Everyone knows the experience of dragging out of bed on a dark morning in January, stepping around the busy humidifier spewing mucous membrane-healing moisture, finding the door to the bathroom and flipping the switch -- whoops, no, not that one, as the fan roars prematurely -- there, the light switch.

"Ouch!" we say or think, and the photons from Edison's folly crash against the reluctant retinas of our eyes. We are blinded. We have a fleeting bed wish, yet know that the time is nigh, and the pain must be borne, the face confronted, the sleepers removed, the "natural" beauty restored with soap and water, and the variety of applications applied that sometimes are required for troublesome corners of God's creation called "face."

Finally we realize that the squinting has subsided. But then whe…