Saturday, July 26, 2008

Semi-Charmed Life

During the summer going into high school, I attempted to celebrate my fifteenth birthday. I woke up that morning feeling slightly nauseous. I told my parents to cancel the party. (That is, if you can actually call a gathering of nine people with the common purpose of saying happy birthday to me a party) The party was cancelled and I laid in bed the entire day reading books, listening to classical music, and playing my piano. It was the first of many days spent this way…

As it turned out, the slight nausea was only the beginning of my sickness. It began to worsen as the days went by. The feelings of nausea grew in intensity for about a month and then ceased suddenly. I thought I was cured. I thought wrong. It turned out that it was only the beginning of something much bigger.
Practically overnight, my eating habits changed dramatically. Before my fifteenth birthday, I was a vegetarian. After my fifteenth birthday, I hated the taste of everything but meat. I began to eat chicken, steak, and pork every meal. It bewildered my parents completely. Little did they know what the future had in store.

Not long after, I began to get skin rashes if I stayed out in the sun for too long. Over time, they would appear quicker and grow worse very rapidly. I began to avoid sunlight all together. I was once again, spending all my days in my house reading books, listening to classical music, and playing my piano.


Over time, my eyes became accustomed to the low levels of light in my room. I began to see better in darkness than in light. My eyes became constantly dilated, allowing me to see very well in the dark but made it impossible for me to venture outside without wearing powerful sunglasses. I began to sleep during the day, and live life at night.

One night, I walked to the bay with my copy of Wuthering Heights, sat on the railing, and stared at the stars. Out of the blackness of space, I saw a shooting star. When it disappeared into the night again I heard the small sound of a footstep behind me. It turned out to be Twyla, my long-lost evil cousin. She told me about the 3 evil cousins and that I was one of them.


The rest is history.


Evilly yours,
Gabriel Gethin

22 comments:

Yours Truly said...

Welcome dearest cousin.

Yours truly,
Twyla Lee

B. said...

YES! BEETHOVEN!

And I'll pass on the guitar, thanks. And the accordion.

B.

Anonymous said...

Hello.

And hey, nobody knock the accordian. I know several badass accordian players myself.
That being said, Stratocasters ftw! But maybe I'm just saying that because I had to move a disembodied Stratocaster neck to get to the computer.
There is NO SUCH THING as too many Stratocasters. Five is not too many.

Gabriel Gethin said...

I think you should get five guitarists together and get them to play Beethoven. The sound would be interesting (not saying I'll like it though) piano is tough to beat in quality of sound.

Anonymous said...

Sadly, I think the most we could probably muster would be three or so.

Or there's the the piano. Though no one really knows how to play it and it might be sort of out of tune.

Medeia said...

I must add that guitars and accordions are both rather remarkable and that I too know a badass accordion player... hmm... maybe those are more common than I thought... then again, that might not be a bad thing...


Oh, and welcome, of course, to the fascinating realm of book-bloggery

Anonymous said...

I think anyone who has the guts to honestly play the accordion is inherently sort of badass.

Gabriel Gethin said...

I think the reason that all the accordian players you know are badass is because if someone loves the instrument enough to learn it in spite of all the teasing they know will follow, then they will dedicate a lot of time to practicing and mastering the instrument. Therefore, if someone actually takes the time to learn the accordian, they're really good at it because they love it enough to play it even though most people think it's a pointless piece of junk.

Medeia said...

Well, my badass accordion player is also my art teacher and (while that profession isn't automatically badass) he's a really badass sort of guy to begin with. Ugh, I really can't stand the redundancy that comes from using the word badass that many times in such a short period.

At any rate, I agree with your comment Gabriel. I think that it also extends to people in general that love to do awesome things despite the teasing induced by the narrow minded "cool" ideals of society.

Anonymous said...

My internet access is evil and eats comments. Argh.

Yeah, but that's exactly it. If you're someone who's going to bother playing the accordain, you're going to bother playing it very, very well.

Though I think there's also a certain amount of accordain players who take a sort of ironic attitude to it all.

Yeah, it's one of those reptition things. Say any word enough and it makes no sense. Badass.

But I think art teacher's a fairly badass profession. Most of the ones i know are. I mean, not all of them, but a few.

Gabriel Gethin said...

We need a new word to replace "badass" because it is being officially overused (By officially, I mean it is annoying me so I'm declaring it outdated). Please use "bad apple" instead of "bad ass." The initials have not changed so as to avoid confusion when abreviating badass to BA.

Medeia said...

But if you're going to replace badass with a word, it should be a badass word because badass is a badass word, which suits the thing it describes. Replacing it with anything less than badass would be an insult...

unless of course you were take an ironic view on it and replace it with something completely un-badass... hmmm...

Anonymous said...

Don't hate on "bad apple." I think it's just as good as "bad ass." I substitute words all the time. Besides, if you take the dictionary definitions of both phrases, they don't seem to be much of a compliment.

Appreciating "bad apple" and yours,
Twyla Lee

Medeia said...

No, no I think you mistake my meaning. I think that it ought to be a word that has the same sort of roll-off-your-tongue-awesomeness as badass. Not saying "bad apple" isn't a suitable replacement, but it just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Gabriel Gethin said...

Well suppose we rung a little Christmas bell everytime we said the word. Then it would have a very nice ring to it.

B. said...

That's only if you feel Christmas bells have a nice ring. Which, personally, I don't.

Gabriel Gethin said...

Well would you like to suggest a superior alternative?

B. said...

Vibraphone. Although that doesn't have a badass ring, you'd need a gong for that.

Gabriel Gethin said...

I like that idea. Vibraphone's do make a really nice sound. Have you ever heard hand chimes? You need a lot of people to play a song but the end effect is really cool (if done correctly that is).

Medeia said...

You know... I think I have heard those before... back in... I don't know... 6th grade maybe...

Well, I didn't know what a Vibraphone was, so I just ran over to my keyboard (it's one of those ones that can mimic a lot of different instruments) and it had a Vibraphone sound on it. It sounds verrrry cool... though not really badass... hmmmm... what is a badass sound?

Gabriel Gethin said...

A badass sound is a huge pipe organ playing something epic like Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

Nymphetamine Girl said...

no no no! we need something that sounds really cool, like... Yeah, I see your problem.