Tic Tac

Once in a while when I wake up, I like to pretend I'm 80 years old and smack my gums together with a smug look on my face. I proceed to imagine as if I were still in my dream with Elisha Cuthbert as she is on top on me (I'm lazy enough to let the dream girl do all the work), and then as I'm give pecks to my pillow, I begin to smell my breath. Ewww I ask myself, "Would I kiss myself if I smell like that?" Afraid to say no but too lazy to brush my teeth, I stare at the ceiling pondering that question till I realize I'm late for class.

I brush my teeth and rinse my mouth out with Scope while listening to Free Bird. Pick up the books and I'm off. An hour after class, I begin talking to my teacher and I begin to smell that same morning breath that attacked me earlier. And it's one of those smells where it gets so deep into your nose that it seeps into your throat and you begin to taste it. And I think, Dr. Davis, get a tic tac. But as I leave the room, the smell followed me, and I realized, Dr. Davis was fine. It was me. I still had it.

But what about the toothpaste and the Scope. There was no time for questioning, but only time for one to get from point A (campus) to point B (home) with minimal human contact. These are the times where four years on the 7 train really pay off, as I can pull off the "I'm pissed off, but not mean, tired, but awake, don't bother me and I won't bother you" look. But as I approach the shuttle stop, there she was. A cute girl...that I knew. Crap. In those moments, you give the closed mouth smile with lifted eyebrows which signals the "oh shit, my mouth tastes and smells like...shit" face. Panic leads to acceptance which leads to a glimmer of hope that maybe she won't notice.

And for the first moments, it seems as if the new hope is still alive. But like the Rocky series, all good things must come to an end. As I'm using my hands to explain some elaborate, funny story, and I hear her laughs, I begin to see the move. You know the move. The move where someone rests their chin in their palm, which is perfectly normal until the fingers move upward, curving over the lips, under the nostrils. Unless she was naked, the philosopher's pose was fooling nobody. I was beginning to wonder why she seemed so attentive, but I knew and she knew that if she did open her mouth, she would have soaked into her lungs the odor that is my breath. And as we parted our ways, I said, "See you later" and she responded with a wave over her shoulder, forcing me to go back to my apartment, and chug Scope till my mouth burned and seared of flowers and blueberries.

John Cusack Theory

He is by far the most successful normal/bad-looking male star in chick flicks/romantic comedies. And in every chick flick/romantic comedy he is in (and every dramatic movie just in case), John Cusack is rained on, and not in the dribble dribble sort of way, but in the pouring way that makes him look like he just escaped the Flood with Noah without the ark. It is usually at this low point where he realizes something or the girl sees something in him, and the story turns around for him.

JOHN CUSACK THEORY: Get rained on before you ask a girl out or confess your feelings for her.

Just My Imagination

Everyone has their strengths and everyone has their faults. And for the chosen ones, they could be one in the same. Since I am the protagonist and the hero of my own story, I am a chosen one. Maybe this has happened because I come from a poor family or because I started reading The Catcher in the Rye when I was in the 4th grade. Whatever the reason, I am now the victim of being struck with a curse of having an imagination that baffles Walt Disney.

I started having a conversation wtih God the other day, and I shouted to him, "You are just a figment of my imagination! You are not real! You do not exist!" I think many people have these kind of conversations (at least the crazy ones or the Christian ones...same thing), but what really begins to screw with your mind is that we begin realizing that just in the act of declaring these words, we have proven to ourselves that God does exist. Then, there lies a vicious cycle where the only thing one can do is call it a "vicious cycle" and be content that you're smart enough to come up with a term like that.

When it comes right down to it, I can imagine almost anything happening to me. I have imagined being hugged by a grandfather or holding a girl's hand. I have imagined a naked woman standing in front of me and I have imagined being naked in front of a class. I have imagined a party with tears and a funeral with laughter. I have imagined that I am American and that I am not. I have imagined that I was in love, and even worse, that a someone else had something for me because of the way her smile curved upward at a 40 degree angle instead of a 30 degree angle. Every night, my pillow is my future wife, and my stomach is a six pack. With so much practice, imagining God is not that hard to believe.

