Guys! I’m so excited by the response to the PO Box! I got lots of great comments and emails and, once I have a few days to make logistical calls, expect an email from me. If you don’t know what I’m talking about or aren’t sure if you might be interested (in using it, even if you don’t want to make a donation), then check it out here.

Over on Secret Society of List Addicts, check out a few split-second decisions that tempt me on a daily basis but would undoubtedly ruin my friggin’ life.

NTKOG #229: The kind of self-confident master of her own domain who is good enough, smart enough and, goddamnit, will tell off a jerk who has it coming.

I am: kind of on the meek side. One of those people who convulsively apologizes just for walking in your path or — heaven forfend! — accidentally breathing on you.

I am not: meek because of any great gentleness or sweet nature. Perish the thought. I usually just have a hard time realizing when I have the right to be angry.

The Scene: My apartment, at a quarter past eight, booking it for the bus to work. Because I’ve been waking up early to clean my apartment, I’d spent the past hour or so attacking all the nebulous to-recycle junkmail and magazines that had accumulated in every crevice of my apartment. So I was feeling mighty accomplished to bustle out the door, carrying two full trash bags of rejected papers.

On the way out, ran into my super. “What day is it?” he barked at me.

“Wednesday,” I chirped, positively seething virtue.

“And do you know what day the trash gets collected?” he demanded.

“Uhhh, Wednesday, I think?” Not even nine in the morning and already, in the eyes of the world, I was faltering.

As my super stared at me with scorn and pity, I swear I could see the blood floating up like lava lamp bubbles to the swollen anger-vein in his forehead.

“Then why are you putting your trash out now?! It’s already been picked up! What are you thinking of?!” As he lathered himself up to righteous wrath, he leaned his whole body into the doorway separating me from the staircase — and the world beyond, the one where I needed to get on a damn bus. And then he really launched into it.

A word about my landlord. Dude is, for starters, super-Soviet. And while he’s a generally nice man, because of some combination of my age and gender, he seems to assume my life is the epicenter of some moral depravity the depths of which he can’t even fathom. I mean, me! Sure, I may have cut a few lines of fleur-de-sel in the bathroom once but, dude, I donate to charity! I eat organic! I go to the library every friggin’ day.

Then again, this is the man who blames every broken thing in my apartment — from broken locks to leaky faucets to burned-out lightbulbs — on my “many gentleman visitors”. Like, heads-up, sir? The only man who’s been in my bed this year is PG Wodehouse. And seeing as how he’s been dead for forty years, something tells me he wouldn’t be too interested in my faucets, leaky or otherwise.

After the super had screamed “inconsiderate” twice, I put the garbage bags down and settled in for the long haul. When he started yelling so loudly that two neighbors poked their heads out the door to see what was going on, I pulled out my iPhone and hit the stopwatch.

Five minutes and thirty-eight seconds. For five-minutes and thirty-eight seconds, he accused me of being inconsiderate, ungrateful, lazy, a secret basement-hygiene saboteur.

Normal TKOG would have started apologizing ten seconds in and — in all honesty — probably be out on the street already. Sure, I did nothing wrong, but an apology is cheap and doesn’t hurt anyone. But, dude, is it so very wrong to admit when you’re not in the wrong?

Finally, when he’d reached the greatest swell of his rage, he paused for breath, and I cut in:

“Hey, you know how I pay rent every month? Well, if you want me to keep on doing that, you need to let me go right now so I can get to work.” He sputtered angrily, as I passed, then turned back: “And next time? You should probably calm the fuck down.”

The Verdict: Dude, I think that’s the first time in my life I’ve ever cursed at an actual (non-parent) adult. Crazy. Not that I’d do that part of it again, but the rest? Okay.

A coda to the story: a few days later, I ran into him in the foyer, and he apologized for losing his temper. And normal TKOG would be so thrilled by the spirit of reconciliation that she’d be practically heimleiching out all the apologies stuck in her throat. But stuck to my no-apologies rule.

“I understand and I accept your apology, but I think you’ll find I’m a reasonable person. Next time you want me to do something, please ask nicely.”

Frig yeah! No apologies! Not ever! Except, actually, still probably sometimes! Or even most of the time! But I think I’m going to make more of an effort to apologize when I’ve done something wrong, and not just continue my current path of ceaselessly apologizing just for being alive.

NTKOG: The kind of frugal, level-headed domestic goddess who takes yo’ Depression-era grandma for a run for housekeeping money.

I am: at least a solid half-level above Microwave Gourmet in the kitchen. Isn’t that enough? No? You beasts!

I am not: secure enough with the essentials of domesticity to even begin considering thrift, frugality or any of those other Laura Ingalls Wilder motivational cross-stitch staples.

The Scene: My postage-stamp Brighton apartment, which is just about big enough to hold one — as long as you don’t have big dreams.

Let me level with you a bit, kittens: Ignore the number in the description up there. I haven’t just done 222 or 250 or even 300 of these NTKOGs — I’ve done more than I can easily count. The problem? Not all of them make good stories. In fact, half of the things I do specifically for this blog end up getting scrapped because there just isn’t 500 words of content in ‘em.

I’ve taken to thinking of these failed NTKOGs as didn’t-kill-me’s. ’cause that’s all there really is to say. Wore a too-short skirt work? Didn’t kill me. Told off a homeless dude for sticking his arm in my shirt up to the elbow? Didn’t kill me. Sat up until 3am drinking boxed wine on the curb with a Jordanian immigrant? Well, you get the message.

Unsurprisingly, many of these didn’t-kill-me’s are stories that take place in the privacy of my own apartment, where I try day by day to take on the non-glamorous task of finally becoming an adult. Still, in the spirit of frugality (and saving you having to read a post every single day ’til August 23), let us indulge for a moment in a compost heap of domestic-themed NTKOGs.

NTKOG #224: Washing and re-using various disposable household goods. This one was brought on by my year-long spurning of paper towels. Heck, if I can save a tree or two, how many casualties could I save in the plastic rainforest?

Cue many weeks of rinsing and reusing plastic cutlery at work, using old wine bottles as water carafes (’till they crowded out my fridge, that is — whoops), and painstakingly washing and drying my old Ziploc bags.

The Verdict: Oh man, this made me feel like the special guest star of a Hoarders prequel. With the exception of the wine bottles, which felt a bit roguish and debonair, it’s just — it’s just so much effort to save something that costs mere pennies. Plus, I’m not convinced it’s environmentally useful, what with the massive water consumption it entails. Voting this one a thumbs-down with a double serving of, dude, I am not my grandmother. (Which is probably a good thing, or else my fridge would be too crammed with decades-expired cans of lard to have room for wine in the first place.)

NTKOG #225: Eating expired food. See what I mean about the non-glamorous thing?

Let me be straight with you: I’m such a paranoid culinary princess that I can’t even eat leftovers more than 24 hours later. And the second we approach the expiry month of a food product? See ya.

Nonetheless, conquered my revulsion by working through two half-gallon bottles of month-expired soy milk. Which, unlike moo milk, tasted exactly the same as they did the day I bought them.

Later, growing riskier, I cleaned out my seriously limp crisper drawer into a pot of chili that tasted — what’d'ya know?! — exactly like my usual recipe. But my craving for zombified produce reached its pinnacle when I prepared and ate, of my own free will, banana-nut dinosaur muffins out of these:

I generally have a rule against foods that can be described as "sludgey," but even three weeks old, organic bananas are too $$$ to throw away.

The Verdict: The first didn’t-kill-me I’ve been delighted and surprised to find actually. didn’t. kill me.

NTKOG #226: The kind of gender-neutralized toolbelt-wielding lady who fearlessly handywomans her own environs. By which I mean. I scraped and re-grouted the crusty tiles in my bathroom. For fun.

The Verdict: Okay, this one actually did almost kill me. Because my Roomba was running in the other rooms I, like an idiot, closed myself in the bathroom for three hours with the caulking solution, then hyperventilated and passed out very briefly in the bathtub. Which is a lot funnier in retrospect than it was at the time.

Oh whatever. Like Bob Vila never had a bloopers reel…

Meta-Verdict: One doesn’t like to brag but — this guy? Totally not dead yet. No, no, hold your applause.

Correction: I might have died of cuteness after eating these.

NTKOG #223: The kind of jumpsuit-chaser who, not content with her current social milieu, jumps at the chance to add inmates to the mix.

I am: not sure I know anyone who’s ever been in prison. Primarily because I haven’t stayed in touch with anyone from high school.

I am not: well-acquainted with prisoners’ rights or psychology. Heck, I don’t even watch movies that involve prisons.

The Scene: My local CVS, where I picked up five pleasant by generic birthday cards. At the check-out aisle, the clerk asked if I had a lot of friends. “Not — not at all, actually.”

Afterwards, went online to Write A Prisoner. Y’know, as one generally does after visiting the stationery store.

A little background here: senior year of college, I got obsessed with the idea of becoming pen pals with Erik Menendez. It stemmed from a Radar article that was running the rounds, about a pop culture journalist, Bill Geerhart, who pretended to be his eight-year-old self, writing to famous Death Row inmates for advice about the kinds of problems eight-year-olds have. (Should I drop out of school? Why do I have to clean my room? Who would win: a shark or a T-Rex? That sort of thing.)

In hopes of getting his story, he also included a self-addressed stamped envelope and stationery for all of his correspondents. A number of them wrote back, including Erik Menendez who, with elegant penmanship, wrote something along the lines of: “Thank you for your letter, but next time there is no need to send paper or a stamp or that sort of thing,” before pouring out a thoughtful and amazingly sweet four-page letter.

I don’t know what it was, but that sentence made me cry. In fact, it still makes my eyes prickle. Maybe because it was so considerate, so hopeful, completely oblivious to the fact that he was being manipulated for a smarmy media piece.

When I first proposed writing to Menendez, Justice and another friend of ours vehemently dissuaded me — for, I’ll admit, the very practical reason that disclosing my name and address to a felon might be classified as a Very Bad Idea.

But while they were dissuading me, the other friend told me: “They’re just inmates. If you really want to do something nice, do it for someone who deserves it.”

Even all these years later, I still find that thought upsetting. It seems so … unforgiving.

So, after I bought the cards, I checked Write a Prisoner and found five inmates who shared my birthday and sent them a card. God knows I’ve had a few horrible birthdays, but never in the solitary-confinement class. Everyone deserves a little recognition on their birthday and no matter what awful things I might have done or might still do in this world, I know I wouldn’t want anyone to forget that small human fact.

The Verdict: To anyone who might be concerned, I did what I could about taking precautions. I used a modified form of my name (full first name + middle name) and a very non-specific address — which will, sadly, preclude people writing back. It was hard, actually, finding five profiles that didn’t begin “Hey ladies!”. Although one was by a man only a few years older than me, who quoted The Odyssey and talked simply and seriously about how he was looking to continue his self-education. I wrote him with my real address.

I’m not worried, because he doesn’t get out until 2028. I don’t know what he’s in for. I didn’t have the heart to look.

Now I’m looking into programs through local churches to actually write and receive responses from people without disclosing my address. It feels wrong not to try this. I call myself a writer because I cherish the absurd notion that I might be able to one day string a few words together in a way that changes someone’s life for the better. What if there’s someone out there who really needs a few considerate words? Wouldn’t I be a terrible phony if I didn’t at least try?

You can mock me or call me crazy all you want in the comments section. Doing this was my birthday present to myself. (Well, that, and about a million drinks in New York, which I’m enjoying even as we speak. A girl can’t strive for personal enlightenment all the time.)

ITALICS MONSTER! Two things: 1) Cool, so there’ll definitely be some sort of little party in Boston after my NTKOG year is over. Details forthcoming, my parents’ schedules pending. 2) Forgive the recent proliferation of ads (yes, even you RSS readers): I’m just trying everything for a week to see which earns me the most, after which, in the words of Highlander, there can only be one.

NTKOG 221: The kind of sanctimonious busybody who, observing your behavior isn’t up to her purse-lipped par, grabs you by the elbow and tells you how to live.

I am: annoyed by nothing in the world quite so much as old people who, seeing me on the street, descend from the guru-mountain of senescence to lecture me about my clothes, my hair, my body — whatever pops into their minds.

I am not: even always the best judge of my behavior, let alone anyone else’s.

The Scene: The Boston Public Library, a quarter of an hour before closing time. I was browsing the W’s fiction shelf for some nighttime reading, when a shriek ricocheted through the marble foyer.

