I'm not dead.

If you ever watched Ren & Stimpy (one of the greatest shows of all time!) you've probably seen this episode called "The Cat That Laid The Golden Hairball" -- a classic. It's the one where the hairball market suddenly explodes, and Ren, always the savvy entrepreneur, opens a hairball factory which consists entirely of Stimpy spewing hairballs onto a conveyor belt. Eventually, Ren gets greedy and cranks up hairball production to a ridiculous rate of speed, causing Stimpy to collapse from exhaustion. An examination reveals that Stimpy's "hairball gland" has been irrevocably damaged. It is all very sad.

None of this has much to do with anything, except that if you were to recast this episode with me in the role of Stimpy, and the editor of a Portland-based magazine in the role of Ren, and a 4,000 word article in the role of the hairball factory... well, that would be a pretty good snapshot of my life for the past few weeks. (With the possible exception of the editor, who is actually a lovely man and not an egomaniacal chihuahua. At least as far as I know.)

I don't have a writing gland, of course. But if I did? I'm pretty sure it would look the way a lemon does after you've squeezed its contents out and then accidentally left it on your countertop for three weeks.

The good news is that Stimpy is back to spewing hairballs in later episodes -- as though the entire ordeal had never even happened -- and I'm sure I'll be back to normal within a couple days. But in the meantime, the content of pink india ink is probably going to be a bit photo-heavy and have that sort of half-assed, phoned-in feeling.

Starting... right now.

Also available at this store: signed first editions of "Harry Potter and the Unfortunate Castration".

But what is it all for?

Emily Gould, former editor of Gawker, penned a lengthy article for the upcoming New York Times Sunday Magazine that was touted on the NYT website’s front page today. In it, she writes about her primary (some might say only) area of expertise: what it means to be a blogger.

She talks about blogging’s roots, and its repercussions: the drive to make the personal public, the importance that a meaningless forum can take on as it gathers readers, and – most interestingly – the ways that relationships can suffer or fold as the online world gains influence on your offline life.

Given the unstoppable proliferation of blogs, the popularity of Facebook, and the way that countless people under age 35 gamely use the internet to publicize their lives, it comes as no surprise to me that the NYT would engage one of the lifestyle’s pseudo-celebrities to pen an article about her experiences. (Personally, I’m just thankful that they tapped Emily Gould and not Julia Allison.)

What does come as a surprise, however, is the absolutely astonishing vitriol that erupted on the NYT reader response board within an hour of the article’s appearance on the website. Comments have poured in all day (as I write this, there are more than 700 posted – and counting), the vast number of which condemn Emily as boring, naïve, narcissistic, a bad writer. A large number of those same readers preface their mudslinging by saying that they “couldn’t even read the article”, which makes their commentary either doubly insulting or questionable in its validity... or both.

The fact that Emily is a 26 year-old woman seems only to have further intensified the angry reactions, many of which sidestep any critical commentary of the article and go straight for a personal attack:

Like your tattoos, I'm fairly sure you'll regret all this by the time you get into your 40s.

What a sorry little cyberworld you chose to live in. Do you have a real life as well? or is this all you have? You are just a stupid little girl. Go watch the sun set and grow up!

You don't realize what an unfeeling, self-absorbed, unsavory clod you are.

Occasionally, things took a turn for the creepy/sexist:

Baring your soul for strangers is much like baring your body for them. They don't care about you; they only want to use you for quick gratification.

(Let’s face it – if this article were written by a man, we would NOT be seeing that particular breed of patronizing, uncomfortably sexual daddy-talk. Just saying.)

Overall, though, the comments seemed united by an intense disdain for the author – not because of her writing, but because of her chosen medium. Even now, there’s something about writing on the internet that brings out the appalled, tech-phobic curmudgeon in everyone. It's funny, in a way; the stigma has finally disappeared from, say, online dating, but blogging still provokes these outraged, "Kids today have no respect!" sort of reactions. I mean, Emily’s article wasn’t dissimilar from the Modern Love essay that runs in the Times every Sunday – I would even argue that its quality was above that of most Modern Love pieces – but the most common condemnation, by a shrieking cacophony of commenters, was that this article wasn’t “worthy” of appearing in the NYT.

Basically, if person’s words are being published on a screen rather than on paper, they aren’t legitimate in the eyes of the world. Writing on the internet isn’t “real” writing.

And apparently, even a blogger who successfully makes the transition from blogging to print – and not just any print, but the New York Fucking Times – isn’t a “real” writer.

I'm sure that this post, with its indignant and whiny tone, is just playing into the hands of everyone who thinks that blogging is pure narcissism (and that those who do it need to get a life). Oh well. Thing is, as a blogger whose work has never appeared in the New York Times, I can’t help but feel slightly withered by all this.

