And if you want me to take that "Best of Miles Davis" off your hands, all you have to do is ASK.

The holiday season – and that down-and-blue feeling that inevitably follows Christmas Day – make it hard for me to write. HARD, I tell you. Especially considering that my wallet is still among the missing. I've been forced to acknowledge that, despite my best efforts to Pollyanna up and think positive, sometimes people will simply not do the right thing by, say, returning lost and valuable property to its rightful owner. (At this point, my faith in humanity would be restored just by getting back my bloody health insurance card. Do you really need that, person who has my wallet? Couldn't you just drop it in a mailbox?)

Still, I do have two good reasons to consider Christmas 2008 a smashing success:

1) That guy from high school who wanted me to be his Secret Loser Girlfriend has gotten fat and bald, AND

2) I knew, for the first time EVER, exactly what to give my dad as a gift.

See, of all the people in my family, it's my father who is the most difficult to shop for. Not because he's picky or obnoxious, mind you, but just because the things he likes are so impossibly random.

"Oh, come on," you are probably saying. "How random could they be?"

And to you I offer this:

A List of Things Which My Father Likes:

soccer

a nose flute

Frank Zappa

sailboats

sea kayaks

some movie called "Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill"

the Battle of Algiers

marzipan candy

trees

See? SEE??? You try looking at a list like that and drawing any sort of meaningful conclusion about the tastes of the person in question. Sometimes I think he is just fucking with us.

And so, in the absence of the means to buy him a surefire winning present (sailboats are expensive, yo), I have consistently found myself casting about to get my father something he will really, really like for Christmas – always attempting to build upon what little knowledge I have through a series of if – then statements. For instance:

If he likes marzipan, then he will like Disaronno.

If he likes the nose flute, he will like a tribal percussion instrument.

If he likes Frank Zappa, then he will like Miles Davis.

And so on, and so forth. It all seemed logical, and not only that, I might never have known that I was consistently fucking up my father's Christmas presents… but for the fact that, one April, I asked my mother if he ever listened to the Miles Davis CD I'd given him the previous December.

"Oh, honey," replied my mother, patting my arm. "You know, that's just the kind of jazz that Daddy really HATES."

That was five years ago. I still can't think of it without wanting to crawl into a hole and die.

It wasn't just knowing that my dad hates Miles Davis; it was the dawning suspicion that this was not the first time I'd given him something really unsuitable. Total mortification ensued -- I found myself wishing that he had just opened the gift, gasped in horror, and shrieked, "Miles Davis?! Don't you know me AT ALL?!!!!" before running out of the room.

Embarrassing? Well, yeah… but not so much when compared with the prospect of a lifetime of shitty gifts.

So I was relieved, this year, to know exactly what to get for my dad. Not just a gift which he might like, but one which, according to several excellent laws, he is REQUIRED to like lest he be labeled a Bad Father:

--a framed picture of the two of us.

The only problem is that I (probably) won't be getting married again, and therefore this is a one-shot deal. But it gives me an extra year to save for the sailboat.

Humbug.

After I posted my fervent plea for wallet-finding help yesterday, an anonymous commenter submitted the following helpful tidbit:

Kat-

I used to find you side-splittingly hilarious and send links
of your posts to friends and family. For god sakes woman, find your wallet and
get a job! This is not going well!!

Well, shit! (I thought to myself) – there’s my problem! All this time that I’ve been worrying about finding steady employment in the worst economy since 1930, stocking up on one-dollar packets of rice and beans, and trying to get my identity back with a mere two days left until Christmas – I never once stopped to consider your needs, commenting person. And now, selfish motherfucker that I am, I have finally seen the error of my ways: I am like a latter-day Scrooge, and you, dear sir or madam, are my Tiny Tim.

I can practically hear your tiny, horrifying club foot dragging across the bare, cold floor as we speak.

But really, before I find myself hosting a nocturnal progression of Christmas ghosts (and, God forbid, sobbing in a graveyard while wearing a dressing gown), I’ll stop worrying about lost things. My job, my wallet, my virginity… well, I’ll have plenty of time to worry about them after the holidays. There are so many other, funner things to worry about instead.

Like, say, whether I might be sending the wrong message by giving my little brother a giant bottle of Bailey’s less than twelve months after he got his license suspended for DUI.


God bless us, every one! (Be back after Christmas.)

This is a public service announcement.

I lost my wallet in a taxi last night.

Just writing that makes me want to weep.