So I sit on a bench or on my knees by my bed, talking to this well...GOD. The only GOD who made like, everything - the stars, the worms, me. And apparently, GOD moved mountains and parted seas and had nature bow down to GOD, eventually dying so that I could be with GOD because GOD looked at me and thought, "GOD likes Yih." Hmmm. And it gets better, GOD wants to talk to me and I can talk to him without any cell phone plans or postage stamps or even a gmail account. I just have to...open my mouth and not even. I just have to think what I'm going to say to GOD. Yeah...right.

But put me into a room of a couple of thousand people who think they believe this, jumping up and down, willing to die or just be complete losers because they believe this so much, and this environment begins to act as a catalyst for my imagination. I mean, if billions of people throughout history could imagine this, why can't I? And I can, almost too easily. But therein lies the problem. This whole Christian thing, it just doesn't make sense. This whole prayer thing, it just doesn't make sense. The only sense I can make of it is through my imagination, but my sanity tells me that a naked woman is not in front of me, I am not at a funeral with laughter, she did not like me, and I am not holding anyone's hand. So if these things are not true, how can I believe that the God part is true too?

Maybe this sounds like I'm at the crossroads between taking Christianity 101 or Heathenism 101. But like C.S. Lewis said, sometimes the best thing for progress is to go backwards after heading in the wrong direction. And I'm going back to the basics in search of GOD or whoever the opposite of that would be. And at this stage, I'm not talking to GOD and if I am, I am mostly thinking if I am actually talking to GOD. And the easy route would be to say that I just need some faith, but call me an atheist or a New Yorker, but that word scares me like mentioning Pepsi's name in Atlanta.

Right now, I'm at a point not so much of confusion, but more of a "wow in a huh" sort of way. I'm standing in awe of this idea and of this GOD and of GOD's story, but scratching my head while doing it. That's fine, right? I think it is. I'm a little bit frigtened of people who are so sure anyway, because to tell you the truth, I'm not very sure of many things. But I'm just going to take things slow, trudging through this line between point A and point B called life in search for something more than just my imagination. And when I find it/him/her/GOD, I can fall in love all over again.

Cartoon This

I post this cartoon from Tony Auth as a Christian whose desire is not to defend Christianity neither is my vision to see a world of Christians. That's the last thing I want. Nevertheless, I will to my death defend Christ with a hope that there will be a world of passionate Christ followers.

Table of Contents

I'm too good for that. Genesis is at the beginning. Psalms is in the middle. Revelations is at the end. Everything else, just skim the page and present a face like I know what I'm doing, and hopefully, I'll find it. But Table of Contents, what am I? In elementary Sunday school? I'm not sure what comes over me or many Christians in these moments with the little things to climb up the corporate ladder of spirituality. David Nasser brought up another good point, where we listen to prayers and once in a while, when we hear awesome prayers with good words about supplication and cleanse and revolution, we store it into our prayer bank, so that when we are with another group, we withdraw from that pool of Christian phrases in order to prove ourselves holy.

The ultimate fear with the looking up the Table of Contents is that it implies that I haven't read and breathed the Bible enough to know where everything is. Basically, I don't want others to know the inevitable truth, which is that many Christians do not really read the Bible as much as we think. It's like the pictures of ancestors in the home of Buddhists, which is absolutely revered to the point where you cannot throw it to the ground, and our idea of giving them oranges is engraving our names on it. Other than that, a good amount of us struggle with reading that stuff. To tell you the truth, I'm a little surprised that there are still a good amount of Christians who both go to church and read the Bible. I mean, college students read almost 10-15 hours worth of reading a week, and listen to 10 hours of lectures all week. To ask them to voluntarily give up a good percentage of their time to listen to more lectures (in Christian world, we call them sermons), and do even more reading is a little bit daunting even for the most academic person.

But at the end of the day, there's enough bitchin that anyone can do about the fronts that we do or don't do. There's only one thing for me to do. Actually read that darn thing. Where do I start...hmm. Table of Contents.

Jackass

Sometimes, I think Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O got nothing on me. You ever just have a few hours to reflect on something you just did, and sometimes maybe even a few seconds, and ask yourself, "what the hell...was I thinking?" The genius in me hates the dumbass in me, but for some reason, the dumbass often wins out.

