My grandfather died when I was twelve.

My dad blamed the nurses.  He said that they’d forced too much into the feeding tube they threaded into his stomach, that my frightened relatives with their broken English couldn’t convince the doctors until too late that Ye-ye was drowning in his food.

At the funeral, I was unexpectedly struck by an inappropriately ludicrous image of my grandfather, clinging to a goji berry like a life-preserver as he was swept away in a tide of chicken soup.  I bit my lip to stifle a giggle as my dad wept in front of me.

(last timestamp, I promise)

In my last post, I provided a guide to making effective puppy faces.  Now it's time to put your skills to the test!

Do you have what it takes to be voted the Cutest Xangan of them all?


Submission guidelines:

1.  Write a post about a time when you unleashed your devastating powers of cuteness to great effect.  Who was your victim?  What was the situation?  What was the outcome?

2.  Choose a category to submit your entry to. 
     -Pictures.  Take a picture of your best puppy face!
     -Audio.  This is for the camera shy Xangans who can nonetheless produce a voice of overwhelming cuteness.
     -Videos.  Show us your best puppy face in action, combined with the cute voice! 
    
The phrase to be used in all video and audio entries is "Please vote for me as the cutest Xangan of them all!" 

3.  Submit your entry!  Make a post containing your story and your picture/video/audio entry, and provide a link to it in the comment section. 

4.  Stuff you can/can't do: 
     -Excessive sexiness:  I know, some of you just can't help but be sexy.  But your entry should be family-friendly --imagine that it's a puppy face you're using on a parent/guardian.  Anybody can flash some boobies or flex some muscles, but it takes skill to properly harness the power of cute!
     -Props:  You may use cute hairstyles, stuffed animals, cute clothing, etc. as you please!  However, you may not pose with live children or pets --that's just too much of an unfair advantage.  

Voting guidelines:
I will make a post containing links to all the entries.  Your fellow xangans (and you) may then vote for their favorites!  More details on this will be available after the entries are in. 

Deadline for submission:

You have this week to prepare your entry!  Submit your entry by 11:59 Pacific Time on Sunday, November 22. (yeah, I pushed it back a day)


Oh, and I almost forgot to mention --there is a prize!  Or possibly several prizes!  But what's definite is that the grand prize winner gets a free YEAR of Premium (courtesy of the generous tsh44), as well as bragging rights as the Cutest Xangan.  And runner-ups can win a free month of premium! 

So start practicing your puppy faces, Xangans!  This contest is open to everyone (that includes guys as well)!

(because it amuses me to pronounce it that way)

As you may or may not have noticed, I changed my profile pic!  I'd been toying with the idea for some time, but couldn't really decide since I've grown rather attached to Penguin.  It felt almost like having cosmetic surgery.  Except, y'know, not really because it's just uploading a different picture to Xanga instead of undergoing major surgery.

Not counting my current one, I have had 2 profile pics for this account, and neither of them actually included me.  My first profile pic was this one:

 

Can you tell what they are?    They're styrofoam peanuts with faces drawn on them, then I fiddled around in photo editor. 

My next profile pic was the penguin that you all know and love:



Anyways, I've generally stayed away from using pictures of myself for 2 reasons.  The first is that I'm not comfortable revealing my actual identity yet.  The second is that I like avoiding the assumptions/stereotypes/behavior that my appearance might trigger. 

I don't really want somebody to read just because they think I'm cute, or to not read because they don't like the way I look.  I like that all you got to see was a penguin or some styrofoam peanuts, and you had to get to know me through my writing.  Also, it really cuts down on sleazy comments/messages, since (most) people aren't interested in jacking off to a pipe cleaner penguin or styrofoam peanuts.

But everybody else was changing their profile pics right and left, so much that I wanted to join in on the fun!  I decided to be daring and use a picture that I was actually in.  At first, I considered using a picture with my face in it (gasp!) --albeit with my sunglasses and hair covering most of it and rendering me unrecognizable.  But I didn't have any pics that I liked, so I scrapped that idea. 

Next, I thought about using a pic of my right eye, the same one I used to use on MySpace.  However, it made me a little uncomfortable since it felt almost like I was flaunting my Asian-ness, and flaunting Asian-ness on the internet when you're a female tends to attract all sorts of unsavory comments/messages.  I presume this is less of a problem on Xanga compared to MySpace, but what can I say?  I guess I've been scarred.    Besides, I always get mildly freaked out by profile pictures of eyes.

So I finally settled on this one. 

 

Boyfriend snapped it while I wasn't looking (obviously), and I think it was actually a very pretty picture, minus me.  Of course, I keep not recognizing myself when I run into my own comments, since I'm so used to seeing Penguin.  We'll see how this pic works out; if I just can't get used to it, I might switch back.
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What's the story behind your profile pics?  Do you switch pictures often, or do you prefer to use the same one?  Why?