Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

Meme-Tracking: Page 23, Sentence 5

by

I am decidedly anti-meme myself, but yesterday Alison featured a quirky one:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 23.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

I am surrounded by stultifyingly dull school books, which have rendered my answer as: “His seat faced toward the door, and she guessed that he had been perturbed by the approach of an acquaintance, a fact confirmed by the turning of heads and general sense of commotion which her own entrance into a railway-carriage was apt to produce.” (From the stunningly boring House of Mirth.)

Much more intriguing than my answer to the meme is the question of where it came from. And, furthermore, why the twenty-third page? Should i start counting from the first complete sentence? What book started all this? In my quest for knowledge, i backtracked from Alison, who got it
via Dave
via John Biesnecker
via John Hicks
via Greg
via Michael
via Keith
via PeterMe
via Caterina
via David Chess
via Long Story, Short Pier
via Elkins (ah, see, now we’ve crossed over to LiveJournal)
via happy_potterer via sternel, who doesn’t directly attribute the source, but points to PegKerr who was “infected” by
kijjohnson
infected by Mckitterick
infected by Bob Howe who, lamentably, attributes two sources (Silvertide and Curmudgeon), though it seems clear that the former got it from the latter who got it from kricker.

Here, the chain becomes tangled. Kricker attributes two sources: pbsage who got it from cynnerth. The latter indicates that s/he received it via seamusd whose journal is friends-only and cannot be viewed by the public. S/he claims to have seen it first at Kricker’s journal. Kricker confirmed his/her attributions, and points out that seamusd had posted about it first. However, lower in that exchange Seamusd reiterates that it originated from Kricker.

It is increasingly hard to find journals closer to the meme-source via google, as there is a proliferation of hits that occurred after the LJ-to-domain-blog leap in the middle of my chain, especially after being featured on such highly-linked sites such as Bluishorange, PeterMe, and Caterina. Interestingly, on LJ pages the meme is often accompanied by a few other recent memes which do not appear to have made the LJ-to-domain jump (or, at least, not on such a large scale). What does this say about the nature of the LJ community vs. blogdom at large? Where did this meme come from? Can you find a higher, earlier link than Seamusd?

You’ll Get Older Too…

by

A great ed-op on teenagers and first amendment rights. It made me think about how different it is to be a teenager now than when i started out as one ten years ago … i never had to carry the weight and memory of a Columbine or a 9-11 on my teenaged shoulders, my daily interactions shadowed by their historical prominence. I never had metal detectors, or school uniforms. I can’t imagine being suspended for writing a story with a hostage situation or for stating that Barbie is a Lesbian.

Today i spoke at our Accepted Students day, in front of almost three thousand people — high school seniors and their families. My remarks were mostly pre-scripted, and included the indisposable cliché of “I sat in your place five years ago, and blah anxious blah scared blah never even been kissed, et cetera so forth yakkity yak.” I’ve said it before, and i’ll be saying it again tomorrow morning at 11:32. Today, though, today was different. Today, halfway through my the sentence, i realized how significant the statement is — i have been there, in their place, and i lived to tell. I can never go back to the idle dreams or the blithe naivete.

I am a scant seven weeks away from being a college graduate, and i have never had the occasion to feel all that old during my college experience, but today drove home how i have become more similar the parents than the students; the former raptly nod along to my points in sympathetic agreement, while the latter view me as a mutant over-achieving neo-adult freak out to unfairly raise the expectations they will be held to. The students gave me those huge, blank, sheep-like eyes; how can i help but condescend to them a little? They don’t realize quite what they’re getting into. How could they?

After opening remarks Aim & i spoke to a small group of Communications majors, and we were bubbling with incredulous laughter the entire time as we realized that we were the nearly-adult examples that were being held up to aspiring students. The funny thing is, we so totally are; as we spoke about our oft-derided Senior Projects i saw parents’ eyebrows raise so far as to meet their hairlines while students glazed over as we glossed over what we consider to be the banal details. Two thousand pictures. One hundred thousand dollars. A visual commentary on the depressed economics of her hometown. A complete script of materials and suggested best practices for the committee to use as necessary. To the parents it’s thrillingly real. To the students, it’s just another obstacle to leap.

Afterwards, the two of us tiptoed through a conversation with one particularly aimless student and his family I told them “Drexel is a school where you have to reach for what you want. If you want a cookie cutter program, don’t come here.” Aim and i ran into them later as they slunk out of the room and towards the parking garage, their Drexel dream discarded. The uber-positive cheerleading Admissions Counselor in me cringed at losing a family. Yet, an hour later, i don’t feel bad. When i was seventeen i wanted the most perfectly cut cookie for my college career, and i didn’t wind up getting one. Instead, to mix metaphors, Drexel let me know that i could make my own cake. And eat it too.

So, woe is to them, those poor beleaguered teenagers with their restricted speech and their college searches. If i am any indication, they cannot possibly realize what lies in store for them, and they will not realize how good they have it until it’s too late. How could they ever be made to understand: the joy is in the process.


The joy is in the process.

I just hope they have the sense to have realistic goals or to pick a school with a co-op program, cause otherwise they’re gonna be fucked.

Bunny-Hunting

by

Easter does not rank amongst my preferred holidays, maybe because the Easter Bunny is not as powerful a social phenomenon as the Jackolantern or the Thanksgiving Turkey. Face it: it’s a day about the son of god coming back from the dead that is merrily glossed over with pagan egg hunts so that it’s not the religious equivalent of Thriller.

I typically spend Easter hiding from my family. This makes it, in effect, no different than any other day of the year. Past tactics have included unplugging my phone, celebrating passover instead, or having my boss invite me to her house for dinner. This year i decided that the best place to hide would be in plain view, so i invited myself, Elise, and four friends to dine at chez-krisis. The plan was that my mother would be overwhelmed by trying to chat like the merrily socially well-adjusted woman she is that i would escape largely unquestioned and unscathed. My mother, after freaking out for three weeks because she’s never had that many people in her house for an occasion not related to a funeral, seemed to take the planning of the event in stride and with only mild outbreaks of frantic chain-smoking while attempting to invoke the maternal instinct for hosting that she’s let lay dormant for all these years.

It went off nearly without a hitch. I was chastised repeatedly for serving cocktails to my guests before dinner, and told i need to seek alchohol counseling when a single drunken exploit was highlighted in conversation, but was otherwise left unquestioned about my finances, job hunt, and ever-mysterious FUTURE. It was small, as dinners go and, as is typical of such events in my family, consisted of a majority of Italian food and no turkeys, greens, hams, or yams. What wasn’t typical was that i got to enjoy the company of both my friends and my family, which made it much more festive for me.

We ended the night with copious Italian pastries and a marathon of Trading Spaces. Pretty much an ideal day.

by

I have to wonder what i’ve been doing with myself when i look here to see so much empty space. This is supposed to be my one true love, as much as looking in a mirror is. Right?

Ahh, but i am too tangled in this crazy race towards graduation, now a mere eight weeks away, trying so hard to escape. What is there to talk about? Met with Advisor X today, meeting Advisor Y & Z tomorrow, avoiding Advisor Q like the plague. Conducting interviews with people from China and Brazil (know any?) for two classes, designing an entire new domain for a third, and reading lots of books for a fourth. And Senior project, endlessly revising the same damn outline, trying to make my thoughts make sense in a tangible way that can be graded.

Two news songs mixed … a complete Moscow, Idaho as well as a drummed-up Bucket Seat (on which the vocals seem totally out of place).

Forthcoming: new apartment, new job, no more school.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/04/108150204608701963/