On the Very First Day of the Newest Semester. . .

. . .The human race encountered a deadly threat to its very existence. It came, as such threats often will, from the most innocent and unlikely of places.

SCHOOL.

*dramatic jazz music*

Kat: Well well well. Here we are again, aren't we.

Max: C'est verite.

Kat: Why are you speaking French?

Max: Why not?

Kat: Good question. So. Whatsup? First day of school, right. First order of business?

Gabe: First order of business is being a freshman sucks.

Kat: Ah, yes, being a freshman sucks, thank you Gabe.

Max: FreshPERSON.

Kat: Fine. Freshperson. But it sucks, whatever it is. I feel new in a school I've been at for the past eleven years. Uncomfortable outside my own skin.

Gabe: Something tells me you mean inside.

Kat: I think I creeped out my new English teacher.

Julian: How?

Kat: I told him my favorite books were Lolita, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and anything at all about Sherlock Holmes. Oh, and V for Vendetta.

Gabe: Something tells me what freaked him out is Lolita.

Kat: Yeah, well. It's a good book.

Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a cream cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?

My car is limping, Dolores Haze
And the last long lap is the hardest
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays
And the rest is rust and stardust.

Nabokov. Good old Vladimir N. You can't beat it, to paraphrase Mr. Holmes. Well, unfortunately I cannot be the medical student of yore, hanging out in the laboratory trying to figure out how to make a reaction precipitated only by hemoglobin and beating corpses with sticks to creep out Stamford, so I must languish here at Buckley in the excrement of a thousand past years.

The difficulty of the whole matter is simply this: I have met my own personal Irene Adler. The Woman, or in my case, the man. And it's not that I feel anything akin to love for him/her, to paraphrase Watson, but damnit. I. Cannot. Stand. Them. Thinking. They. Are. Smarter. Than. Me. Because I know that this is not true.

Little Shop auditions are soon. Huzzah!

I should get out of this school. You can just be sitting there and you start to wish you were dead.

You know something? You know how at the end of Catcher in the Rye Holden talks about how he misses everyone? Because he tells about things? So never tell anyone anything, or you'll start to miss everyone? That's kind of how I feel. I've written so much about everyone that I've met and known in the past few years that now I would miss them if they were gone, but they're not gone, so I don't miss them, and not missing them is worse than missing them, if you see what I mean, because this way you can't just forget about them.

Quote of the Day

"I enjoy wrestling trained guard dogs. It is a refreshingly uncomplicated pastime."

- Sherlock Holmes

Comment at once if convenient, if inconvenient, comment all the same,
K.H.

In Which Kat Dies of Joy. Again. About A Different (And Better) Musical.

Okay. We may as well keep old traditions going. . .

I saw Sweeney at the Eugene O'Neil!

I saw Sweeney at the Eugene O'Neil!

I saw Sweeney at the Eugene O'Neil!

I saw Sweeney at the Eugene O'Neil!

I saw Sweeney at the Eugene O'Neil!

I saw Sweeney at the Eugene O'Neil!

I saw Sweeney at the Eugene O'Neil!

I saw Sweeney at the Eugene O'Neil!

I SAW SWEENEY AT THE EUGENE O'NEIL!

Oh my God. Patti hysterical. Manoel creepy and adorable and has a voice like an angel. Michael Cerveris even sexier in person. HE JUMPS OF THE SET PIECES FOR CHRISSAKE. We stagedoored and ZOMG he has the most incredible eyes but you can't see them from the stage because he's busy being phsyco. A Little Priest was inCREDible. I mean, for serious. They were two extremely sexy people singing about cannibalism and Jethuth Chritht. (What about meeeee?) There was this one bit when they completely grabbed each other. Trés disquieting and trés sexy.

SWEENEY LOFF. OMG OMG OMG OMFG.

JOHANNA. WE'RE NOT EVEN GOING TO DISCUSS JOHANNA. SO GOOD. SOOOO GOOOOOOD. AND ANTHONY! SIDEBURNS LOVE.