Losing one's wallet is always devastating, but it is especially bad when it happens during the week before Christmas, and it is especially especially bad if, like me, you have a tendency to keep your entire life in it. Apart from the usual credit/bank/grocery store cards, the missing include: my driver's license and health insurance; a bookstore gift card that was a wedding present from my high school english teacher; and a Haitian gourde note that my father-in-law gave me with the caveat that I "must not lose it".

Shit.

I realize that the chances of ever seeing any of these things again are slim-to-none, but with this blog available as a mouthpiece, I figured it's worth a try. To anyone who's willing to re-post, forward or otherwise flog the following, I will be eternally grateful to you. I'm really desperate.


THE PSA: Reunite me with my wallet! Reward! Also, good holiday karma!

The wallet: Large, beige-colored, fake leather with a snap flap and tooling on the front. Left in a yellow NYC taxi in Greenpoint, Brooklyn at 8pm on Sunday, December 21st.

Contains: a $20 bill, my driver's license (first name: Kathryn), insurance cards, credit cards including one with Starry Night motif (yes, it is tacky and weird), and odd ephemera including a $2 bill, a Haitian banknote, and a bobby pin in the change purse.

Reward: $100, but I'm also open to tongue-kissing or writing original epic poetry about wallet-returning heroics. I will do anything. I just really, really want my wallet back.

If you have info: Email to katrosenfield at gmail.


That's it, kids. Please re-blog, foward in emails, whatever -- even if it's all for naught, I will appreciate it.

And I promise to be funny tomorrow.

Photo post: Pretty city.

It's been raining for two days, and it's near-impossible to go outside without stepping in a knee-high slush puddle, but...





New York City is really quite nice at Christmastime.

Fickle.

Yeah, you caught me -- I've been messing with the blogger layout again. I just can't make up my mind, a problem of mine which extends way beyond Blog Aesthetics and into other, more important realms such as Hair Color, Movie Choice, and What To Eat At Restaurants. (To whoever invented the sampler platter: You are a genius, and I love you.)

A college girlfriend of mine once tried to explain my inability to make decisions by pointing out that a) I am a Pisces, and b) that all Pisces are wafflers, and c) that waffling is therefore the fate dealt to me by the cosmos and totally beyond my control.

Which is all well and good, except that the day I offer up astrology as an explanation for my character flaws will be the day that I will officially consider myself to have hit rock bottom. And so, I will continue to apologetically waffle in full admission that it is All My Fault For Sucking So Bad.

Anyway, as always, feedback is welcome on the new, wider layout (does it make me look fat?) and what my logo ought to be (my mother suggests "an ink-splattered pigeon", which is such a complete non sequitur that it might actually cross right over the line into ironic brilliance).

Also: As you might have noticed, you can now officially stalk befriend me via Facebook by clicking that little link to the right. Go on, you know you want to have your life enlivened by my totally awesome status updates ("Kat is eating an orange!" "Kat is wearing pants!" "Kat is NOT wearing pants!") and endless stream of drunken party pictures.

And, lest anyone feel that this post is somehow sub-par for lacking the usual weirdness that my readers have come to expect, allow me to leave you with the following tidbit:

Brad has been using my razor and deodorant. I know this, because his armpits smell like my armpits, and my armpits smell like a man's face.

The Importance of Reading Directions

"So," said my supervisor, "I thought I'd give you a break from those manuals and let you do a product test for me."

"Oooh," I said. I had been sitting in an office surrounded by electronic devices since beginning my work at You-know-where, but as of yet, I had not actually been permitted to touch any of them. "So, you mean, I can play with all these great toys?"

"Sort of," he said. "I'll be right back."

A moment later, he returned and deposited an alarm clock on my desk.

"This is an alarm clock with iPod docking station," he said. He pulled an iPod from his pocket and handed it to me. "This is mine, but you'll need it to test that the dock works. Just go through the manual, one step at a time, and do all the setup and basic functions."

"No problem," I said, and immediately turned to page one in the manual, which read, Connect the power supply cord to the device at one end, and to your power outlet at the other.

I did.

This was my first mistake.

See, many years ago, my fourth-grade teacher gave my class a worksheet which was created with only one purpose in mind: Fucking With Children's Heads. (The makers of this worksheet will tell you that it was designed to Teach The Importance Of Following Instructions. They are liars.) I'm confident that mine was not the only class to be given this exercise -- in fact, I was given it a total of three times since I skipped from one school system to another between the ages of 8 and 13, so it's obviously a great favorite among teachers of all types, who probably cannot believe their great luck at discovering a worksheet which is designed specifically to Fuck With Children's Heads.

