Hello Kitty

Reader Danny took pity on me and is the first person that decided my Hello Kitty Hell deserved some intoxication to help dull the pain and get me through it. He’s the first person to buy me a beer (click on the title of this post and look to the right if you have no clue what I’m talking about). Despite his generosity and my thankful senses, Hello Kitty Hell would be Hello Kitty Hell if I could simply drink a beer in peace and quiet. It’s a sad fact of life that there isn’t a single cup in our house that isn’t branded with Hello Kitty so my refreshing beverage had to be consumed in a Hello Kitty cup:

There should be a law that if you are a guy drinking beer, the beer can’t be in a Hello Kitty cup. Instead of being able to sit back and sip my beer slowly and with pleasure, Hello Kitty Hell and the Hello Kitty cup dictate that the beer needs to be downed as quickly as possible…each time you bring the cup to your lips, you see your sworn enemy directly before your eyes and you want to dull the pain of the situation as quickly as possible. Thus the Hello Kitty Hell escape paradox – when you believe that you will believe you will be able to escape Hello Kitty Hell even for a few minutes, she ends up being closer to you than you’d ever want her to be…

Just a quick note to let everyone know that the Hello Kitty porcelain figure which the readers here decided to save arrived safely at Heather’s house (against my better judgment, I actually wrapped her well so she wouldn’t get damaged along the way). Heather promises to do her best to protect her, but does have a video camera fixed on her on the off chance that something goes wrong…

Now that the Hello Kitty ceramic figure has been saved and is on its way to well protected safety, I thought that with my new found affection for Hello Kitty I should do something responsible for all those impressionable kids out there. I therefore spoke with my wife and convinced her to give me a couple of Hello Kitty plush to use as characters to make an educational video. Even better, Hello Kitty is dressed in a school uniform and Dear Daniel is in a graduation gown. The question became, what lesson should I teach to all the impressionable kids out there?

I considered this awhile and thought it’s important for kids to understand that fireworks are dangerous. I could have Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel show the dangers of playing with fireworks. If in the process of showing how fireworks can be dangerous, Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel accidentally found themselves trapped in barrage of fireworks and ended up lighting up in amazingly colorful sparks, we would all know that this was a sad event, but they had taught everybody an important point.

Or if I was to teach kids about the dangers of playing near the water by a fast moving river and both Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel accidentally fell into the river and got swept through raging rapids and then over a high waterfall, we would all feel bad, but understand that they had done a great service in teaching us about safety near rivers.

Or if I had a wood chipper and wanted to teach how dangerous it is to be near one of these machines as the machine grinds branches into small chips and Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel accidentally get stuck in one of the branches and go through the chipping machine, we would all feel terrible, but know that they had taught us a very important lesson about the dangers of wood chipping machines.

After considering numerous ways I could teach kids about the dangers in the world with Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel (and smiling the entire time), I realized that I didn’t feel like sleeping on the couch in the Hello Kitty sleeping bag for the next month.

I have therefore decided to let the readers of this blog tell me how they would use Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel to teach kids about safety. Of course you should have a video camera to tape the lesson and any accidental events that may happen during it.

If you feel that you can do justice in teaching an important lesson to all the kids about safety using the Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel plush pictured here, please leave a comment on exactly what lesson you would teach and at the end of the week I will choose the best one to send these two plush to…

As you all know, I promised to choose someone to give the Hello Kitty ceramic figure to in order to protect it when you overwhelmingly voted to save her instead of letting me smash her with a hammer. There were a lot of entries that put a lot of thought into how to protect Hello Kitty, but ultimately I decided to go with Heather and her Nerf missile guns (she is being sent out this weekend), because one of the things that I love to see in Hello Kitty Hell is poetic justice:

Although I don’t have a Blendtec blender with which to protect Ms Kitty, and I don’t have a tank that I could use in Hello Kitty’s Arsenal of Free Cuteness, I can offer the services of my geek brother and I. You see, my brother is rather famous for his many ingenious ways in which he modifies Nerf guns into semi-automatic dart-firing machines. And honestly, as much as I love tanks, they’re much to hard and rigid to protect Hello Kitty. And as much as I love Blendtec blenders, the blender is much too square, and its blades are much too sharp and shiny. No, Hello Kitty needs to be protected by something from her own universe; something soft, cute, brightly colored, and slightly fuzzy. You know, like a Nerf dart… that’s capable of being fired across a football field.

You might be wondering, how would a Nerf gun compare to the protection power of the glock that someone else offered? Well, I somehow doubt that Hello Kitty’s cute little petite, feminine hands could withstand the shock of firing a glock. But she could easily fire the cute little missiles that come out of a Nerf gun with enough force to give a full sized man a black eye. See? Not only would a Nerf gun provide protection through pain, that pain would come from something as soft, gooshy, and cute as Hello Kitty herself. It’s a little something I like to call Poetic Justice.

