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White BFL, spinning wheel, fireplace, and 7 more days until I’m a slave to my schoolwork once more.

Here’s a screen cap of the pics on the auction for my new guitar. Don’t you love it? I like the Sex Pistols-esque “Hello Kitty” on the back. There was much debate on which was better for me, the pink or the black version, the font decided it all.

It’s a little disturbing and quite sweet that a concerned person emailed me to say that playing a Hello Kitty guitar might undermine my legitimacy and seriousness as a musician. At first I thought it was a joke. Then I realized this person has kindly overestimated my musical potential and emailed back explaining that legitimacy and seriousness are not things I’m known for musically.

For the record, I have a Hello Kitty waffle maker and I take waffles very seriously.

So what’s with the Hello Kitty stuff anyway?

Everything has a threshold, pass that threshold at the end of the spectrum and you flip into the extreme of the other side.

At one point in time all I wanted was a pair of black Chuck Taylors, a pair of Levi jeans that didn’t flair at the ankle and a gray and pink sweater. I got the Chucks. Then I got orthodic inserts which meant I couldn’t wear the Chucks, a leg brace, bifocals, orthodontic gear and back brace. Oh yeah, and my parents were in the middle of a bitter divorce.

There is no cool when you hit that point. It’s just cold.

I knew that, I gave up even trying. I picked a pair of Buddy Holly frames because they were the cheapest. I started buying pants at the military surplus store because they were not only cheap but because they concealed the leg brace. The shoes I wore (which I really had no choice, they were the only ones that were my size that could fit orthodics and my narrow feet) were ugly bulky British manufactured work boots and oxfords.

At this point in my life my favorite things included 4-H for dairy goats, home economics, reading, watching Monkees reruns, swimming and trying not to get beat up. Then I saw her. Hello Kitty. At age eleven I didn’t care about irony. I was just thinking how cute the t-shirt transfers bearing the pink maneki neko were.

I bought them.

I took them home and carefully transfered the happy Hello Kitty onto some t-shirts that I’d tye-dyed with the little kids when I volunteered to help at church day camp.

Hello Kitty made me smile.

Later, Hello Kitty and kawai stuff became sort of an in-joke. The back of my motorcycle jacket was painted with a pink Kitty-like skull, Misfits style, by a friend in high school. Kitty’s face was sandblasted into the headlight of my Norton Mk3 by the body shop guy I worked for one summer. My kayak was Kitty pink.

Sometimes my hair is Kitty pink. I have the aforementioned HK waffle iron, plus bento box, and Pez dispensers. I have a few kitty hair combs. I want to buy the Kitty sewing machine for the kids.

Hello Kitty still makes me smile.