P.S I ended up using the 'bitten out of my life' quote.

In short, I have to write a personal essay for english class/college admissions. So I decided to talk about my most vocal subject: Me being a medical mystery. I tried, and it turned out like this:

Blessing in Disguise
“You can‘t eat what?”
I hear this a lot. Do you know what what is?
Chicken.
Ha-ha. Go on, soak it in.
I get this reaction about once a month, whenever one of my friends suggests meeting up at Chik-fil-a. No, I can’t eat chicken. And not just chicken, either: peanuts, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, turkey, bananas, celery, peas, and, for a limited time, (thank god) eggs and corn. How do I get by? I eat lots of noodles. It spurs lots of awkward conversations with ignorant people, makes me give away more than half of my Halloween candy, and has created a paranoid label-reader. But, as sucky as this sounds on paper, (and as the title so cliché-ishly puts it) it’s actually helped me grow in a lot of areas. Because I will never be the one who is picky about anything. I accept every new food I eat as a challenge, an adventure and - deep down - one more thing I can use to someday fill that huge chunk that’s been bitten out of my life.
Fish: Bring it on.
Rubbery Scallops: Pile ‘em up.
Squid-y calamari: What is this, Christmas?

Now thats what I call a rough draft!

My Drunk Foot-Scrubbing Adventures

So my mother has... a certain... special gift.
(SIGH)
Okay, so my mother has a knack for something absolutely abhorrently terrible. It has to do with my grampa. These are things that she has said to him:

"So what do you think about that kidnapping case?"
"So Cathy said she'd come to visit this fall... You know, when you move up here?"
"I don't know, I think they're building a Mosque in our neighborhood."

I guess she does this because, I DON'T KNOW, she seems to remember my grampa having a history of acting like a calm and conciliate companion for controversial and complicated conversations?* (Key words there, if you don't know my grampa, are Kidnapping, Move Up Here, and Mosque. God only knows what possessed her to say Mosque. She could've said A Gas Station, A Target, or the all powerful I Don't Know.)

*That's some kick ass alliteration right there, if you didn't notice. ENGLISH 12 POETRY UNIT, HERE I COME!

Moving on.
So the story I'm about to share with you happened right after incident #2 in the example list. I won't go into details, but it involved my grampa forgetting about his insurance covering assisted living (for the umpteenth time) and us trying quickly to recover (FOR THE) and remind him (UMPTEENTH) that he's not paying for it (TIME.).
As soon as the shouting started, I bolted. Overcome by the pressure of my small teenage world, I burst into tears. Gina came over and was all like, "Oh hai?" and then we talked and laughed and lightened up. But one of the things she mentioned to me was "This would be a good night to curl up with some headphones." and in jest, "Steff needs a beer." Now, combine this with my mom's advice. ("I'm sorry you're feeling down. Sometimes we all need a - Ohmygosh, you need to wash your feet, your feet are black. Dan - Dan. Come see her feet. See how black they are.") And so, beer+computerspeakers+footbrush+bubbles followed. Makings of a good night, no?
So I'm just going to share some wisdom with you, here. You will never feel more vulnerable then you do in a bathtub. I don't know if it's because of the myriad of horror films (The Shining, Mirrors, What Lies Beneath, Psycho) or whatever, but everytime you turn off the water and settle into the opaque bubbles, you accept that there is probably a sudden 10% increase in the chances of you getting raped, kidnapped, stabbed, your jaw getting ripped apart (Mirrors, holy shit). All of this plus my second beer of the day? Now it's 20%.
So I have my music going for my relaxing bubbledeath, and it's pretty damn reposeful. (Check it out - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzX350VPIqc, please ignore the geekiness.) So my random playlist of Zelda songs ramble on, leaving me in pixelated perfumed pastures and rasturized rambling rivers. And then, out of no where, this happens.
(And at this point I have pretty much embraced death.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGxGD5Y9uWY
Keep in mind that as I am in a tub, I can not change the song, so I sit and listen to the whole thing. Petrified. Please listen till the end, it gets wicked creepy.

I'm never taking another bath.

HHLCD Awareness: What YOU can do to help

Internet Health Journal
Entry One
By Dr. Livingston (I presume?)