So if you grant me the privilege of protecting Hello Kitty, I will do my best to guard her with my family’s entire arsenal of super soft, super cute weaponry. That includes everything from the air-tank powered automatic dart rifle, to the massive customized camel-back missile launcher. I’d even take Hello Kitty out to the next Nerf War, so that she can learn how to defend herself with a Nerf gun her own size. But if she should happen to take a little friendly fire, don’t worry, how much damage could a Nerf missile really do?

Anyway, that’s my pitch from my Nerf soapbox. I say the best justice is poetic justice, and the best way to protect the sweetest, cutest, softest, most feminine kitty in history, is with the softest, foamiest, fastest weapons on the planet: nerf.

Now, I know that Heather will be doing her best to protect Hello Kitty so that no harm comes to her, but I also know that none of us could blame her if while teaching Hello Kitty how to protect herself with the Nerf missile launcher Hello Kitty accidentally gets some string tangled around her neck at the end of the Nerf missile and launches herself the distance of a football field into a brick wall (or some other unthinkable tragedy) since we all know accidents do happen.

I feel good in knowing that I have honored your wishes to save Hello Kitty and to place her in a protective environment…

A rare glimpse of sunshine to drown out the Hello Kitty Hell pinkness arrived in my email:

I’m going to be honest with you – I found your website by trying to find Hello Kitty items. And I’ll admit that I am (or was?) a Hello Kitty fan. Not really a fanatic, but I did shriek with delight sometimes over anything with that cat on it. Actually, my boyfriend is in Japan right now, so he sent me Hello Kitty items – an alarm clock (it speaks in Japanese, though, and doesn’t sing the Hello Kitty song), some Hello Kitty candy, and Hello Kitty noodles or something weird like that. Now, at the time, I thought this was awesome.

But then I started researching Hello Kitty items, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Hello Kitty is no ordinary cat. Call me crazy, but it has some freakish power of sucking in people with it’s cuteness. For some reason, women are more likely to be sucked in by this. Men seem to be able to resist. Fortunately, I’ve never been one to like pink, so I’ve busied myself with non-pink Hello Kitty items (tough to find, I know). But your website, the one that opened my eyes to Hello Kitty bras and Hello Kitty pads (honestly, wtf?), and that eerie Hello Kitty Darth Vadar, has almost made me disgusted with Hello Kitty.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I do think that Hello Kitty is slowly taking over the world. My boyfriend has claimed that every store in Japan has something Hello Kitty in it, so it’s already claimed them. When will it claim other places? I see it’s already claimed your home.

And to think…I wanted a Hello Kitty toaster. But now, instead of cute, it seems cultish.

And on that note I must thank you. The truth of Hello Kitty is very exposed in your blog. I only hope more people can see it. — Savvy

Of course, the true question is, how many million more to go ???

This blog was initially set up for me to vent and to warn others of Hello Kitty Hell. It never crossed my mind when I started that Hello Kitty fanatics would start to come here. Why would they when all I do is talk about what a horrifying character Hello Kitty is time and again, but I underestimated the draw Hello Kitty has for fanatics. Even when someone is pointing out their absurd fanaticism, they can’t stand the thought of missing out on something Hello Kitty, so they come in droves. But it was with this latest email that I realised how evil Hello Kitty fanatics truly are – they are now using this blog to subtly introduce their significant others to what type of Hello Kitty Hell life they can expect with the significant other not even realising it:

It is frightening to me (and sadistic) that my girlfriend would have directed me to this site. I got off of work today, and she called just as I was grabbing in to some left over pizza.

Her: Are you at your computer?
Me: No, not right now. Eating.
Her: Well, I want you to look at this site!
Me: Alright. What’s the address?
Her: Do you have your browser open?
Me: Yup. (hoping it’s not more online shopping)
Her: Okay. “HelloKitty–”
Me: (sighing, hearing that phrase)
Her: Hell. ‘dot’com.
Me: Huh. (Shocked that those three words were in sequence from her voice)

And so I delved into your blog. I read a few highlights from your entries that I thought were clever aloud to her and she laughed, like it was some sort of cute joke. However, within this, a brimming paranoia began to brew in me. Without thinking, “Nuh-uh, this isn’t how things are going to be.” (A hello kitty sleeping bag?!) Somehow we progressed to talking about our days and things that have been going on, but it is too late. I already have major concerns developing.

We’re a young couple–I’m 20 and she’s a bit younger, and in the next few months she’s moving into my two bed room apartment, which at this time is delightfully not-pink. We’ve been together for a few years now, and will be engaged soon, but over the past few weeks certain conversation topics have given me some reason to worry.