10 pm. I come back from a long day of work, classes, and meetings. Everything in life is working out perfect so that I could hang out a little bit, and get to bed by 11:30 so that I could have 8 hours of sleep for my 8:30 class. I begin the time with video games
11:20 pm. 10 minutes before I should go to bed. I begin clearing out the guests in my apartment and without my roomates present, I am completely free to get the rest I need beneath the jack johnson music as I drift off into a land where I continue to get rejected by women in my dreams.
11:30 pm. Let's just make a goal before midnight
12:00 am. I begin chatting to people online and writing on my blog, as my narcissistic self wants people to talk to me, about me, and if no one else is there to do, I'll do it on my blog.
1:33 am. I tell myself how stupid this is and decide to head to bed.
1:34 am. I conclude that I am not tired and cannot sleep.
1:35 am. I come up with this crazy idea that since I cannot miss another 8:30 class that I should just pull an all nighter till my class in the morning. The different frat boys in my head are yelling out "yeah, yeah yeah!!!!" one right after the other. I think these imaginary Gamma jackasses in the head are the basis for all dumb decisions made by men.
1:45 am. After telling the plan to my roomate (the same roomate who is going to take an 8 hour mcat class, then drive to orlando on a sun night to see a concert he already saw the night before, stay up all night partying with his friends, and driving back monday morning to make his 6:30 lab and be ready for a test tuesday morning), he says that it is a bad idea and thinks that I should go to bed. But I have been reading too much about the Republican strategy, agenda, and mode of thinking. So feeling like the cowboy with friends who has departed him on this journey and battle against time, space, and logic (all of which are really just code names for the new sects of terrorism that were formed because of Clinton's foreign policy plans), the dissentions only drive me more towards this great idea.
2:30 am. Family Guy.
3:00 am. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Mario Kart.
4:00 am. I have roomates to keep me busy. Doing well. Doing well.
5:00 am. There is no turning back now. But my roomates have gone to bed, and suddenly, it has become a little bit more difficult to pull this off.
5:30 am. Struggling to live life. Need to keep eyes open. For the same of humanity. For the same of democracy. For the same of freedom.
5:40 am. In times of trouble, there is only one thing we should call upon. The holiest of holies when we get down on our knees and do the only logical thing that we can do. Watch A NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY. I try to laugh and I want to laugh, but every muscle in my body has focused itself on making sure the eyelids to not close.
6:10 am. You know...my eyes...they're tired. Let's just try this "resting" the eyes thing.
8:23 am. "You ever fucking wake up and before even seeing the clock, you know that you're fucking late. But you wish that it is a dream, so you're like 'maybe i'm not late,' but you know, you know you're late. And here's the worse thing, when you wake up for something at like 9 at like 8:56. That's enough time to do...NOTHING! You're just lying away in your bed saying FUCK" - Dane Cook
8:24 am. No, no, no, no, no, no. Do I piss, brush the teeth, change? I have to change for gym class. I take the quickest piss of my life. "Shuttle, for crying out loud, if you leave without me, I will slit your throat and by throat, I mean tires. With what? Shut up!"
8:36 am. The teacher is taking attendance, no. Open the door, open the door dammit, you little fatty. "Yih Lee" HERE! In those moments, everyone thinks you're a complete idiot for being out of breath, but in that moment, you want everyone to know that you made it. Feeling like I just jumped up to hit an awning or watched five consecutive Rocky movies, especially the fifth one, or actually listened to a girl talk, I let everyone know who the freaking man is.
9:00 am. Doing martial arts moves while stumbling around with eyes closed, but the teacher doesn't know because I'm Asian.
10:00 am. I completely hate myse for the no sleeping thing, as right now, I look and feel like a cross between Keith Richards and Richard Simmons. Still tired.
10:15 am. I'm finishing up on a blog post.
10:20 am. What the hell....was I thinking in writing a blog post when I'm exhausted?
10:30 am. Sleep.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Seven months after leaving Tampa Urban Project, I received a text message from one of the housemates. I never returned the message neither have I called her back. I have been ridiculously bad with my communication since leaving Tampa, which makes me a little afraid about the relationships (probably all) in college that I will no longer make an effort in keeping in tack. But with Tampa, things are different. You do not just spend 6 weeks with 30 complete strangers and 15 of them in a house, and within the first week, things are said and done that exposes the hurt of 20 years, flooding the small house with tear after tear from grown men and you don't go through 9 hour house meetings before waking up 3 hours later, and be called out over and over again. You don't do all this stuff and then leave, pretending to be normal friends again. It's impossible. What happened in that place was like war. It bonded us like a magnet, but like a magnet, it had the power to repel us too. The things we saw, the things we did. Sometimes, we just wanted to forget. But you never can.

