Today, while sitting in the salon in my hometown and having the prerequisite hairdresser chit chat with the guy who’s been doing my hair since high school, the old “so, you got a boyfriend?” question came up.

These days, I don’t even try to stop my chuckle when I answer, “nope”.

We talked a little about why my river has run so dry for so long, and as he ran his scissors through my bangs, my hometown hairdresser goes “well, it’s probably because you’re a real person.”

This is not the first time I’ve been called real. And it’s not the first time this “realness” has been connected to me being single.

What are we to surmise from this?

Does being real immediately put me in some kind of realness cage? A desolate place where people who can’t be anything other than themselves are gawked at by the rest of the fake society? Is being real like having some kind of horrible birthmark on my face — something that frightens potential suitors away with its blatant obviousness? Are we real people like the cyclops kitten; so weird no one wants to get too close but can’t exactly look away? Read More »

Now, I consider myself to be pretty internet savvy. I know how to search for stuff I need, what sites are good and what sites suck, and all kinds of stuff I’m sure you probably don’t even want to think about. But even I fall for things sometimes, and though I tend to do research on stories that I don’t quite fall for, some stuff gets me. I don’t feel bad though; it gets pretty much everyone else, too.

Remember Aliza Shvarts? She reportedly repeatedly artificially inseminated herself, then took all kinds of abortifacient (read: abortion-inducing) drugs and herbs for an art project. Everyone was all kinds of upset over this one, and it was taken seriously since Yale reported it and everything. Alas, not so much; Aliza’s work was entirely fiction.

Then there’s the one guy who re-grew his finger with pixie dust. Everything grew back in about four weeks, reportedly, and things worked just fine. Of course, it helps that he only had a minor injury and certainly didn’t have his finger severed at the knuckle or anything.

On the flip side, there are stories that can’t possibly be true but are. Read More »