Initially, I started writing here because it was a source of escape; working a lifeless job, trapped at a computer all day with little to do, it seemed like a better way to pass my time than endlessly refreshing TheSuperficial.com to see a new photo of Mischa Barton’s cellulite. And even when I moved on from that job to see if I could make a living from words (tricky, but ultimately not impossible), posting here still felt worthwhile.

Which, I think, is why it upsets me to see comments like the ones that appeared in response to Emily’s article, comments like, “The blogging epidemic strikes me as the height of self-indulgence, without any real regard for the common good.”

In a way, of course, I suppose that blogging is self-indulgent; these days, I post (not-always-stellar) essays about my life and fully expect that somebody will be interested in reading them. (I mean, look, here you are, reading. One of you must find this entertaining, right? You can’t all be lost souls who were just looking for porn!) And I'd always thought that the glimpses I provided into my life -- and that I enjoyed on the blogs of other writers -- weren't all that different from the confessional essays that grace the back pages of magazines like Self and its ilk.

But that element wasn't really there at first– at first, I had no audience at all. Just words rattling around in my head that I wanted to throw somewhere. So I did. It was pretty fucking organic, if you want to know the truth. It felt like a good exercise, like important practice.

At base – although an angry internet mob with pitchforks is apparently in violent disagreement with me, and everyone else who keeps a blog, about this – it felt like writing.

And honestly, it still does.

So I’m going to keep doing it.

And if Emily Gould -- who has no doubt learned in the hardest possible way that her writing can inspire hatred, disgust, and hurt feelings on the part of people who care about her -- still feels anything like I do about the words she types on her screen, I hope she keeps doing it too.

I just flew in from Oakland, and boy are my arms tired.

I was fully expecting to come back from the West Coast with tales of drunken debauchery that would endlessly entertain all of you.

Instead – probably because of some combination of the beer/burger/shake/chili cheese fries/burrito/mojitos/Ethiopian meat sampler plate I consumed over the course of two days (what? I was hungry!) – I came back with a bunch of pimples, a hangover, and a stomach so volatile that I am surprised that airport security didn’t classify me as a terror threat and refuse to allow me to board the plane.

TSA Official: Excuse me, ma’am.
Me: Yes?
TSAO: You can’t bring that on the plane.
Me: What?
TSAO: (pointing at distended, gurgling stomach) That.
Me: But… that’s just my stomach.
TSAO: I’m sorry ma’am, but we don’t allow that sort of thing in the cabin. It’s too dangerous. You’re going to have to check it.
Me: (gamely attempting to remove stomach) Ow. I can’t.
Stomach: Braaaaaaaggggh!
TSAO: Arrest her!!!

So rather than regale you with not-that-interesting stories about the various meats I consumed, or the late-night argument I had with my friend over whether or not Barack Obama self-identifies as African American (note to friend: SUCK IT), I’m going to simply say hello to blogland, and then go back to poking disgustedly at my face. I'll see you all tomorrow.
So…

Hi there.

(poke.)

much love,
Kat

Into the Mild

My mother recently passed along a book to me: John Krakauer's Into the Wild, from whence the same-named recent film was developed. For those who don't know, it's the story of Chris McCandless, who graduated from Emory University in 1990 and decided, after reading too much Thoreau, that he wanted to opt out of society, disappear, and "live off the land" for a few
years.

Unfortunately, his idea of living off the land included spending a period of several months alone in the Alaskan bush. He hiked down the trail into the wilderness, uneducated and ill-prepared, and ended up starving to death.

Reading this book, for me, has meant vacillating wildly between feeling appalled (McCandless vanished without a word, allowing his family to spend two years agonizing over what might have happened to him) and, at the other end, feeling this weird mix of inspiration and jealousy at the life depicted in it.

The book is rife with other examples of men -- always men, Thoreau-worshipping dudes who felt simultaneously disgusted with society's modern trappings and fascinated by the solitude of the country's most inhospitable places -- who also wandered ill-equipped into the wild. My (morbid) favorite is the larger-than-life Texan who arranged a pilot to fly him into the Alaskan wilderness for the summer, but met his end when the cold weather returned and nobody appeared to fly him back out. (Why? Oh, because he forgot to arrange his own return trip. Oops!)

But in spite of their foolhardiness, not all of them died, and even the ones who did got to experience a sort of freedom that allures and frustrates me all at once. Because no matter what, it's something that I, as a woman, am barred from experiencing.

Not that woman are physically incapable of doing this sort of thing. Certainly, we all can hitch-hike across the country, sleep by the side of the road, trust our lives to the kindness -- or barring that, the indifference -- of strangers.