“Help me! Help! Make her stop!” a teenage girl screamed.

A series of ominous thumps, then a deep women’s voice, cracking with panic, cried out: “Call the police! Call an ambulance! Goddamnit, call somebody!”

Her voice physically dragged me across ten feet of carpeting and into the foyer, where a few patrons stood frozen at the check-out line and half a dozen library employees clustered in an anxious knot.

On the outside of one of the big glass doors, a woman — mid-forties but with an older face — wrestled a skinny teen girl against the glass. The girl twisted herself around, trying to land a vicious elbow into the woman’s face, letting out an animal wail.

Somehow, the women hooked her left ankle into one of the next set of doors and dragged it open enough to scream into the library again: “Call a fucking ambulance! It’s my daughter. She stole my phone. She just got out of the hospital.”

“Don’t fucking touch me!” the girl screeched. “I’ve never seen this woman before in my life!” The rest was lost in sobs.

And maybe it was the scared resignation in the woman’s voice, or the way she was ripping her body in an attempt to restrain the girl while seeking help, but something told me this was indeed a mother, dealing with only the latest episode in a long, sad battle with her daughter’s mental illness. It’s just a guess, mind you. But if you were there, I think you’d agree it’s a good one.

After two or three more minutes of wrestling and wailing, the head security guard stepped outside. “Has someone helped you?” he boomed.

“No. I keep asking. I’ve asked five fucking times for an ambulance! I took her out of the hospital and it was a mistake — she needs to go back right now.”

The guard paced back to the security desk in quick, measured steps, and — finally — called the proper autorities. As he started describing the situation to the dispatcher, I checked out my book and slinked out of the library.

Except, out on the street, I was the only person moving. There must have been three dozen pedestrians gawking at the specacles — eyes wide, whispering to each other out of the corners of their mouths, all but nursing bowls of Jiffy Pop.

And, dude, something inside of me snapped.

“Hey,” I broke into a coven of after-work PR blondes. “They called the cops. You should probably keep walking — all these people can’t be helping the situation.”

One of the blondes made a moue of disgust, but they shifted.

One by one, ran up to the groups of goggling pedestrians. “Dude, there’s nothing to see there. It’s none of your business.”

Some people moved away; some stayed, staring, smiling, speculating on the scene with schadenfreudistic glee. Then, out of the corner of my eye, a glint of iPhone casing.

Twenty feet from the scene, a crew of high-school boys stood, one training his phone on the whole conflict.

“Are you taping this?!” I spat. “What, are you going to put it on YouTube?”

“Come on,” the ringleader grinned. “It’s hilarious.”

And there were many things I wanted to do. I wanted to swipe the phone from his hand and smash it to the ground. I wanted to click through his contacts and call his mother, tell him what her son was out doing. I wanted to smack his smug face until he learned the difference between suffering and entertainment. But of course I couldn’t do any of those things — not with the cops already on their way. So, I did the only thing I could do.

I danced.

Ducked into the path of his iPhone video until I was obscuring the entire frame, then danced my spastic ass off. Where he swiveled, I followed instantly; where he tried to evade, I only took up more space; where he ran, I followed. I blocked out every trace of the two women’s struggle until, finally, he gave up.

“Crazy bitch,” he snarled. Which tells me two things. First, this kid obviously doesn’t appreciate fine dance. And second, that he might have a bigger lesson to learn about what is and what isn’t entertainment.

The Verdict: Not sure how sold I am on this one. On the one hand, it’s the type of thing I feel myself increasingly drawn to do these days, yet lack the commitment (and willingness to look like a total ass) to actually pull off.

On the other, it doesn’t escape me that it might be a trifle hypocritical. After all, who am I to unilaterally declare what is and is not a worthy public spectacle? Besides, to be perfectly honest, I know I would have been staring away if I were that teenager. So what about a year ago? Or six months ago? Or yesterday?

Making other people’s ethical decisions for them: fraught. Guerrilla-dancing in other people’s YouTube-bound videos: hilarious. Let’s go ahead and call this one a draw.

This post is about me trying to improve my body but, entre nous, even without trying, women already kind of have the being-sexy thing down to a science. Check out my list of top five all-time sexy female attributes over at SSoLA. (Trigger Warning: accidental, uh, cannibal tangent?)