For those who are utterly confused at this point, I went to inner-city Tampa, Florida last summer for a missions project called Tampa Urban Project. I worked with two different internships: one of them was teaching high school students basic and intermediate computer skills and the other was working in the projects as an art camp counselor. At nights, we had college course readings and a weekly three hour class. We also lived on 15 dollars a week that covered our food, our tithes, our toiletries, and everything/anything in between. We lived in a small house that housed 15 of us. Each week, we had anywhere from 1 to 7 house meetings to discuss logistics but really wound up being animosity between one another, as hurt and pain and anger was all exposed in front of each other. I learned and understood and felt racism and sexism to a degree that I have never felt before. And then I was sent back into the real world without training wheels or allies in my struggle.

The project was the best thing that had ever happened to me. The project also ruined my life. Seven months to gain some perspective on the thing, those are the only two sentences that seem to make any sense to me right now. It made a mess of my semester last year, and I now currently stand at a point where I'm trying to rebuild relationships that were broken and trying to do humbly, acknowledging my own sin as well as the person I'm trying to communicate with.
I do not expect anyone to understand anything I am saying or anything that I went through. If you are black, everything that you have felt bombarded me in that six week period. If you are a woman, everything that you have felt bombarded me in a two week period. If you are Asian like myself, my heart opened its formerly bolted locked door and let out a large amount of pain. Find for me the structural white man struggle, and maybe I'll feel that too, but I didn't. And that was what I was thrown back into the world with.

It would have been easier if she hadn't said these words to me in tears: "If you want to truly love me, you must walk in solidarity with me. And if you want to walk in solidarity with me, when you hear something that is against me, you stand up for me and you just feel my pain. Not to get rid of your own guilt, but just to feel the pain that I feel everyday and say something about it." Those words never left me. And her face of tears was imprinted into my mind, to the point that when I did hear something about her gender or her race that I knew would upset her, I pictured this woman, this sister that I love with those tears. And the irrational bursts of anger and tears, and my somewhat unforgiving/bitter heart towards men, white people, and myself were so high that no one could understand it. And unlike other times when I stand up for something, there is no behind me to affirm me that I am actually doing it right. I was simply clinging on to that mental picture in my mind of her crying. It was as if the whole world was dissing your mother on a daily basis, and yet the world did not understand why I was so "offended" or "sensitive" or "couldn't take a joke." I could never explain it to anyone. And after a while, I never bothered.

It's a blur of what I should do, what I should think, or how I should feel. I'm trying to offer more grace as God has offered me much more grace than I can ever ask for or give out myself. I'm trying to be patient with both others and myself. But at the same time, beneath the fake laughs and weird looks I give, a part of my heart does break each time I hear that "racism no longer exists," or "love this country or leave it," or "women aren't as good as men in ____" or "why are all black people....."

And I have no conclusion, neither did I have an introduction. I felt like I needed to post what's going on in my mind one more time before I fall into the temptation of writing too much about sports and politics again. I'm not looking for anyone to agree with me or disagree with me. I'm just hoping that one more person will understand me.

Switch

I admit, I can be a little narcissitic at times. This blog, in essence, is about me. I like writing about myself, and I often revisit my own site not only to boost up the hit count, but also because I like reading about myself, as if I were the main character in this weird Darren Aronofsky film mixed with a Jerry Bruckheimer production, where the mundane and freaky meet the explosions and hot girls. It never really makes sense, but who cares? Sometimes, as long as we like the main character, the story doesn't have to make sense. We can just stare into the eyes, or if you really want to be poetic, the soul for hours and hours on end.

When I say I write about myself, however, it is not in the "So today I went to history class and there was this girl, and oh my god, she was so stupid. I had to answer all the questions for her and I just don't get it. This life sucks. EMO RULES!!!" kind of way. I'm not talking about that. The kind of writing I do is vulnerable, real, offensive when I should be defensive, defensive when I should be offensive, and anything less should might as well be stuck with the 2 dollar romance novels in the back of the local convenient store. But I refuse to be stopped by a middle aged sexually frustrated woman on my way to buy a slurpee at the seven-eleven, and have her tell me that I changed her life.

At the same time, I find it too easy to talk about sports or politics, arguing our way into oblivion without a single measure in our heart wanting to change anything. It becomes ridiculous rhetoric to exhibit our own intelligence or our entertaining extremist thoughts. We are here to shock and to wow, so that at the end of the day, more people will like us or more people will hate us. Whatever. It's a cheap way to get others so distracted by an issue that everyone forgets the crap in the only speaker, the only person relevant to the conversation - you.

But I'm going to do it anyway. Granted, I never liked getting involved in politics. Despite the fact that I am a journalism major, I hate reading the newspaper or magazines and I'm not even that keen on Jon Stewart (I know, that's a sin in college terms). But something Nelson Mandela said before he ever entered politics got to me the other day. He said, "Whether you know it or not, whether you want it to be or not, your life is political." But the last thing I want is to give you some 4th grade Michael Moore bullcrap taken from what a friend of a friend said that was actually from a propaganda Hollywood movie, neither will I offer a "yessum" attitude as I wake up daily to research Bush's quotes, make a tribal dance around it as if it were infallible and live my life dodging questions from the so-called "liberal media" like, "who would win in a fight, BUSH or GOD?" and say "TRICK QUESTION, BUSH IS GOD." No, I refuse to offer any more to this crap world of Paris Hiltons and Freddie Prince Jrs., of Into the Blue (a movie devoted to Jessica Alba's ass) or Hostel (cut an arm and forget the script), of Dancing with the Stars and Gilmore Girls. Neither will I be afraid of what I write, hoping to find comments and eprops and nicer hellos on the shuttle, so that I will be more secure with myself in that there are other people out there who agree with me. My goal in life is not and will never be to find people who agree with me and befriend them. On a sidenote, it might be one of the saddest progressions in human interaction I have seen when we often look for friends that at the very base of that relationship, they have to agree with us on something, creating a sort of hub or bubble where we are our own king with dozens of jesters who say, "yes i know right!" to boost our own incapability to be sure of our own convictions.

In light of all this, I will comment on these cartoons that have created a conflagaration of violence and misunderstanding. Like a overlong "yo mama" joke contest between two kids who already hate each other, the Islamic world and the European world have clashed, leaving some confused and others fidgeting with their fingers, ready to point the finger at someone, anyone. Both Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter have been posting up beautifully-written pieces on the issue, where Malkin discusses the absurdity of the International Day of Anger just because of these cartoons. These silly representations done through pencil and paper have caused international violence, where Protestants have withstood Kanye West's words (apparently, he wants to be included in the Bible according to a headline today), and pictures involving Mary, Jesus, and dung without doing more than shaking our heads, she also says. They both defend the freedom of press and of speech in publishing material like this, and anything less would be a direct attack on our freedom. In one of my favorite points, Coulter finds it ironic that Muslims are using violence to combat cartoons that mock them as being overly violent. But beyond the beautiful prose, hilarious phrasing, and fabulous credentials, I see nothing but a lack of common sense, disrespectfulness, and exhibiting an attitude of pompousness that only spurs on the Western stereotype that uhh...well we're pompous.

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will never hurt me. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Just because it rhymes doesn't mean it's true. Trust me, I'm a poet. I haven't heard so much crap and lies as in a poetry club. But this saying was probably around long before the days of W and JFK and FDR, when the power of the image was not fully understood or even known by many of the world's people, before television ruled the world. Together, words and images produce a hurt that cannot be explained but understood and sympathized by most. Should I stand in front of an African American and call him a "nigger"? Use "spick" or "gook" or "jap" to the minorities around me? Do I stand in front of a homosexual and call out "fag" or "dike"? Maybe I should give your mother or your father or anyone near to your heart a call and practice my freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does not mean to be a complete dumbass, and most of the time, I agree that many people are complete idiots while practicing this freedom, but when we speak or defend or write, should we not realize the social implicationns of what we do?

You may see the self-control to publish the cartoons in the US papers outside the Philadephia Inquirer to be a sellout and a complete surrender to the intimdation of extremists, but I prefer to see it otherwise. I see it as empowerment for moderate Muslims, who often live in fear and in a double consciousness, as they try to grasp that we do respect their religion and its teachings of peace and love, even as we confront a dangerous minority's attempts to use it to spark a civilizational war. I believe that God has offered us a way to reach people who don't hate us, but trust us less and less each day, but I'm not so sure that way is to stereotype the majority of Muslims because of a minority group of terrorists, neither is it to ignorantly do away with what is in the mindset of the masses who are protesting and are moved so deeply to violence. I do not consider myself a killer, but I swear to God, if you so much as hurt my mother, I will kill you without a moment of regret.