The Kiss Me Quartet was so funny. Johanna's basically going, "OH NOEZ." And Anthony's like, "Jo-Jo, cool it, babe, I have a plan. A PLAN! Jo-Jo, are you listening to me?" The Beadle was even funnier than I expected. So deadpan. So funny. Love him. And Judge Turpin! Damn! He's a creepy man. Pretty Women was amazing. At one point Michael clutched at the barber apron like he was going to strangle the Judge but then decided not to. Quite funny. I could seriously spend all day gushing.

Oh, and Mickey, I asked Benjamin Magnuson how it's pronounced. It's Antony, although it's spelled Anthony. AND I ASKED BENJAMIN MAGNUSON AT STAGEDOOR AND I KNOW BETTER THAN YOU. HAHAHAHA.

Comment at once if convenient, if inconvenient comment all the same,
K.H.

The Poignant Funnyness of Love, and Other Phrases Kat Comes Up with at 11:57 PM After a Long Day at Rehearsal

I was listening to Harry Nilsson on my mom's iPod when all of a sudden my brain goes:

Brain: Hey! Kat! Listen up!

Kat: Five more minutes, mom.

Brain: No, damnit, wake up.

Kat: Okay, whatsup?

Brain: Your play - that's the genre it is!

Kat: My play is a Harry Nilsson song?

Brain: Yes!

Kat: I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you mean.

Brain: Okay, work with me here - you know how he does his whole crazy loony scat solo in the middle of Don't Leave Me?

Kat: I'm with you.

Brain: That's kind of like the comedy in your play!

Kat: Okay, I'm hearing that. Well, that's what I like about Nilsson - his songs possess the poignant funnyness of love.

Brain: Then again, if my remarks make you talk like that, I should shut up more often.

Kat: No! No! That's actually a good idea! It's more accurate than calling the play a tragicomedy.

Brain: Oh, is that what we were calling it before? I obviously wasn't involved in that decision. Now, I am going to turn off before you finally write that fight scene that you can't get right.

Kat: No! Come back! NO PRODUCER IS GOING TO ACCEPT A PLAY ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES ON THE GROUNDS THAT IT IS A HARRY NILSSON SONG!

---

So basically, aside from coming to the conclusion that my play is a Harry Nilsson song, I am making no headway whatsoever. (Thanks to SP, by the way, for Harry Nilsson in general. I feel stupid because of how much I love his stuff, especially seeing as how people ask me how I know of him and I'll be like, "Well, my ex's mother. . ." at which point they leave.) But seriously folks, that one song - Don't Leave Me - is basically my play in a nutshell. Except my play takes place in Victorian England. At Eton. With crossdressing and Shakespeare involved. And Sherlock Holmes.

Okay, so only I get this connection. But it's there, I swear to God. The story of our play is really a universal one. It's like, "Boy meets girl, boy wants girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy. . .um. . .becomes world's only cocaine addled private consulting detective."

Okay, maybe not.

I SWEAR TO GOD THE PLAY IS GOOD. (And my writing partner's pretty. Does that count for anything?)

---

Certain things must be adressed. LIKE JOHNNY DEPP IN SWEENEY TODD.

ZOMG.

Okay, so Stephen Sondheim himself (drool, worship, etc.) apparently auditioned him, and I trust Stephen, but then again. Johnny Depp?!? You better be sure, Stevie, because if this movie is bad I WILL HAVE VEANGANCE, I WILL HAVE SALVATION, ETC..

I will seriously set up shop as a barber and start slitting throats if the movie's bad. Who's up for meat pies?

No one?

Oh well.

It's Depp! Have a little Depp!

---

You know what, it's time for a new La Vie Boheme song parody. Hang on a tic.

---

Nevermind, I'm too lazy and too busy writing Holmes/Watson. (Go on, come read my efforts, you know you want to.)

