich. I moved on to Chicago.
After a time met Tyler Rountree, villain.
I moved on to New York. A gray-haired magnate
Went mad about me—so another fortune.
He died one night right in my arms, you know.
(I saw his purple face for years thereafter.)
There was almost a scandal. I moved on,
This time to Paris. I was now a woman,
Insidious, subtle, versed in the world and rich.
Poem by Edgar Lee Masters, Dora Williams

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.
Quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby