IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

Dear Readers: You're going to have to bear with my semi-self-indulgent entries. I'm sure to get it out of my system soon. If not, you're just going to have to deal with it, won't you?

I got the opportunity to catch up with a friend during a long drive home this morning. This friend just finished her Masters program at UCLA (GO BRUINS!), and we were talking about all the graduation hoopla. In that conversation she asked if I could photograph her for her graduation photos. I was flattered and honored she asked me, and I excitedly accepted. She then told me that she's never taken graduation photos before, which I told her that wasn't such a big deal, and that my mom's insistence caused me to have two batches of awkward-looking graduation photos.

From there, the subject somehow got to my college graduation picture and my telling my friend that she has to promise me, should I ever go missing, she needs to make sure that the picture they use on the reports and what not is NOT my UCLA graduation photo.

No, I don't have a digital file of that image to share with you, and I'm glad. I'm not saying it's a bad picture...it's actually a fairly decent photograph, but I really don't like how I look there. My hair looks like a well-tamed helmet framing my face, and I put on a bit of makeup that looks fine but very...doll-like. It just isn't me.

I will take this opportunity to make you, my reader(s), to promise me by hook or by crook that any of my 2003 UCLA graduation photos are NEVER used should I wind up missing (Besides, that was six years ago to the month, so it's not the most accurate and up to date photograph).

For your convenience, I have picked out the photo I would wish to be used should I go missing:
Some may notice this is my current social networking profile picture (a few sites). This picture works on a few levels: It was taken at a time when I was feeling pretty sick, so I'm not looking my best, and I'm sure if I were to go missing, I may have fallen into some ditch or got lost in a cornfield and will look to some level of haggardry. The fact I'm in the picture with a purple mouse puppet conveys my general air of irreverence; you know I'm not quite myself if I wasn't.

Heck, let's be honest and if I were to be recovered from some sort of distress, I'm most likely going to look like this:

So look for that girl. There's a good chance I may be dirtier and smellier than in this video, so I warn you now.
(Sorry for subjecting you to that - I think you deserve to know the truth)