Portrait of Karen

(edit: Oh noes! After this post she has shut down her blog from public viewing and taken her excerpts and short stories offline! Sorry, you'll just have to trust me on the value of her insane, profanity-riddled posts.)

Well, I've decided to acknowledge it, but briefly as above. You'll notice we have a new banner as well. Excitement! I hope everyone else will come back to the site soon, too. Sorry I've been away for so long. I had a bunch of stuff I needed to figure out that didn't really involve me communicating over the internet, or really much at all. Speaking of going nuts and shutting yourself off from the world, this woman was a minor obsession of mine last week. The whole thing is worth a read, but I certainly have some favorite entries. (That title for that last entry is "No No No Fuck That Fucking Shit." Totally serious.) I came in to contact with her re: a blog comment section argument about the role of indie bookstores. At first I tried to converse/argue/share my viewpoint, but quickly became apparent that she is not well. It went from arguing to poking fun to shocked embarassment pretty quick for me. Once I logged a few hours on her site, I realized fully what I was up against and decided any further communication, especially arguing/disagreement/fun poking would be a little bit like kicking a dog. Which, I know, posting all this stuff is indeed a little bit like kicking a dog. But I just couldn't keep this to myself. The publishing world has shat on her work and shat on her, but don't take their profit-driven misogynistic word for it. Read some samples of her fiction! (Phew - I hadn't been there in a couple days, but in her latest entry she suggests that she and not Hemingway should be a successful writer because her attitude towards women and animals is less barbaric than Hemingway's was(!?!).) Yeah, I know. It's not nice and it's not healthy, but her perception of the world and reality - and her response to that world and reality - is so drastically different from my own that I couldn't help but get caught up in it a little bit this week. She is totally, totally incomprehensible to me. And now I'm going to bed. Nite!