That is, unless, like me, you are among the unfortunate minority of humanity afflicted with HKSG-1, the Hello Kitty Susceptibility Gene, and are incapable of turning away from any image of Sanrio Corporation's ubiquitous, globe-headed globe-trotter, Hello Kitty.
I have discussed my disability in these pages before and received an admirable tolerance and acceptance that speaks better for this community than any policy position or charitable drive. HKSGs don't ask for your pity, only your understanding, and kossacks have shown they have hearts worthy of Her Cartoon Self.
I don't make a habit of waving my condition around like a flag. Though it is no shame, I don't feel the need to flaunt it or make a big deal of every nightmarish episode, as some do.
Today, however, I feel obliged to pass on an HK encounter that literally shakes the Kitty universe to its foundations, made not by me but by Christine R. Yano, an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii who is curating the upcoming Hello Kitty retrospective at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.
In preparing HK biographical data for the exhibition, Ms. Yano made an assertion which was sternly corrected by representatives from Sanrio, in a statement with ramifications still not fully understood throughout the Kittyverse:
Hello Kitty is not a cat.
"I was corrected — very firmly," Yano said. "That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She's never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it's called Charmmy Kitty."
I have yet to fully process this revelation, as it shatters so many assumptions I have made about HK and her seemingly-infinite incarnations. The implications of such a profound paradigm-shift are impossible to predict.
I am, however, relieved, in one respect. The appeal of some of the odder HK images doesn't seem quite as disturbing now.