NTKOG #211: The kind of disgustingly virtuous personal fitness junkie who jolts awake  at 6am, runs approximately half the circumference of the globe, then saunters into work with a soy-protein smoothie, no worse for the wear.

I am: out of shape. As in, I wouldn’t take on Pavarotti in a footrace. And, yes, I am aware he’s dead.

I am not: up for flaunting this fact to the general populace. While I’m certainly one for periodic bursts of virtuous exercise, they tend to take place behind closed doors. Heck, even buying a guest-pass to an all-women’s gym stressed me out!

The Scene: The mean streets of Brighton, Allston and – depending how in-shape I feel – as far as Brookline. Y’know, the streets where other people exist. And watch you. And judge.

For the past two weeks (sssssshh, I don’t I won’t stick with it, but let’s play pretend, shall we?), four mornings a week I’ve been jerking myself out of bed at 6:30 and immediately shackling on those running shoes for a half-hour or so of mad dashing. I’ll always be a Brain, but I’m trying to make more of an effort now to think of my body as a pivotal component of my human experience, instead of a dude who just happens to get invited to all the same parties I do.

Have you guys heard of the Couch-to-5K program? It’s basically interval training for people who, like me, suck at exercise. More importantly, it has a free iPhone app, wherein a posh woman with a slight New Zealand accent coos in your ear: “Now run for two minutes!” “You can walk again in half a minute!” “You can start walking … in ten seconds!”

She always fools me with that last one. Bitch.

For those of you blessed enough to live far, far away from muggy East Coast summers, let me tell you: early-morning jogging and 80-degree, 90%-humidity weather do. not. mix. The first morning of my “training” (ha!), as I launched into the third of what should have been eight easy one-minute runs, I suddenly stopped, gasping. My friggin’ lungs were filling with water! Flaming water! Oh god make it stop.

Forget Couch-To-5K. Maybe there’s some sort of remedial Bed-To-Couch program I could start with?

The part I most feared, though, was being forced to catch eyes with other early-morning dwellers while my sweaty, wheezing self polluted the neighborhood scenery. It’s not nice and it’s not okay, but you know we’ve all had cruel thoughts or even made snide comments about out-of-shape joggers. Obviously it makes no sense, because, dude, they’re obviously trying to help their bodies, but – I don’t know. People can be kind of sucky.

For a couple of mornings, I was desperately paranoid that the worst would come to pass. My seventh-grade crush would pop out behind some shrubbery and jeer: “Uh, maybe you should have tried diet before exercise!” Maybe Jillian Michaels would leap down from the top of a building and punch me in the face. Something awful would happen – I just knew it.

Then, on my third morning, the thing I’d feared the most: as I careened down a residential hill near the end of my work-out, the back of my tank top blooming a gruesome Rorschach of sweat, a middle-aged man working on the truck in his driveway shouted something out to me.

“What?!” I called back, taking out my earbuds, trying to set my jaw into a weak smile.

“I said good for you, honey.” He shouted back. “Hot fucking day. I couldn’t do it.”

Somehow the pain mysteriously seeped out of my tired muscles as I raced the rest of the way home.

The Verdict: Well, after a few mornings of surreptitiously googling “how to run with oxygen tank” at work, I think I’ve very slightly started to get the hang of the thing. A little more mileage, a smidgeon fewer pleas for death. Hell, this time a year from now, I might not even break a sweat trying to peel an orange.

NTKOG #208: The kind of bubbly, over-friendly chatterbox who peppers every banal sentence with enough “honey”s and “sweetie”s to give you diabetes.

I am: revolted by over-familiarity. Yeah, we may be fellow citizens of the universe, but don’t talk to me like you know me. Honey.

I am not: super comfortable being affectionate with my half-dozen cherished friends – let alone perfect strangers.

The Scene: Various retail outlets and eateries around the greater Boston area, where, for about a week, this stoic misanthrope giggled and simpered with perfect strangers like they were members of her dang wedding party.

Aside from the red passport tucked into my lockbox, I rarely remember that I’m very fully one-half British. Sure, I like blackcurrant juice and Enid Blyton novels (who doesn’t?) but I’ve always prided myself on my freewheeling, egalitarian American social graces. Except – EXCEPT – when perfect strangers have the audacity to refer to me by some pet name best left to boy-girl relationships.