Anyway, as I'm sure some of you will remember, the worksheet was set up thusly: It featured a long list of instructions, the first one of which was, "Read all the instructions before beginning this worksheet." This was followed by a few logical next steps, such as "Write your name at the top of this worksheet," and "Write today's date," but soon descended into complete madness as the instructions became more and more bizarre, complex, and physically demanding. And as people completed each task and moved on to the next, it wasn't long before the entire class (save for one or two smug bastards) would be -- per the directions -- hopping around on one foot while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance backward.

And then, in what I am sure the creators of this worksheet believed to be the GREATEST PUNCHLINE OF ALL TIME, you would reach the end of the worksheet and discover that the final instruction was, "Now that you have read all the directions, complete the first one ONLY, and write your name at the top of this worksheet."

Ha! Ha!

And so, we humiliated children all learned the Importance Of Following Instructions. And also, that you cannot trust anyone, ever.

I remembered this exercise well enough that the second and third times I received it in school, I was able to be one of those smug bastards who read all the instructions and then watched amusedly while my naive classmates jumped around and folded their worksheets into paper airplanes.

I did not, however, remember it well enough to peruse the alarm clock manual in totality before beginning to test its functions. I did not consider the possibility that, as with the infamous worksheet, there might be a similar punchline in store.

Like oh, say, the complete absence of any instructions on how to turn off the alarm.

Which is how, when the alarm clock roared to life and began playing my supervisor's iPod-- which, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, was set to ODB's "Die Uncle Tom" skit-- I was left futilely beating at it while my coworkers stared and the sound of Michael Richards screaming, "HE'S A N*GGER! HE'S A N*GGER!!!!" blared from the speakers.

"What the hell is going on over there?" said one of the designers.
"The manual is incomplete!" I said, frantically pushing buttons. "I can't turn off the alarm!"
"Oh," said the designer.
"HE'S A N*GGER!" said Michael Richards.
"Shit!" I said, diving under my desk to unplug the clock.
Michael Richards stopped screaming.

"Jesus, that was awful," I said, climbing out from beneath the desk and wiping sweat from my forehead.
"So the manual didn't say how to turn it off?" said the designer.
"No, it said how to set the alarm, but not how to turn it off," I said.
"Wow," he said. "I guess you should have read all the directions first."

So I stabbed him.

The end.

The road less travelled is one which I myself have been down before.

As those who have been readers of Pink India Ink since the beginning will undoubtedly remember, I was not always happily coupled with The Man Who Is Now My Husband. Rather -- like so many young women in New York -- my early years in this city were spent unattached, gallivanting around, and, ahem, sampling the goods. And so it was that a few years ago (long before I joined the corporate softball team where I would meet the dashing Brad) I went through an unfortunate period of rampant singledom during which I indiscriminately dated, snogged, and slept with approximately 1 billion guys.

But wait, you are probably saying, that doesn't sound unfortunate! It sounds like grand fun!

And indeed, it might have been, but for one problematic fact: out of all the many, many men living in the city and surrounding environs of New York, I always managed to find myself dating the ones who had tiny little cocks.

There. I said it.

This is, of course, a popular subject -- one that has inspired countless tirades, blog posts, even hit songs! -- and as such, there's only so much I can add to the discussion. But suffice to say that, as a result of all these liaisons with petitely-peckered gentlemen, I found myself with an ever-expanding cache of "small penis" stories which made for great conversational fodder after a few drinks. (To this day, whenever the topic of dick size comes up, one of my girlfriends will say something about "The Roll of Dimes", an analogy once used to describe... well, you know.)

However, even as the hilarity mounted, my hideously bad luck in the penis-picking department started to make me very nervous. I had been fortunate thus far in that none of these guys were relationship material (for reasons having nothing to do with the topic at hand). But based on my experience, it seemed more and more likely that when I did finally meet someone worth spending significant time with, he would be so unsatisfactorily endowed that the romance would be doomed.

I was on the phone with my mother, describing the latest bad date, when my increasing worry over the situation finally reached a boiling point.
"This is awful!" I suddenly wailed. "Mom, what if I end up falling in love with a guy who has a really small penis?"

My mother, in a move that would unequivocally confirm her awesomeness in the talking-one-down-from-the-ledge department, simply said: "Oh, honey, come on. That would never happen."

Which, to my great relief, turned out to be true.

With all that's happened in the years since, it had been quite awhile since I thought about the potential problem of inadequate endowment among prospective suitors, and what a pall it can cast over the dating experience, and how worrisome it is to imagine oneself tumbling, through the vagaries of love, into a relationship which, for all its joy and warmth and companionship, brings with it a lifetime of sexual dissatisfaction.