I believe the biggest fault in the freedom of speech is that we have a knack for speaking so much that we begin to drown what we're saying to each other in a world of Adams and Eves in a deception battle, in a world where "we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms." -Ephesians 6:12 (NLT).

So I simply urge us not to place the American flag and the US Constitution on such a pedestol that we forget the teachings of patience, love, and understanding, if not from Sunday School or our parents, then from our own common sense.

Sick Day

Once in a while, I receive the privilege to be sick. The mirror constantly lies to me about how big my head actually feels. I have a contradictory desire to both eat at a Chinese buffet and a reality that struggles with swallowing a saltine cracker. And after staying in bed for over thirteen hours, I begin to question if I'm sleeping so much because I'm sick or am I sick because I'm sleeping so much. NyQuil becomes the crossroads of the sickness, whether I declare myself to be utterly useless and must simply be confined to a bed for the next week, or reject it with the silent, masculine hope that wimpy Tylenol will do the job. I seem to get all the disadvantages of being at a dance club (the incessant thumping in my head) without the advantages (the actual dancing). When I have tried dancing (the last time to Casper's Cha Cha Slide or West's Gold Digger), I find myself never really having the stamina to get up after Kanye tells me to "get down, girl, go 'head, get down." I find myself on the campus apartment's dirty carpet floor with one single thought for the next 15 minutes: "What can I do now?" At the end of the 15 mnutes, my memory brings back an audio recording of some premed student telling me that exercise is good for you because of the sweat and endorphins or something like that. I often just do whatever they tell me, because heck, they're premed students. All I learn about is race relations, but even my opinions on that are merely opinions that are not respected despite my studies of DuBois and Tatum. I digress. I'm still on the floor. I try to do one pushup...for five minutes. It doesn't work. My roomate comes in and finds me on the floor and proceeds to laugh. I laugh as well. And in that moment when my body is paralyzed, unable to move despite the floor's smell of dirty socks and Papa John's pizza, and when my mind is playing out an overdramatic OC moment, I come to realization. Sometime in the past 7 to 9 years of my life, I have transformed sick days to a grouchy, listless day of increased stress rather than the jumping on the bed, watching Price is Right moments of grade school. Load up the time machine, DOC, and make sure the flux capacitor is working. For one day, I will say NO to you, college and responsibility, and actually be excused from it.

And so I begin my party. For once in a long time, I can bask in the genius of ITunes Party Shuffle that plays Papa Roach, LFO, and Sugar Hill Gang in a row, without anything else in my mind, like a number or a letter's value to my life, a ministry that I force to give me more stress than freedom, or the fact that the closest love interest in my life is my pillow. Now I stand on my own freedom and listen to no more voices in my mind, but only to the thumping of my feet. Before I started playing the guitar to try to woo girls with four chords and a mediocre voice, performing Secret Garden, Wonderful Tonight, and Truly Madly Deeply, I played the air guitar for myself, Jimi Hendrix style. I could play riffs with my teeth and sing at the same time. And none of that chick flick Freddie Prince Jr. crap, but Beach and Beastie Boys. And yes even from time to time, I would sing out loud "It's raining men" and my favorite "I'm a bitch I'm a lover I'm a child I'm a mother I'm a sinner I'm a saint I do not feel ashamed" without a care of who is listening or watching. Why do I find such peace and understanding through rebellious females? I do not know, but Pink took me out of that phase quickly. I play these songs on my oxygenated guitar I call "BADASS" while I jump on my bed like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. He was the younger version of Ferris Bueller, at least in my generation. And when someone comes and visit me, I will stay in my bed, as if I have not moved all day. I will accept all the pity that comes my way and laugh hysterically on the inside, realizing that sick days are unexpected birthdays, when the world revolves around me and to want anything less is unhealthy. My room is a mess from the books and the ruffled sheets and the countless Kleenex tissues, and mother is not here to tell me to clean it up. I declare this my own holiday. My alcohol is the Robitussin and my friends are my bad breath. And I will get crunk before the popo labeled Scope and OldSpice make their way into my life. The day is already half over, and it has only been in the past 30 minutes when I have finally felt alive. And alive I will be until Nyquil gives me another hangover. But at least when I wake up tomorrow morning, I will have some ingrained memory of my one-night stand with LIFE that I can carry on with me through this college and adulthood of boredom and responsibility.