Call me “muffin” in public. Go on, try it. I guarantee you I’ll draw myself up, Queen Mother style, and glare at you like you just sneezed in my open mouth.

And yet, for one week: “Don’t worry about it, honey,” I cooed to the bagel shop employee who told me they were out of light scallion cream cheese.  Later, after the dour postman dropped off a heavy post at work (all bills, of course), I called gaily to his retreating form: “See you tomorrow, sweetie!”

Bank tellers, 7-eleven employees, panhandlers: the world was my 24-hour dessert buffet, and I was calling every damn item by name.

By the time the week was done, I heaved a cold sigh of relief and prepared to return to return to my usual Spartan style of address (nothing more intimate than “sir” or “madam” ‘til marriage, please).

Then, not two days later, Justice, Muscles and I grabbed a quick bite at a cute little Williamsburg restaurant. As I inelegantly demolished an order of pork ribs, a waitress passed by and discreetly floated a stack of napkins into my lap. I thanked her, then turned to find Justice gazing, aghast:

Justice: What did you just tell her?
TKOG: I just – I just said thank you. Didn’t I?
Justice: You said, “BLESS YOU, HONEY.”

Oh god. What have I become?

The Verdict: I guess this doesn’t make me as uncomfortable as I thought? I still think it sounds a little crass, and in theory prefer rigid boundaries with strangers, but, after the week, an observation: if you address people extra-sweetly with genuine good spirit, they notice it. They like it. They smile to acknowledge it. And I guess I must have internalized that lesson more thoroughly than I thought. With an extra bonus helping of talking like an old Southern lady thrown in.

On Secret Society of List Addicts, check out vacations I’d send myself on if I weren’t so broke I actively have to choose between food and laundry. (Hint: I always choose food.)

NTKOG #207: The kind of modern-age guru who – when casting around the darkest corners of her psyche – realizes, hey, there’s an app for that. (And at $1.99, spiritual well-being comes cheap!)

I am: wary of New-Age jiggerypokery, including but not limited to: hypnosis, “self-esteem” and quinoa.

I am not: trying to get competitive, but I might be the most unenlighted person I know. Hey, how many first kisses have you had in Wal-Mart parking lots?!

The Scene: A late evening bus from New York up to Boston, obsessively cataloguing my neurotic thoughts while hungover college students dozed in the seats around me.  In a last-ditch effort for serenity, tried to meditate my twitching, vibrating self into an uneasy physical rest.

Suddenly, a (recyclable, eco-friendly) lightbulb! Hypnosis! Signed into the App Store to check out the free trial contenders: a half-hour program for improved self-esteem (um, no) and another for restful sleep. Jackpot!

Once I downloaded it, wriggled into a comfortable position and plugged in my earbuds as deep as they could go. The closer to your soul the better, right?

After some bird chirping and gong ringing, a disembodied man’s nasal voice started speaking to me from deep within my ear canal. “Close your eyes and relax,” he told me. “Picture yourself outside in your perfect place on a beautiful day.”

All y'all desert rats know what I'm talking about.

As I sunk lower in the bus seat, he directed me to shine an imaginary sun on each of my muscles in turn as they melted into utter relaxation. “The sun warms your face” – slack-jawed, I drooled on myself – “and now it shines on your chest and stomach” – I slowly dripped another six inches lower in the seat – “and now it warms the toes on your left foot. Really feel each little toe relax!

Wait, what?! You mean – you mean the left foot that’s currently crunched at a 160-degree angle to avoid the risk of accidentally making contact with some other dude’s bare foot? You mean that one? Oh, man, Relaxo Towne Express! Choo choo!

I pulled myself up haughtily in the seat and it took fifteen more minutes of deep-ear blathering (something about candles? a sunset might have also been involved?) for him to liquefy me back to a Capri-Sun-commercial-esque puddle of relaxation.

Just as I started to enter the velvety blackness of welcome unconsciousness, Disembodied Voice dropped to a whisper: “You are now completely relaxed. You will leave your unconscious mind open only to my voice. You will absorb every bit of the very important information I am about to tell you.”

On the count of three, you will chant your Visa card number...

Wait. What. The. FUCK?!