It started out mild in addiction. She’s always like Hello Kitty, the plushies, the little pins and such. Since it is irrelevant, I won’t elaborate on her addiction to pink electronics or San-X Nyan Nyan Nyanko (frightening food-cats which I’m sure you’ve been punished with having to know they exist) which until this point were the major torture-points which I was forced to appease.

Then one day we went into Build-A-Bear and she made the 17-inch stuffed Hello Kitty. She is attached to this thing. She sleeps with it, and consequently so do I. However, ever since this…thing has come into our lives, her obsession has done nothing but steepen. We had to buy all the bows for this doll, the dresses, the accessories…and I was okay with it. It was ‘cute’. At the time.

Recently she’s been doing a lot of online shopping and (oh god) eBaying. So, I got conned into buying her a matching purse and wallet, with the dreaded cat head on it. This progressed to a Coach Hello Kitty key chain, a hello kitty head contact lens kit, and a pink hello kitty head mirror compact. This is not including the cosmetic bag and the ten bracelets and necklaces with Hello Kitty’s head on it. I’m thoroughly convinced that 17-inch stuffed Kitty brainwashed her into this addiction.

Now, back to the real issue…she’s moving in. While we’re sharing a bed room, she wants a room for her Hello Kitty things, and has said it could be our office and I could have my video game stuff in there. She proposed this to me with the incentive that this heavy flow of Hello Kitty merchandise wouldn’t attack the rest of my apartment.

That was until she saw the Hello Kitty appliances. Well, I love my girlfriend. I think she’s amazing and we have a strong relationship and we’re very close. Over the years she has gotten smart, and with this intelligence has learned an apt amount of ways of tricking me.

Her: When I move in I’ll make you breakfast!
Me: Aw. How sweet. (that would be nice)
Her: You like waffles right?
Me:(slowly catching on) Yes…
Her: Wouldn’t it be nice to have me make you waffles before work?
Me: (I was right.) …Yes.
Her: Remember that Hello Kitty waffle maker?
Me: Can I have special waffles that aren’t in the shape of Hello Kitty’s head?
Her: Aw, why! It’d be so cute! Maybe they make KT butter too…

Ugh. I can just imagine the daily trauma I would have to endure every time someone asked what I had for breakfast, or when someone ever said “waffle.”

She is also especially adamant that she has all of her things mailed to the LA Sanrio Momoberry store to have all of her things custom embellished with Swavorski crystals with Hello Kitty heads all over it. It is getting worse.

What do I do? I know my bathroom won’t look like yours because she doesn’t like excess and clutter, and I know she won’t buy Hello Kitty things she doesn’t really like or thinks she could use (at this point). However, I don’t want my apartment being taken over with an obscene amount of pink, flowery, heart clad, cat-head shaped merchandise.

I guess the question is what CAN I do? She wants the ring bearer in our wedding to be a small child in a hello kitty suit. She has told me that Hello Kitty will have to be the topping on our Wedding Cake. That was her compromise after I talked her out of having a complete Hello Kitty Wedding and Reception. However, another part of her mastermind scheme is that we will have to go to Puroland. If you don’t know what that is: Good. It’s a Hello Kitty Sanrio Themepark in Tokyo. She also wants to visit Harmony Land.

Now, we’ll be moving to Japan in the next few years for business…so I can’t even IMAGINE what our place will look like then. I guess I just want to know…Is it too late?

He’s a goner…might as well set up an account for him to start writing a Hello Kitty Hell column right now…

It seems that the Hello Kitty fans came out in force to keep me from smashing Hello Kitty voting 829 to 643 to save her. This show of unity for the one without a mouth has deeply moved me and made me re-evaluate my thoughts regarding Hello Kitty. I have been converted. I now see clearly the need to protect Hello Kitty from evil people as myself that want to smash her. Since I promised to give her away, I want to make sure she goes to a home where she will have the needed protection from people such as me that would want to do her harm.

For example, if you had a tank, that would be a great place for me to send Hello Kitty because nobody is going to mess with someone that has a tank. And even if the unthinkable happened — such as you placed Hello Kitty on the ground in front of the tank to make sure she remained well protected and your friend started up the tank without your knowledge and accidentally ran over Hello Kitty while you were filming and taking photos, nobody could really blame you because you had Hello Kitty’s best interest in mind and accidents do happen.

Or if your home just happened to have a flame thrower, I would feel quite safe sending Hello Kitty to you for protection because who would mess with someone with a flame thrower? Now if it happened that while testing the flame thrower to make sure it was in good working order to use for the protection of Hello Kitty, Hello Kitty somehow got in front of the flame which happened to be caught on camera or video, we’d all know that you had her best interest in mind and terrible accidents do happen.