And then, an intrepid Googler gave my memory a little jog:


To repeat some excellent advice once given me: Oh, honey. That would NEVER happen.

Putting the "assy" in classy.

Though there were many, many ridiculous things I used to find entertaining during my high school career (Happy Gilmore comes to mind), none were ever more ridiculous than "Would you rather". For years, there was nothing I loved more than to sit around with a group of friends, laughing uproariously as we posed absurd hypotheticals to each other and then struggled to figure out which was the lesser of two evils. The questions were typical, far-fetched concoctions designed to test the intellect in the most peculiar possible way.

"Would you rather have huge, hairy feet like Sasquatch, OR, leave a slime trail wherever you go?"
"Would you rather begin every sentence for the rest of your life with 'Mister McPenis says...', OR, fart explosively whenever you're surprised?"
"Would you rather shoot yourself in the face, or have sex with Jason H-----?"
(Ok, maybe that last one was just us.)
(I have never seen so many people eagerly agree to shooting themselves in the face.)

"Would you rather" was fun, of course, because you could safely plumb the depths of your personal moral code and choose the lesser of two evils, always safe in the knowledge that none of these hypotheticals would ever happen. After all, it's easy to say that you'd rather sit on a tack every day for the rest of your life than announce it loudly to everyone around you every time you have to poop, when you know that nobody will ever call on you to do either of these things.

But on the other hand, this is also what makes the entire game a little bit cheap -- there's never anything at stake. Hell, you could even LIE about what you'd rather, and nobody would ever be the wiser. "Would you rather", for all its endless hours of giggling entertainment, never really puts you to the test.

And then this morning, as I struggled to force my birth control pill out of its damnable plastic packaging, the thing suddenly burst forth, flew threw the air, and landed with a resounding plop... right in the loo.

Dear high school friends -- remember that time I told you I would rather get pregnant than eat something out of the toilet?

I lied.

You had me at "Oreo".

Every so often, in my virtual travels 'round the internet, I come across Blogs of a Certain Type. You know the ones I'm talking about: they are like digital diaries, written by women who know no greater joy than to write earnest, frequent, faux-confessional posts about their feeeeeeeeelings, and then sit back while their similarly-afflicted sycophants erupt in a cacophony of shrieking validation via the comments.

In general, when I encounter one of these posts, I just shake my head and move on. Experience has taught me that this is the Right Thing To Do; I doubt that I need to remind anyone what happened the last time I dared to make fun of one of these blogs.

Apparently, however, even the teachings of Experience have their limits.

And so it was that I recently came across the following:

Sometimes I worry that I’m not a good wife. I know my husband adores me, but I feel inadequate at times.

Oh, my. How troubling. But what do you mean, 'inadequate'?

I don’t cook that often and can be really gross and unlady like.

Umm.... well, I guess if you did something really horrific--

Example: I ate an oreo off of the floor the other day and I have no problem laying in my own filth when I am sick/sad/lonely, etc. I pick at my face when I’m bored and keep the dvr filled with episodes of John & Kate + 8 and Gossip Girl. I can be really selfish and downright mean at times. I am working on becoming a better version of me but there are some days I wonder what it is he sees that keeps him in love with me.

...uh-huh.

I'm not linking back, here -- not just because I would prefer to avoid the inevitable shitstorm that comes when you call someone out for writing about their feeeeelings, but because honestly, this isn't even ABOUT that blog, or that blogger, specifically. Rather, this post is symptomatic of a far larger, more insidious, diseased mindset that seems to be spreading throughout the blogosphere -- one in which "wife" is viewed as something that one does, rather than as something that one is.

Which, in addition to being a truly nauseous idea, is just plain silly.

"Wife" is not an achievement. That's the nice thing about it, actually -- the list of required qualifications for the position of Wife is blissfully, beautifully short. To determine whether or not you qualify, simply ask yourself this question:

Do you have a vagina?
Yes?
Hey, congratulations, lady. You've got what it takes.

You do not have to major in Wife. You do not need to intern, pay dues, or climb any sort of corporate ladder to get there. You don't need prior experience. Hell, you don't even have to have any fucking skills. (Although based on my piddling 3 months of wifely experience, the ability to put stray socks in their proper place is potentially valuable.) And again, these are the nice things about it -- the only requirement of the position, apart from the vadge, is that you have somebody to do the other half of the job.

Which, needless to say, has fuck-all to do with cooking abilities, reality television, or whether or not you shower every day. Men know this: nobody's husband sits around wondering if he's worthy of love because he likes to scratch his ass and then sniff his finger afterwards. That's his business. And if your husband has a problem with any of the above, you get to give him the finger (with which you may or may not have just scratched your own ass) and say, "Oh yeah, motherfucker? Guess you should've thought about that before you asked me to be your wife!"

