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.

Stuff I have bookmarked, but never investigated.

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I’ve been futilely struggling to clean my office/studio so that Gina and I can record our next Live @ Rehearsal disc (and also so I can make good on promises to Vicky and Nate to record them).

I realized the futility of my struggle was connected not to the level of mess or lack of places to put things. Instead, it is due to my obsessive need to collect tiny flecks of information that I might at some point have a future use for.

This collection takes the shape of back issues of Wired with folded over pages, old business cards with words scribbled on their backs, and old notepads with a few last clinging pages. Occasionally, an url makes it all the way into my bookmarks file – making it even less likely that I’ll ever visit it.

I am throwing them all out.

Below is the net results of my trash haul – the bits of information that seem worth remembering.

If you know anything about any of them please feel free to chime in, as clearly I still haven’t gotten around to looking into them too deeply.

37signals (Small business software.)

Dymo DiscPainter (Only $279 – could be worth it.)

The Motels. (Will I like them?)

The Annotated Watchmen. (I finally sat down and read it last weekend, so maybe now I’ll have a use for this one.)

Boost Your Bottom Line (butt exercises)

City Chase (Amazing Race without a television; Elise and I both bookmarked it to show each other, but haven’t got much farther than that)

Sheepskin Sandals (I think I wanted to buy these for Jack?)

The Pirate Bay (I don’t actually like torrents; I must have been looking for something specific.)

Birth of Rocker Venus (I use this a lot on mix CDs; not sure why it’s still bookmarked.)

BitPim (Allows you to manipulate data on your cellphone.)

The Rainy River Record (I have no idea.)

Entertainer’s Secret Throat Spray (I’m happy with my Vocal Eze, even if it’s just a placebo effect.)

Lark’s Tenor Guitar (Still tempting, but I wouldn’t spend more than $300)

Electronic Frontier Foundation Staff (Elise and I loved Fred Von Lohmann in a documentary – maybe This Film Is Not Yet Rated? If I ever went to law school this is what I’d want to do.)

Tune Tech Clip-On Tuner (Gina has this one; I still prefer my Intellitouch.)

How to convert a DVD for iPod (I’ll need a bigger PC and iPod to make this useful. Maybe next year.)

Better Living Through Design (Ikea for rich people.)

How to use space in a presentation (Just now cribbed from MLarson; if I remember this exists I will use it dozens of times a year)

Ma.tt (Love this design; fodder for the pm.com redesign.)

There might be more…

Still a comic book nerd at heart.

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How bad do I want this?

Really, really bad.

Not quite as bad as I want to fly to Madison, Wisconsin to see Peter Mulvey open for Ani next weekend, and I’m hoping the flight will come down to the same price as this useless statue of my favorite comic book character of all time in one of her best costumes.

Best Reason to Vote Palin

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Palin visited Tony Luke’s for her ritual Philly Cheesesteak, rather than either of the horrific, fatty, over-promoted pair of Pat’s and Geno’s.

That’s the best possible Palin-based reason any Philadelphian could have to vote for the Palin-McCain.

Seriously. She won’t be giving you any better reasons than this one.

Annotated debate transcript, and some hindsight

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Washington Post provides an excellent annotated transcript of the debate that provides some fact-checking as well as allowing you to watch specific exchanges as you read. Similarly, C-Spans Debate Center offers isolated video and graphs each exchange by speaker over time. The two most effective recaps I’ve found so far.

I’m apparently in the vast minority in my opinion that McCain held a slight edge over the course of the entire debate. I even got flamed for saying so on Huffington Post!

I think part of my opinion was the expectations game. After all the ridiculous, manufactured drama this week from the McCain camp I thought he’d be vastly under prepared. That was not the case. At the same time, virtually the entire country touts Obama’s speaking and debating skills, while not giving McCain much credit at either.

Based on the combination of those two factors I was expecting an Obama blowout, and since it wasn’t I likely graded Obama harder than he deserved. Also, I’m not nearly as liberal on economic and foreign policy issues as I am on civil rights and domestic issues.

Essentially, I’m willing to admit that my deck was a bit stacked against Obama, in this particular instance. But, I have an equally stacked deck against any Republican presidential nominee, so if anything I think this might represent one of the few chances to capture my unbiased opinion on the political process.

I’m interested to see if I have a similar reaction next week to the VP debate, where I have a significant absence of respect for one side and expectations about neither.

Live blogging & recapping presidential debate #1

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I think that presidential debates are crucial to our understanding of how we can use our votes to better this country.

I’ve been a supporter of both of these gentlemen at different points of this election cycle – I respect them both, but I also believe they’ve each made some grave mistakes. I can’t pretend to be actually “undecided,” since my lifelong commitment to women’s and civil rights clearly dictates my choice in their pairing, and because of that certainty I don’t know whose side I fall on a lot of the other major issues of this election.

Hopefully after the debates I’ll be able to make a more educated decision.

The debate begins… [Read more…] about Live blogging & recapping presidential debate #1