But it wouldn't work. Imagine a 22 year-old girl striking out on her own, completely alone, becoming a hobo and simply drifting from place to place in search of solitude, or nature, or a life outside society's walls. Would she even last two years, get as far as Alaska, have the chance at starving to death in the woods? Or is it far more likely that she'd end up raped, or dead, or both, within the first few months?

* * *

And on that note -- given the grim chances of my vanishing into a life of trampery, itinerant labor, and desert camping -- I'm doing the next best thing and jetting off to the wilds of Oakland, CA, for the weekend.

Blah, blah, blah. Bee, bee, bee.

James Frey: A good novelist with a questionable past? Or a no-talent, abject failure who should just find a hole, crawl into it, and then die?

Find out today on neighborbee!

That sound you hear is the world's smallest violin, playing just for me.

I had the first fitting for my wedding gown on Friday.
It was a fucking nightmare.


Before I go any further, I can honestly say that I spent all weekend waiting for something else to happen to me – something of the toilet-clogging, eggplant-haranguing, dog-wrangling variety – so that I would NOT be up here on Monday with yet another wedding-related post. On one hand, I know that some of you enjoy reading them (bless you for it). On the other, I fear that those who don’t enjoy them will be so put off by these forays into the bridal world that they will leave and never come back.


The fact that my upcoming wedding means that I will never have sex with James McAvoy is quite bad enough; the last thing I need is to lose readers over it, too.

So if, perchance, you are put off that the content of pink india ink is getting too wedding-heavy, I promise you this: If I find myself hard-up for non-wedding-related content again, I will eat a tampon myself, just to have something else to write about.

Deal?
Okay.


I should preface this story by saying that back when I first started looking for dresses, I really didn’t think that I wanted a wedding gown, per se. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to wear white (at least, until I said as much to Brad and was met with the same horrified look that I might have received if I’d confessed that I liked to kick puppies.) So even when the dress-shopping expedition took us to the traditional bridal salons with their little pedestals and angled mirrors, I was still uncompromising: I didn’t want to look like something out of Brides magazine. Meaning no big skirts, no taffeta, not even a hint of that ubiquitous strapless ballgown that everyone seems to love so much.

Trying to explain this to the average bridal salon employee, however, proved to be impossible.

“Just try this one,” one staffer said cheerfully to me, dragging a strapless ballgown with approximately 3 miles of netting stuffed up underneath its balloon-like skirt into the dressing room. “This style looks good on everyone!”

Of course I had to – it’s hard to give a very decisive “No” when you’re in room full of strangers and wearing nothing but your underwear – but doing so only confirmed my suspicions: that a style which “looks good on everyone” doesn't really look fantastic on anyone, and particularly not on a small person. (More than anything, I looked like a disembodied head on top of a silk-satin snowball.)


Ultimately, though, we made our way to a cool little couture bridal shop out in New Jersey, where the first thing I pulled off the rack was a fantastic silk-chiffon, 1930s-style gown with a low-cut back and a netted neckline covered with deco beading and bling. And that was that: I had my dress.

That was back in January, and I am being 100% honest when I say that there has not been a single day since when I didn’t think about that dress. The dress haunted my dreams. Some people think about their weddings as the day when they will Make The Ultimate Commitment To The One True Love Of Their Lives.

Not me. For me, it was the day that I would Wear The Dress.

This probably sounds awful, but actually, it just reflects my general feelings about this wedding: that in the context of my relationship, it just isn’t that big of a deal. It might be unromantic, but it's the truth; it doesn’t change anything. Brad and I will get married, and then we will resume telling each other bad jokes, watching baseball on TV, drinking beer, and arguing over whose turn it is to take the dog outside.

I’m fine with that.

And of course, it leaves me free to focus on the one thing about this wedding that is utterly and completely new: The Dress.


So when I heard from the shop last week that the dress had arrived, it was like Christmas – so much so that, when I went in for the fitting, I had barely been able to sleep the night before because I was just that excited.

And then, naturally, it turned out that The Dress was Fucked Up.

Oh, God, was it Fucked Up. There’s no need to go into detail – just suffice to say that I found myself standing in front of the mirror in a dress that looked nothing like it was supposed to, and which did not fit, and which – as though the not-fitting and altered design thing wasn’t bad enough – was giving me a fucking rash.

In one respect, of course, I got what I wanted – I certainly didn’t look like something out of Brides magazine. In fact, I didn’t look like a bride at all. I looked like an unfortunate, splotchy, utterly unmarriageable person in an extremely ill-fitting evening gown.

After leaving the salon (where they promised that The Dress will, in fact, be fixed) and having lunch (which may have included somewhere between one and two beers) I tried my best to stay positive. I pictured myself as a strong, upbeat, devil-may-care sort of woman who would never be perturbed by this sort of thing. After all, I thought, it’s just a dress! I should be focusing on something else! Like how I’m marrying the One True Love Of My Life!

