Please Give Generously, So That I Can Kill Karyn

October 1st, 2002 Posted in 2002

Talking to Neil on ICQ moments ago, when the following horrifying message “UH-OH!”ed its way to my attention:

Neil (07:06 PM) :
I see Beltzner is asking for money on his blog!

Egads, I thought. Mike? Begging for change on his blog like some moth-eaten hobo? “Have things gotten that bad for him?” I thought, my heart bursting with sympathy. “Holy Hell, does Mike really have that little dignity?” I thought soon after, replacing my sympathy with the much more familiar black bilious clouds of rage and moral indignance. Mike would have to be dealt with, that much was clear.

Perhaps I should preface my seemingly off-the-cuff decision to punish someone I know and like quite well. I’d recently read an article at Salon that talked about a new trend called “cyber-begging.” And much like doing Macarenas, wearing ill-fitting pants, or watching streaming .avi’s of “All Your Base Are Belong To Us”, the cyber-begging trend is, I assure you, thoroughly reprehensible—and worthy of all the disdain you, my fellow man or woman, can muster.

How the craze caught on is like this: a rich television producer named Karyn Bosnak was pulling down just under $4,000 a month and living the good life in a hopelessly rich and trendy apartment in downtown Brooklyn, apparently unconcerned with the troubling spelling of her first name. She shopped at Gucci, ate in nice restaurants, and lived a kind of endless Mentos commercial of a life. Since Karyn at age 29 was probably already more successful than both of your parents combined, and certainly more hip than anybody you know, you may feel free to loathe her.

At any rate, in between having money fights with her show business friends and defecating purest rose-scented candles, Karyn managed to rack up a twenty grand bill on her credit card. She would have been able to pay at least some of this off with her savings account, except that she didn’t have one, because in addition to being extremely lucky and wealthy, Karyn was kind of an idiot.

Now, we all get in tight times now and then. But where someone like you or I might get saddled with a twenty grand debt for a student loan, or a mortgage, or a child’s dental work, Karyn went with the more original route of pissing away $20,000 she didn’t have on useless trendy garbage. Again, feel totally free to loathe her, I’m not stopping you.

Faced with harsh reality for the first time in her life, Karyn was inequipped to deal with a crisis that you or I, with our regular crappy jobs and bills and responsibilities, would immediately begin saving up to pay off. Karyn, not knowing any better, started up a website begging complete strangers for money. Not seting up an appointment with her bank to work out a payment plan with her sizable monthly income. Not attempting to sell back some of the useless garbage she’d wasted all the money on. Not in any way taking responsibility for her actions in any way. Just asking people she didn’t know to get her out of it.

And, of course, it worked, because why shouldn’t more things happen to give me ulcers? Karyn has managed to pay off the entirety of her loan. Not only that, but she’s gotten famous off of it, appaearing in magazines and daytime television shows. And all thanks to the kindness of people she didn’t even know, who took the time to send her money (in one case, $1000.) This is the kind of thing that makes me want to carve Karyn’s credit card into a Japanese throwing star and mount her to the wall with it. Good God, The David Suzuki Foundation works tirelessly to fight for the health of our ecosystem and many endangered creatures. Hope For African Children is a non-profit organization devoted to helping starving children dying of AIDS. There are literally thousands of charities you could donate a dollar or two, in seconds, online, if you were so inclined. But people don’t think like that, do they? They think “Oh, this is new,” and give Karyn $40 so they’ll have a story to tell their friends, and television producer Karyn gets to roll around with her goateed, lattee-sipping boyfriend on a pile of Gucci totebags while an African kid dies of AIDS.

I would hope your first reaction, like mine, would be “How could this spoiled idiot have gotten away with this?” I also hope your second reaction, like mine, would be “How do I get in on this?” Unfortunately, you’re too late for that. Karyn started a a tidalwave of a trend, and now everyone with half a brain and a cable modem is trying it, to increasingly diminished returns. Naturally, this isn’t stopping people in the least. Just keep stabbing at that bright red button, huh?

And then Mike. Oh, no. Not Mike too? I quickly trucked over to his blog to see for myself. I might never stop slapping him.

And…

Mike, it turns out, is looking for sponsors for a charity drive for The Hospital For Sick Children, the big dumb lovable galoot. He’s not a trend-hopping moron! He’s a caring, nurturing moron!

So that susses up that. Except that now I have to endlessly slap Neil instead of Mike, for blatantly misrepresenting Mike in ICQ conversations. Please, give generously to the Jay Stomping a Bootprint Into Neil Foundation… won’t you?