doodledee

Earlier this week City Pages kicked off a mean-spirited-yet-mildly-amusing contest to see who can best condense a Katherine Kersten column into a single 17 syllable haiku. The idea is driven in part by the redesigned Strib's new shorter 500-word limit for columnists - if the same point can be made in 500 words, why not in 3 lines of poetry? - but it's also driven by the odd fascination CP seems to have with all things Kersten. (Here's hoping that search results page doesn't commit suicide when it sees itself in the mirror, btw.) She's a bad writer, she's ugly, she's stupid, their laundry list of complains goes on and on like a rolling ruler. One would almost wonder why they pay her so much attention - why not just ignore her? I can't think of a name for that type of behavior, so I'm just going to make up a term for it right now: bitchnore.

bitchnore (bich nor)
v.

1. To bitch about something when you should really just ignore it.

Anyway, all the talk about haikus reminded me of the time I wrote a haiku for CP's restaurant critic Dara Moskowitz as part of a note I sent her looking for tips on where to eat on our NYC vacation a few years back. She thought it was so mint that she used it in her column a few weeks later. I pretty sure that makes me some sort of unofficial psuedo-indie-media haiku god, but for some reason I haven't been invited to judge the entries in the latest contest. Their loss, I guess. (PS: not interested.)

And then *that* reminded me of how I wrote to her again a month or two ago about that butcher shop piece she wrote. I had an idea for a follow-up column that she was... uhh... less than receptive to. She basically told me I was an idiot. All those years of feeling like I had this cool bond with a fake local celebrity and then she e-dumps me. On one hand I was bummed out, but on the other, hey, I got dumped by a fake celebrity, and not just anyone can say that.

I had these big intentions of writing the suggested column myself and posting it here, but then I got side tracked by work and life and it never happened. Then my i'll-show-her fire started to go out and I thought about just posting about how outraged I was about the whole thing, but not really doing anything constructive other than complaining (ahh, the internet, eases the pain). Then I decided I should probably just ignore it and move on. No bitchnoring for me, thankyouverymuch.

The Katherine Kersten haiku contest [citypages]
Katherine Kersten [strib]