That's the beauty of marriage.

That, or I'm a super-shitty wife.

~~~ post script ~~~

Dear readers,
The day that I consider "I ate an Oreo off the floor" to be some sort of scandalous confession will be the day that I invite all of you to kill me.
love and kisses,
Kat

The telltale fart.

One of my favorite stories of all time is Edgar Allan Poe's The Telltale Heart. I'm sure you know it: it's the one in which a young man murders his landlord and then hides the body inside his house, only to be driven to a psychotic confession when the heart of his victim continues to beat loudly beneath the floorboards -- audible only to him, the perpetrator of the crime. The story is a masterpiece, a brilliant portrayal of the way that one's entire sense of reality can be distorted by the knowledge of one's own guilt.

Which leads me to this:

I was sitting at my desk this afternoon -- the sun dipping below the horizon, quittin' time approaching fast --when the quesadilla I'd eaten for lunch gave a sudden kick in my stomach.

Whoa, I thought, immediately standing up and making a beeline for the hallway, and beyond it, the safety of the bathroom. I'd better take a time out before something bad happens.

I walked briskly down the hall, stepping past another employee with a polite "Excuse me", and was nearly out the door when he suddenly looked back at me.

"Hey," he said, "did you fart?"

What???

My mouth dropped open. I stared at him, aghast. He was looking expectantly at me. I surreptitiously sniffed at the air, trying to look like I had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, sure, maybe a little something had slipped out -- but not that much! It hadn't even made a sound! There was no smell! How did he even know? Had it been noticeable somehow?

And even if it was, (I thought, beginning to get angry), who the fuck was this guy to be pointing it out? Didn't he have anything better to do than wander the office hallways, trying to catch someone in a flatulent act and then shame them into an admission? What was his fucking problem?

He was still looking at me.
"Uh," I said, looking around awkwardly and shifting from one foot to another, "I, um..."

I was caught. I stopped and took a deep breath, ready to bite the bullet and admit it. Yes, I DID, I was about to say, and I would APPRECIATE IT if you didn't go around POINTING IT OUT like some kind of FART POLICE. I had opened my mouth to speak when a woman suddenly answered from behind me.

"Actually, it's five-thirty," she said.
Fart Police said, "Wow, I didn't realize how late it had gotten!"

It was at this point that I realized that the man had not, in fact, said, "Did you fart?"
He had said, "Is it five yet?"

I still cannot believe that my nervousness over my volatile stomach somehow distorted a perfectly-innocuous question about the time into an unprompted accusation of flatulence.

But more than that, I cannot believe I was going to confess.

Everyone who made fun of me back in 2002 for picking a useless second major in a foreign language can mangez my culottes.

Lest anyone has been marveling at my improbable, nay, awesome ability to find a job in our current economic climate, I would like to take a moment to explain what, exactly, said job is.

For the past week, I have been employed on-site at the Long Island headquarters of a Certain Large Corporation, where I spend my days copyediting packages and user manuals.

For consumer electronics products.

In French.

Anyone who is still marveling at my job-securing skills can go ahead and leave the room now.

The company, though I will not name it here, is one which many of you would undoubtedly recognize as the maker of extremely cheap portable CD players and other electronic ephemera which are sold on the shelves of... well, actually, the only place I've ever seen them is at CVS. Behind the counter, next to the condoms. Which, if we're being honest, are probably a better bet for your money when it comes to production quality and durability. (And if we're being really honest, they are probably also better at playing CDs.) However, said company has recently decided to expand their sales to Canada, which is, of course, how I have found myself spending large portions of every day researching the best possible way to express "48-inch High-Definition Flat-Screen Plasma Television" en français.

The job is project-specific and only lasts five weeks, which with any luck means that I will stop working a) having made enough money to support myself for a few weeks while looking for another job, and b) just short of ripping my own face off out of boredom.

In the meantime, though, my days are long, exhausting, rife with Chinese-origin documents written in Engrish and heavily monitored by incredibly humorless Personal Electronics People. Who are already beside themselves at allowing a plebe like me to use their super hi-tech bank of fully-automated employee toilets, much less have full responsibility for getting their products out the door in packaging free of typographical and grammatical errors.

And so, it is with a heavy heart that I must make the following announcement: the daytime blogging at Pink India Ink is on hiatus until the first week of January.

The post-work consumption of several beers followed by incoherent internet rambling, however, is still totally on.