She said there's something about you that really reminds me of money / She was the kind of girl who could say things that weren't that funny

Over at the always worth reading, How to Save the World, Dave Pollard had a post up recently linking people's reactions to the grim state of our society/ecology to the 5 stages of grief which people are said to pass through when dealing with a personal tragedy. Dave argued that it is not a straight path of things getting better as we move from one stage to another in a linear fashion and he got some interesting, serious reactions in the comments - but I was reminded of his post the other day in somewhat less serious circumstances when I had the following conversation with my girlfriend:

Me: "Check out my new driver's license photo, what do you think?"
Girlfriend (grimacing): "Well, in your last picture you looked like you wanted to kill somebody. Now you look like you want to kill yourself."
Me: "Is that progress?"
Girlfriend: "No."