Good evening, colleagues. A matter was recently brought to my attention regarding a new syndrome in young people causing widespread panic. It's called HHLCD, or more commonly, Haters with Huge Lung Capacity Disorder. See here the issue in a most dangerous example, recently seen on an Internet discussion about Tila Tequila*:

"no u probly look and act like u live on a street corner and u dont know her personally so u have no right to say stuff like that use the saying dont judge a book by its cover judge it by whats in the inside and still that saying is wrong cuz whats on the inside is her personality and thats not your life to live its her and maybe you shuld have more respect for othersand if you are going to be rude like that behind her back then i guess you have enough courage to say it to her face and let her rough you up alittle"

As you can see, the poor girl in question (<3~malibuchikXX) clearly lost consciousness before finishing her rambling opinion.
Fortunately for today's youth, I have spent many hours in my study and my basement laboratory and have successfully procured a solution! My prescription is as follows:

Three hours a week exposure to respectful society (museums, libraries, national parks, etc)
and about 13 commas and periods per day
(if they don't like swallowing punctuation, try mashing them up in applesauce).





*TILA TEQUELA!?

Pancake Assistant

Earlier, I was on Craigslist, looking for lawlz. I found one.

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/stp/1278977516.html

If I were to respond to this, it would look something like this...

Jeezy Creezy, Kids These Days...

This quote was extracted from a recent article in Teen Vogue about whether or not to change the drinking age to 18. The quote was very big and highlighted, used as a valid point towards one side of the argument. I was very angry upon seeing this, and personally grounded Stella* for three weeks with no AIM! Bummer!

"If you're old enough to vote or fight in wars, you're old enough to drink"
- Stella,* 15

Phew. Okay. Buckle your seat belts, guys.

Listen, Stella*. I know you think you're cool and opinionated because you ripped part of this philosophy off the sign of a passionate teen during the Vietnam war pushing for voting rights. But you're 15. 15. Barely 3 years a teenager, and you're already trying to justify that getting drunk with your friends is as much as a national freedom, right and honor as serving in our military and voting in elections. I think our great country needs to take the most extreme measures (keeping the drinking age at 21 is a good start) to reinforce this one simple fact: You are not an adult. And there is a real reason why you are not yet considered mature. Your statement is, then, entirely false. The three things you mention in your quote do have something in common: they require intense responsibility. And since you are not old enough to have experienced these things, you have no basis for your argument whatsoever.

Faint Signals - An action long overdue!

Recently, I let my voyager comic go unnoticed. But no longer! On the Internet they go! :]

http://s133.photobucket.com/albums/q52/Piratessfifi/Faint%20Signals%20from%20Voyager%20One/

The last one is my favorite. The notebook nuances didn't quite transfer, so I had to do some finagling... It's still funny, I think.

<3

Food strike

Please don't bring up my allergy in public. I hate talking about it. It always happens when I'm out with a group of friends and theres that one person who I don't know too well. Food comes into the room, I decline politely, and the barrage of questions that I've almost memorized the answers to comes at me. Again. I do whatever I can to avoid it but inexplicably, it always finds a way through. It makes me really uncomfortable, and for me, thats a feat. So let me get some things straight.

• Yes, I'm allergic to chicken. Don't ask why, I don't know.
• How do I get by? I eat a lot of steak and noodles. And fish.
• I can't eat many types of fruit, because I'm hyper-sensitive to pollen.
• Don't feel the need to get concerned or cater to me if I can't eat something you offer me. I've fed myself for years without your help. The last thing I need is to feel like a burden.
• Don't tell me it sucks. Because if you think about it, I'm not really missing much.
• Don't try to haggle me into eating something. If you say, "Oh, it's just bread. It doesn't have peanuts in it," you are only showing your ignorance, and passing it off as if you are willing to have my death on your hands.
• Stop digging through my purse, and don't touch my epi-pens. I need those to stay right where they are.
• Please don't get offended if I don't want to sit next to you due to your peanut butter sandwich. You probably don't notice it, but peanuts have a suffocating smell, and it reminds me only of fear and pain. I made Hillary drive with the windows down in the snow because she decided to eat half a bag of peanut M&M's.

There. I guess thats it. I'm sure I sound like I'm overreacting, but this has gotten me teased, taunted, tricked and talked about nonstop since I was about 5. I don't like being the center of attention, I never could handle it. Thats one of the reasons I quit theatre. So, just be sensitive if you can, and please trust that I know what I'm doing.