---

Link to proof that fanfic can be good.

---

Thought I'd repost this thing. . .Ben posted it in the comments way back when, I was going though old comments, and it just made me laugh how much of this has actually happened to me.

Lifecycle of Bloggers

Having blogged in one form or fashion for the last 6 years or so (not including personal journals that I’ve written in, on paper even, with crayon even, since I was six years old), allow me to personally provide you with a rundown on the lifecycle that I’ve observed from personal bloggers.

#1. Start reading blogs.
You start out as a lurker and by either having met a blogger or run accross an intriguing and challenging post from someone else’s blog, you start mulling about in your head for either a forum for response, challenge, or agreement. You *could* start by commenting on other folks blogs first, but you start having a gradually increased desire for a space of your own. Like when you’re living in your parent’s basement and the rest of your friends are making weekly trips to Home Depot and using words like “mulching”. You begin to wonder if you want to belong.

#2. You start a blog.
Maybe at first it’s on blogspot or livejournal. You start writing about cheese sandwhiches. You use your full name and the full names of your friends that are involved in your occasionally mischievous exploits. These things satisfy you. Hubris starts taking a more significant part of your site as you develop your tiny homestead online. The notion of fleshing out your online personality becomes important.

#3. You become a stats whore.
Daily stats/referrals and meme participation for webrings, quizlists, personality profiles, and the occasional sepia toned webcam photo to make you look all “emo” and “sultry” and “sensitive” or at least a little bit thinner. And definitley like a Kpop music video still image. You voraciouslly groom your links list as you build a posse. The wishlist makes it’s initial appearance and creepy strangers start sending you gifts when your birthday comes around. You consider this slightly weird, but hey, then again, you *did* get that Star Wars Box set that you always wanted. You *start* memes just for the additional traffic. Perhaps you even start a webgame of sorts.

#4. You become really personal on your site as the online and real-life worlds start confusing you.
As you recognize the possibility of being an opinion leader in your personal circle, people flame you. You occasionally flame back. You cry about comments that certain people make to provoke you. You bitch about these things as well. Then you take into consideration that comments were made by pimply 14 year olds who post jpegs of their warcraft characters online and realize that these lOZeRs aren’t worth your time. This gives you an sense of superiority. Haha! you say to yourself. I have a posse and a blog and you don’t. So fuck off, you lame twat. Hazzah!

#5. You faux “retire” from blogging.
Having temporarily exhausted the emotional reservoir from which your personal blog has released, you post about retiring. Or a vacation. Or a hiatus. Or a sabbattacal. You say this will be permanent. Or last a month.

#6. You cave back into blogging in less than 72 hours.
You candy pants blogging crack addict.

#7. You decide to “get serious” about blogging.
You seek out “The A-List” of bloggers and start reading more of them, and news about them, and news about blogging in general. You come to the conclusion that if you ever hope to join their rank, then you need to atleast register your own domain. Afterall, http://candypantsnewbiebloggeraboutcheesesandwhiches.blogspot.com will not get you linked by Kottke.

#8. You have a pseudo flirty im/blogging/flickr flirting relationship with another blogger whom you have never met.
This will likely end badly. Very badly.

#9. You decide that you must meet other bloggers.
SXSW seems like a good way to go about it. Or attendance at Fray Day. Or finding any excuse possible to move to San Francisco. At least a trip, after all. With a visit to SF, meeting other “celebrity” bloggers is just as tasty a tourist destination as going to Fisherman’s Wharf. Or more so. Definitley more so. Your blogroll grows threefold.

#10. You take a step back and metablog about blogging and what blogging has done about your blogging.
You become pedantically navelgazingly annoying. For some reason, your blogger readership eats this shit up. This does not convince you, however, that you want to do something silly like smoke weed with Marc Canter. Because even *you* know that’s a bad idea.

#11. See step 5. Shampoo, rinse, repeat.