I would also be willing to send you Hello Kitty if you have one of those “will it blend?” blenders and placed Hello Kitty inside it for protection because who would stick their hand into one of those things? Now if someone accidentally hit the blend button while you had a video camera in your hand, we’d all feel terrible, but know that you had only the best intentions of protecting Hello Kitty in mind.

I have decided to send the Hello Kitty figure to the person that has the best protection plan for her. Just for your information, I believe explosives of any type have a high protection level. So if you think that you can provide a protective environment and have a video camera and/or digital camera on the slim chance that something awful goes wrong, leave a comment with all the things that you plan to “protect” Hello Kitty with. I will grant custody of Hello Kitty to whomever I feel can defend her best because we certainly must have massive protective forces in place so that someone like me can’t smash her on purpose.

Thank you, Hello Kitty fans, for teaching me this important lesson…

My wife announced last night that there are only Hello Kitty fans that visit this blog and my attempt to find others who are in Hello Kitty Hell or sympathise with me has been a failure. “Everyone loves Hello Kitty and it will never change!”

I tried to explain that while it may appear that the readers here like Hello Kitty, it’s only a small minority of fanatics that believe that. In reality, even those who say they like Hello Kitty really don’t. Of course, this sent me to the couch for the night in the Hello Kitty sleeping bag, but it also produced the “Hello Kitty: Save or Smash” contest.

My wife believes that for some unfathomable reason, I haven’t seen the Hello Kitty light and I am the only person that doesn’t believe that everything Hello Kitty is the “cutest thing ever” (“You must have been born with deformed genes” is her current theory). I, on the other hand, know that all the Hello Kitty fans that visit this site really have a deep dark desire to see Hello Kitty smashed into smithereens. So we will let you vote and decide.

I have secretly kidnapped a Hello Kitty porcelain figure and all of you will decide whether it gets smashed to bits or saved. To the right in the sidebar is a poll and the choice to save or smash Hello Kitty. The voting will last until the end of this month. If more people vote to save Hello Kitty, I will lose all faith in humanity and extinguish all hope that Hello Kitty Hell may someday end, but will still refrain from smashing her and I’ll give the figure away as a prize. If the vote is to smash, I will believe that there is still hope in Hello Kitty Hell and gleefully take a hammer to the Hello Kitty figure. The choice is yours…

Oh, wow! Imagine that. The first vote in the poll is to smash…

Don’t even bother asking, it isn’t going to happen. All your pleading, whining, and crying have absolutely no effect on me because basically, I don’t care. In fact, it rather brings a smile to my face seeing Hello Kitty fanatics whine and plead for something they can’t find (kind of like Hello Kitty Hell in reverse and it almost seems poetic in justice – my wife, the ultimate Hello Kitty fanatic, doesn’t only bring Hello Kitty Hell on me, but also onto other Hello Kitty fanatics because they can’t find what they want). Maybe there is a higher being after all…

I live in Hello Kitty Hell so there is absolutely no way I am going to spend any of my time searching, looking or even telling you where you can find any of the Hello Kitty stuff my wife locates (I view this as a good samaritan service to all human beings across the world on my part so they don’t have to look at even more Hello Kitty – and especially to any significant others you may have. I bet they would even pay me for this service.)

Or maybe I should just put it in words that any Hello Kitty fanatic should be able to understand: Hello Kitty Hell has no mouth – you’ll simply have to find the answer with your heart 😉

Apparently the public relations firm that is promoting the new Sanrio site believes so:

Stumbled across your blog when I was doing searches for hellokitty stuff. Nice blog. Let me introduce myself first. I’m Allan Lianza, I work for Outblaze Limited. We provide online services to our clients. One of these clients are Sanrio. We run Sanriotown.com, a site that offers email, forum, games, video uploads and etc. We were wondering if you can post a PR of our new upgrades to the site? Its just a simple press release nothing fancy. I’m attaching a copy in this email if your interested.

Hoping for your reply and thanks!

Sincerely,

Allan Lianza
Content Support Supervisor

????!!!???? (shaking head in disbelief) I thought it was a joke from one of my readers when I first saw it, but sure enough, a press release was attached. I attribute it to Hello Kitty fanatics not being able to comprehend that a negative word could ever be uttered against her. That is the only logical reason someone promoting a Hello Kitty site would ask me to help…I’m trying to escape.

Isn’t that typical Hello Kitty Hell for you? I complain and ridicule Hello Kitty fanatics and then the company that runs Hello Kitty asks me to help promote Hello Kitty. This nightmare is becoming even worse than I imagined….