And then I drove my strong, upbeat, devil-may-care self back home to Brooklyn.
Bawling.

And now I am washing my hands.

In certain ways, having a dog is a lot like having a child.

Not a normal child, of course. Hurley the Golden Retriever, for instance, is more like an extremely well-coordinated, freakishly strong, remarkably hairy toddler -- one who has figured out the whole Walking thing, but not so much the Talking and/or Not Putting Everything You Find On The Floor In Your Mouth thing.

The difference, of course, is that even a hair-covered weirdo baby would eventually (one hopes) pick up on the fact that the whole world isn't a giant, edible buffet... whereas the dog continues to lunge joyfully at anything on the sidewalk that remotely resembles food. Chicken bones, old tissues, rocks, the occasional pigeon carcass: it's all fair game.

Usually I'm able to spot these things before Hurley does -- I can tell a piece of moldy pigeon bread at a distance of 25 yards -- and steer him out of the way. But in the morning, when I'm not completely awake, my skills aren't so sharp. And when we stepped out this morning, he immediately made a beeline for some piece of detritus on the sidewalk and snapped it up before I could even react.

"Hurley!" I gasped, with the same tone of voice that you'd use if you walked in on your husband masturbating to a picture of Richard Nixon. (Sometimes, if you act shocked enough, the dog will give this panicked, I'm sorry, I didn't know! kind of look, and drop whatever it is.)

Hurley stared at me emotionlessly, then sat down with a thump and started to chew on the thing.

It was pretty big, I could tell that much. And while sometimes the easiest thing to do, once he's got something in his mouth, is to just give up and let him eat it, I was pretty sure this one wasn't even food. He was still chewing it, and there was a piece of what looked like string hanging out from between his jaws.

If it wasn't digestible, he'd be in big trouble if he swallowed it. I had to get it away from him.

The string was still hanging out of his mouth. I grabbed it and gave a tentative pull.
"Give," I said.
Hurley stopped chewing and clamped down, looking up at me insolently.
"Give," I said again. I tugged at it. What the hell was he eating? I wrapped the string around my finger to get better leverage, and it suddenly dawned on me that there was something familiar about it.
No, I thought. No WAY.
"Hurley, GIVE!" I said, with as much force as I could muster.

He made a grunting noise and then, reluctantly, let go.

I was still holding the string. The thing dangled from it.
A passing woman, who was probably on the way home from bringing her kids to school, glanced at what I had in my hand and then gave me a horrified look.
I chucked it away as my stomach lurched dangerously.

It isn't just that my dog nearly ingested the thing, or that I was publicly seen holding it, that bothers me. It's that I can't even imagine, try as I might, what kind of situation would actually necessitate leaving a used tampon on the sidewalk.

Oh, the places I went

I’m taking a little break today to do some other work, and also to fantasize about boning James McAvoy.MEOW.

But I can, of course be found on neighborbee, and also on Indie Bloggers (where the inimitable Stacy saw fit to post my little story, probably familiar to some of you, about that disastrous audition for a student film at SVA). Go on, check it!

None for me, thanks.

When I started spreading the news about my engagement, people’s reactions were mostly positive – save, of course, for a few naysayers who completely passed over any congratulatory sentiment and instead met the news by pointing out (usually with a sort of grimace) that getting married means I will only be able to have sex with one person for the rest of my life.

I’ve generally handled this in one of two ways, by either a) gaily pointing out that Brad is likely to die from a smoking-related illness by age 55, leaving me with plenty of time to play the field in my golden years, or b) stating with absolute sincerity that, having spent my early 20s happily having sex with pretty much anything that moved, I’ve done enough wild oat-sowing to last me several lifetimes. (And really, the thing that nobody ever mentions about New York’s endless sexual buffet is that the quality-to-quantity ratio is really, how you say, unfortunate. It’s like being let loose in an apple orchard, and then finding out that 80% of the apples don’t taste that good. Or have herpes.)

So, fruit metaphors aside, I can honestly say that I was pretty unconcerned with the whole lifelong monogamy thing. Sure, it’s a little jarring to think back and realize, OH, I guess that time I made out with Brad after having 4 glasses of wine was actually my last first kiss (barring a divorce or early death by cigarettes).

But no, really, I wasn’t bothered.

That is, until I watched Atonement this weekend. Upon which I realized that, no, wait, I am bothered. Really fucking bothered. Specifically, I am bothered that I will never have ridiculously hot, secret sex with James McAvoy in the library of a British estate house while wearing a 1930s evening dress. Which, of course, would totally have happened if I weren’t getting married.

Damnit.

P.S. No, really, I'm not.

This post, about the first meeting between my parents and my future in-laws, was left up for one month and then removed (based on an agreement between myself and Brad). If you want a copy, email me.