#12. You decide that as a result of step 10 and having repeated step 5 more than 3 times in the course of your lifecycle as a blogger, that you need to sanitize or reinvent your blog. You purge or hide archive entries and take more note to remove full names of your friends/crushes/accidentaldrunkenfondels from your site and links list. Your blog goes back to cheese sandwhiches. But this time your site validates.

#13. You either lose your job because of blogging, are afraid of losing your job for blogging, or join a company that builds blogging tools. Either way, your blog either dies a horrible painful death, or becomes significantly less personal to the degree of trite and uninteresting compartmentalization or subject matter discretion.

#14. You decide to start an anonymous livejournal blog. Here is where you still talk about your crushes, the he said/she said crap, and that you really really really really really really really like Maroon 5. And it’s on your wishlist.

---

A Few Things One Notices When Writing a Play About Sherlock Holmes

1. Why is Holmes always in a dressing gown whenever anything mildly important to the plot is discussed?

2. What is with the dressing gown, anyway? It's girly.

3. Why is Holmes constantly perched on the arms of people's chairs, sitting on the floor by Watson's armchair, around armchairs, etc., etc., but never actually seems to sit in one?

4. Why is the hardest part of writing this play getting Holmes out of a functional romantic relationship, and not getting him into one?

5. What's with Watson?

6. In the same vein, why hasn't Watson decked Holmes by now? Christ knows he deserves it.

7. Where the hell is Watson's war wound anyway, Mr. Conan Doyle?

8. What does the H. in John H. Watson stand for?

9. Please don't say it's Hamish.

10. WHAT THE HELL WAS WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES'S FAMILY DYNAMIC?

11. The way that my writing partner writes Watson as contradicting himself all the time is so adorable that it makes me fall in love with her all over again.

---

Quote of the Day

"Take that, you thing from another world, you!"

- Porky Pig, Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century

Comment at once if convenient, if inconvenient, comment all the same,

K.H.

Mark Twain is THE AWESOME.

I think I may be the most peculiar person in the entire universe. I'm a little lonely.

Everything made me want to cry today. Do you ever have one of those days where everything you see makes you want to cry? Not because you're really sad as a person, but because the beauty or the terribleness of things makes you sad? I'm having one of those days where everything seems to hit me in my bones. I had a dream about someone I used to know. I don't think I still do. They don't return my calls. I don't know if I wished they did but I still can't avoid them. My memories are too full of them and I still dream of them sometimes.

Despite all this, I think perhaps I'm happy.

I'm not sure, though.

I don't think I see the world quite the same as you do.

I think the barrier between fiction and reality is thinner than I think it is.

I think.

iThink.

iPod.

Quote

“But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner who needed it most?”

– Mark Twain

Comment at once if convenient, if inconvenient comment all the same,

K.H.

In Which We Return to Our Roots by Finally Starting a Title With "In Which" Again

Okay, I am a geek. I've accepted this. Mainly because my mother was coughing today and I went, "Did you say Basil Rathbone?" Guess if she did.

And the blog, I'm afraid, is going though yet another name change. I will let you know before the URL is converted, however, because I do not wish to shock you/throw you out of the loop/destroy your connection to reality/sundry other objectionable things. The new URL will be:

http://www.demonbarberofbakerstreet.blogspot.com

Hey, it changes with my moods. And I think that once you start answering your phone with, "221B Baker Street," you have some obligation to change the name of your present obsession. (Especially if the person on the other end replies with, "I'm Mickey Mantle, wanna fuck?" But that's another kettle of HELLO MAX altogether.)

All right, 'tis time for I, Kat Kire, to get up, stop being an incurably lazy devil, and damnit, figure out the new blog formatting!

Rumi kicks ass. That, it is necessary to inform you of. (Yes, I usually do speak fluent English. Shaddup, I've been doing Shakespeare all the livelong day.) Gay man writing ancient spiritual poetry? YES PLZ. EET EES GOOD FOR ME.