My whole body jerked upwards like a marionette, wild-eyed and desperate to protect myself against Disembodied B’s attempted brain-rape.

Disappointingly, he just wanted to tell me lots of stuff about how I’m a good person for trying to take control of my unconsciousness, and how restful sleep is this big noble gift I’m giving myself and how I’m basically a Chivalrous Knight of Olde for vanquishing my fear of unconsciousness with this free trial iPhone app.

I’d already sunk halfway under the chair in front of me, murmuring incoherent agreement (“Yes I am great!”) and was three milliseconds from sleep when, damn it all, the Disembodied Bastard trotted out the old healing sun motif yet and – curses upon you, you nasal bastard! – directed my personal consciousness-sun to wake me up, muscle group by muscle group, and face the day alert and alive.

Dude. Psyche-blocked.

The Verdict: A two-pronged upshot to today’s tale, loves. First: I obviously found some aspects of hypnosis at least somewhat relaxing, and so am interested in re-trying it in a more appropriate physical context. Despite the fact that this experience suggests I won’t be able to turn my conscious mind off for long enough to experience much joy. (What else is new.)

Second: When I started the hypnosis, I felt especially well-dressed for the part, because I was wearing a long, floaty hippie skirt – one of those loose, elastic-waisted numbers. NOT THE CASE. Between all the relaxation puddling and jerking abruptly upward in my seat, after the half-hour course I realized that, without noticing, I’d managed to roll my skirt entirely off my hips. Yes. I was sitting bare-ass on a bus seat.

Cue two full hours of TKOG attempting to subtly stand up enough to readjust the skirt without a) flashing the couple behind her, or b) waking the girl next to her. Both of which I ultimately did. No fewer than four times.

Yeah, maybe I should have bought that self-esteem hypnosis course after all.

The lovely Amy of Just A Titch was awesome enough to post an interview with me today as part of her Start Fresh Summer series. Check it out to read a little about the life dream I threw away, why I’m less of an asshole now, and thoughts about how to scrap your so-so life and start fresh!

On List Addicts, embarrassing early-aughts hiphop I physically cannot stop myself from listening to on repeat.

NTKOG #204: The kind of suave, adorable attention whore whose daily soundbytes qualify — in her own mind at least — as capital-N News.

I am: tolerably amusing in bite-size chunks, some have suggested. However…

I am not: super into thrusting my name into the semi-literary world in any milieu less masturbatory than my fetal fiction career.

The Scene: My tiny apartment office, transformed for a few weeks into a cutthroat all-publicity-is-good-publicity (diet)coked-up PR maelstrom. There are bloggers out there, I’ve heard, who want to get famous — and bully for them, I say, but this dude just wants to write. However, for just a few days, I had a singular goal: to slide my words or, god willing, smiling mug under the face of every semi-literate man, woman and gender dysphoric warrior in America.

Considered and promptly rejected the idea of emailing terse, over-hyped press releases about myself to cranky Conde Nast interns. But how else to infiltrate the media? Guerrilla newspaper stuffing? Hacking TMZ’s Photoshop programs? Uh, sky-writing?

Enter Help A Reporter Out: a service that pairs stressed-out reporters with aspiring journalistic starfuckers with no aim greater than seeing their own names in print. Perfect! Signed up for the site and sat back to let the offers roll in.

Good news about HARO: the service sends out three digest emails a day — as well as several last-minute tweets — specifying exactly what sort of sources they need and, where applicable, exactly which opinions the reporters need to hear before the paper goes to bed.

Less good news: unless you’re a paleontology-certified personal trainer willing to give five sentences about the economic implications of Mr. T’s social relevance, you might have your work cut out sifting through offers.

However, within two months, I’d achieved my goal of becoming a media darling. Sort of.

Current tally: several quotes in a super-bourg Boston Globe article, which hilariously referred to me as a nascent socialite (um, dudes, I don’t even own a hair dryer); a quote in a national women’s magazine, in which I discuss a sexual mishap that caused me to compare my escaped NuvaRing to a “gooey hula hoop”; a quote and PICTURE in — honest to god, guys — a NATIONAL BEAUTY MAGAZINE.

