This is in response to Lithium98's question about my other screen name, foofernarfie. It started as a comment and got really long.

I barely remember what the story behind foofernarfie is, because it's so old. I made it up in elementary school, and I think it involved the random letter sequence "foof" in a word search, and "Narf!" from Pinky and the Brain.

I also made up "acklashomanarf," complete with an illustration of a monster going by that name. The monster guarded my bedroom door, and was apparently so fearsome that it frightened away my baby brother.

I like nonsense words. Thursday I was meandering around San Francisco, and I spent about a block laughing about "Nowl," the abbreviation for the N-line Night Owl on Muni. It's fun to say. (Try it! "Naaaaahhwl!") Of course, my buddy I was walking with thought I'd finally cracked, and didn't see what was so funny even when I explained where I'd gotten the word I'd been shouting inbetween bursts of laughter.

Words are great. It's fun to roll them around in your mouth and listen to how silly they can sound when they come out.

I stopped eating ice cream about a year ago. I rarely miss it. No I'm not on some crazy diet, I'm a skinny bitch with a tiny rack already. I'm lactose intolerant. I'm the race war skinhead fight-to-get-locked-in-isolation-in-jail-away-from-the-blacks sort of intolerant. It's probably because I'm Asian.

I even converted to soy based coffee drinks at froofy coffee shops. I mostly drink fancy coffee when I'm on road trips, and it really cuts down on speed and efficiency when I have to stop every hour to pour my insides out in a nasty gas stop bathroom.

I still put milk in my tea, though. Black tea just doesn't taste right without milk and sugar. I'm willing to put up with stabbing stomach pains for that.

A friend of mine has been told repeatedly by his doctor that he can't eat spicy food. He still does. I see him slather sriracha on his plate when he eats at my house. For him, stabbing pains and sweats are worth having a good meal.

At some point, I decided it's not worth it. I gave up the root beer floats and the Guiness beer floats. I miss the second one more - I'll start alcoholic ice cream desserts again if I find a decent non-dairy ice cream that melts properly. Maybe something made with coconut or hemp milk. In the meantime, I quit the cheesecake and free pizza and milkshakes and all the other wonderful dairy based products. I turn my nose up at my friends who come running at the shake of a cardboard Costco box. I'm nobody's food whore, I proudly claim, but really, I'd be just as bad if I didn't know free pizza came with too heavy a personal price.

I already mentioned my friend who still eats spicy food despite the pain, but he's got all sorts of silly body problems. He's a walking medical mystery. He's got a hospital chasing him around trying to drag him in for examination because they think he's on the brink of a heart attack, and he says he solved that problem completely with an arm massage. His body's just all sorts of bizarre, and I'm not going to cite anything that happens to him as normal.

I know people with legitimate food allergies who can't eat foods because they will incapacitate or kill them. I know people who avoid foods because of philosophical reasons, and will loudly proclaim to everyone the righteousness of what they eat, or quietly and firmly eliminate certain products from their diets.  (Funny, the quiet latter group usually follows their beliefs much more strictly than the former.) I know people who don't eat things for religious reasons.

I don't really know people who avoid foods the way I do. I can eat dairy, it's just inconvenient. I'm not morally opposed, I won't compromise my soul, I won't die, I'll just have an uncomfortable afternoon of stomach rumblings. Everyone else in my family still eats ice cream and cheese on toast and all sorts of other dairy products.

What I want to know is, are there other people with these sorts of food issues? Are there other people out there who avoid delicious deep fried food or cookies or tasty pork products like bacon and chops because it's inconvenient? Do you deprive yourself of extremely yummy food?

I think I just wrote a lot of proof that I was a liar when I said I rarely miss ice cream. I really want some vanilla ice cream with Halloween Butterfingers crumbled over the top. Scuse me while I go argue with my stomach for awhile.

It's October, and I'm struggling not to buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner shop.

I broke my no smoking resolution last Halloween. I had a cigarette at a friend's graduation party in June, but that was nowhere near the nicotine intake I had on Halloween. I'd been so good about quitting smoking, and then Halloween rolled around, and there was all the drinking and partying and walking around, and other people smoking, and I hadn't gotten to the point where I didn't crave a cigarette when someone else next to me was smoking...

and then I'd broken my resolution, so then why keep it at that point, and I smoked until I moved, dealing with the stress of living in that horrible little split level condo with two bedrooms, four cars, and five women, one who was the landlady, and who tried to sign me up for two pyramid schemes and gave my space in the cramped three-person bedroom we were sharing to her friend without checking that I really did intend to move out.

I moved, stress levels dropped, the weather warmed, and I stashed my last sealed box of cigarettes at the bottom of the silky things drawer. And I've been so good, until now.

It's October again and I wanted a cigarette so badly, walking to work. Is it a seasonal thing? I had a stuffy nose from allergies or cold, either the stormy weather in the Bay Area or all the California flowers blooming in the wetter weather. The weather was cold and foggy, my head felt wrapped in cotton, I wanted a cigarette to dry out my sinuses and wake up my brain and give me an excuse to stand out in the cold, bundled up against the elements.

I see people smoking whenever I walk around the business district. Fortunately, I no longer have a nicotine craving when I smell smoke. I sometimes want to smoke for the activity of it, but that's a stupid reason to do more damage to my lungs. I take long walks around downtown Oakland instead. Hot drinks and sudafed are a better way to deal with cold weather and stuffy noses, or so I keep telling myself.

If you were in the Bay Area in 1989, what do you remember about the Loma Prieta earthquake?

For me, it's all mixed up with the time the neighbor crashed a truck into the bottom story of our apartment building, and the time I dropped a box of tissues off the balcony, one by one. watching the white shapes float down.

I built a kit today. I like being prepared, (I might be mildly paranoid) so I keep a first aid kit, pair of boots, flashlight, and bottles of water under the bed already. I grabbed a backpack and threw them all in today. I also chucked in spare glasses. I need a current pair of glasses - I don't want to navigate the post-apocalyptic wasteland in red wire librarian glasses that stopped being cool at least 6 years ago, if they ever were cool anywhere outside my hormone-addled high school brain.

Other contents: pocket knives from my small pocket knife collection, old battery-powered Game Boy Color (kiwi, best color ever), any prescription medicines I can grab, camera.

I subscribe to the Red Cross newsletter. They have a feature where you can submit to Red Cross "What's in your kit?" I want to submit "a wind up vibrator," but you can't do it anonymously.

In a post apocalyptic barter society, I could charge for the use of wind up sex toys. I should invest in those if it looks like the apocalypse is coming. Service economy, baby.

Do you have a preparedness kit?

I'm in California, drinking British tea I bought from the Indian grocery store, choosing a brand I discovered while visiting Australia.