Also, being able to hook up with sundry attractive young people in the guise of doing a play is good. I feel this should be made known to the male population so that they will finally get into drama.

ATTENTION MALE GENDER.

YOU ARE GOING TO BE ONE OF THE ONLY STRAIGHT BOYS IN THE SHOW.

CONSEQUENTLY, STRAIGHT GIRLS WILL FALL OVER YOU.

ATTENTION GAY/BISEXUAL WOMEN.

THIS APPLIES TO YOU ALSO, BUT HURRY OR I MAY HAVE TO STEAL ALL THE GAY/BISEXUAL GIRLS IN THE CAST BEFORE YOU GET HERE.

Quote of the Day

"It’s no good giving you my heart and soul, because you already have these. So – I’ve brought you a mirror. Look at yourself and remember me."

- Rumi

Comment at once if convenient, if inconvient, comment all the same,
S.H.

ALL YOUR HOLY HELL WHAT HAPPENED ARE BELONG TO US

I went to work this morning with a pair of shoes, a part as the Jester, Touchstone, in a production of As You Like It, a Sherlock Holmes play to write, and a ridiculous crush on an unattainable straight girl. I came back with one heel broken off my shoe, a big floppy velvet hat, and a girlfriend.

WTF?

Seriously, what happened?

Whatever it is, I'm good with it. Severely happy Kat. Mildly confused Kat, but nevertheless severely happy Kat.

ALL YOUR LOVELORN KAT ARE BELONG TO US

Okay, guys. There's this girl. . .

I'm going out of my mind. I'M GOING OUT OF MY MIND.

Did I mention I'm going out of my mind?

As in, like, here's Kat. ----> =^_^=

And here's Kat's mind. -----> sanityrationalthoughtabilitytoarticulateetcetera

You may notice that Kat (=^_^=) is not in her mind (sanityrationalthoughtabilitytoarticulateetcetera). If she was, it would look like the below.

sanityrationalthought=^_^=abilitytoarticulateetcetera

Ergo, she is out of her mind.

Glad we've clarified that.

So there's this girl. . .

Cannot finish sentence. Going mad.

Am saved only by Stephen Sondheim's Passion soundtrack. Love that show. Going mad. Did I mention that?

Watching Charlie Rose.

Trying to write Holmes/Watson.

Failing on both counts.

Not able to write complete sentences.

Going mad.

Or did I mention that already?

ALL YOUR RANT ARE BELONG TO US

Dear Fan Fiction Authors,

Stop. Just stop. Repeat after me:

We must recognize when reading Sherlock Holmes, that at a certain point the idea of Holmes falling in love with a woman is STUPID. JUST STUPID. He doesn't like women. He really doesn't, and he says so. "I have never been a whole souled admirer or womenkind," ring any bells? How about "The fair sex is your department, Watson?" Or, "I should never marry, lest I bias my judgement?"

AAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH. If you want to write Young!Holmes, then damnit, write Young!Holmes, but leave my old, bitter, morphine/cocaine junkie the hell alone. ALONE, I say! He doesn't want to jump into bed with your Mary Sue, he's not madly in love with Irene Adler, and if he is in love with Watson (or Irene, come to that) he's not going to MARRY THEM mostly because GAY MARRIAGE IS ILLEGAL IN THE VICTORIAN AGE. Nor is Holmes terribly interested in having long, soppy conversations with Watson about their relationship. HE'S SHERLOCK HOLMES, people. He isn't a therapist, and he's certainly not Watson's tberapist, and if I see one more fan fiction with a summary like, "He had never loved. He was a broken, bitter man. Until she came along." GAAAAH no! He was a broken and bitter man and he stayed that way, damnit! Because he's so much cooler that way!

SOS!

SAVE OUR SHERLOCK!

However, if you're into writing Holmes/Watson, you will find no resistance from this quarter! Tally ho and on with the unintentional homoerotic subtext!

XOXO,
Kat