The Verdict: Apparently the (sweet, extremely awesome) reporters I’ve worked with are really emphasizing the darling aspect of my new media darling persona. Judging by the press, I’m a glamorous, sexually adventurous socialista. But, uh, last time I checked, I’m still the same old grungy, celibate socialist. Now with a few extra-hilarious google results after my name.

That said, I’ve stayed in contact with a few writers from said national beauty magazine, and periodically send ‘em more hilarious, unprintable soundbytes that — weirdly — sometimes get printed. So even if it isn’t my key to journalistic superstardom, at the very least, it’s an entertaining new hobby. You should try it too, if you’re so inclined. Then we can trade Talking Head business cards and share a throaty chuckle at the grim lots of those poor schmucks who don’t fritter away their lives as amateur media darlings.

Guys, I was set to announce the Ask Me Anything winners today, but then something happened last night that I wanted to write about right away. Winners are going up tomorrow, though; I wrote a whole post about it. (ps: thanks for bearing with my oafish self. You guys are totally boss and I hope you get let out of work early today.)

NTKOG #202: The kind of fussy busybody who takes it upon herself to mediate your relationship woes — or bring in a third party, if necessary.

I am: no Montel. (Though I did stand next to him in an elevator once. Surprisingly bad skin.)

I am not: perfect in my own relationships; why would I hold you to a higher standard?

The Scene: Around midnight in Chez TKOG. I’m just turning out the light to curl up with my latest library find when, out of nowhere, a barrage of atomic F-bombs explodes through my open windows and right into my apartment.

Break-Up Couple.

Break-Up Couple lives in the apartment building across the courtyard from mine, and has been breaking up every week or two ever since I moved in. I’ll admit, at first I found it endearing: she would shriek accusations, his plaintive “baby! baby!”s would gradually bellow into counter-accusations, she’d throw him a few good slaps, then transition into an hour of primal screaming “I hope you get chlamydia!” Back in the good old days, I used to open the windows while they fought and gather every snatch of drama. In fact, I wouldn’t be prepared to swear I didn’t settle in to enjoy the proceedings with a big bowl of popcorn.

Lately, though, the fights have gotten more intense. Two weeks ago, they kept me up until four in the morning while she threw dishes at him and screamed, “You’re a fucking toolshed! Go back to your hoes!” When he’d finally stormed out for the sixth or seventh time, there was blessed silence for a few moments, followed by a series of loud cracks. Confused, I pried open the shades and caught a glimpse of her silhouette in the bathroom. She was hunched over, smashing her head again and again into the wall, as hard as she could. The impact rang out like gunshots.

Warm weather has brought out the worst in Break-Up Couple. Because everyone’s windows are open, their voices detonate right into your living room. Which brings me back to last night, for twenty minutes my apartment echoing with hundred-decibel “fuck you!”s, oozing acid.

Although I try to hide my nosiness, and certainly understand that all relationships are different and should be left to themselves, the lack of sleep has started to get to me. As she slapped him last night, I considered heckling out the window or even threatening to report a noise violation.

Then, a different sound than usual. Her slaps rang out as usual — weak but triumphant — then were stopped all at once with a veritable thunderbolt of flesh on flesh. She gasped. I picked up my phone and dialed.

To their credit, the police weren’t racist this time. The second the (very nice) dispatcher picked up, though, I became immediately ambivalent about calling. On the one hand, there is nothing okay about regular domestic violence; on the other, I can’t be sure of what I hear, and anyway, people’s relationships are whole universes with their own governing laws. But after I explained the whole situation to the dispatcher, leaning heavily on the fact that I could in no way be positive that anyone had laid a hand on anyone else, he warmly explained that they ought to send over an officer anyway, if only to address the noise complaint.

For five minutes after I hung up the phone, Break-Up Couple continued their intricate dance of taunts, shrieks and screams. Then: silence, punctuated only by the barely audible rumble of one of Boston’s Finest, restoring peace to the night.

The Verdict: My conscience is gnawing away at me for involving myself so thoroughly into what is obviously a private affair. After all, they are Break-Up Couple. They must break up; it is in their nature. But I need sleep and some quiet and to know I’m living in a world where domestic disputes don’t escalate, some strange drunken night, into a violent tragedy twenty yards away from my own home.

Ambivalence. Guilt. Silence. I guess this is pretty much my default state.