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.

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I don’t write, i don’t call… you’d think that I don’t like the internet. Really, it is sometimes what keeps me awake, alert, and alive. Especially because of coffee.

I have discovered that I cannot ingest anything more than the most minuscule amount of caffeine. This falls somewhere between inconvenience and embarrassment when it comes to the caffeinated peer pressure that in inherent in the corporate environment. Each morning my co-workers invariably fuel up on coffee, breezing through the coffee station at the breakfast stand like a stealth bomber quickly refueling in the air. Coffee keeps them going, it makes them sharper.

Coffee does not make me sharper. Not in the least. Coffee fuzzes my edges, as if my body is a camera trying unsuccessfully to capture a subject in motion. An afternoon trip to Starbucks leaves me feeling drugged, unable to control myself or stop talking or just think clearly for a single second. Is this what it’s like, i think, to be on speed? Moving without even having to think about it.

I have resigned myself to empty-handed trips to the cafeteria at ten fifteen, when they are just heading for a reload. As they return, sipping their caramel-colored drug, i slip into my cube, surreptitiously loading Little Yellow Different or bluishorange or Wockerjabby and getting my fix and then, reinvigorated, re-attack my work.

You have so much energy!, is what they always say. I always extol the virtues of eight cups of water and a bottle of cranberry juice a day with no red meat and only a touch of liquor. I guess i should really just own up and tell them to get a blog.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106095459601423923/

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Oh, found another song blogger! Ariel S Lee emailed me with a link to her online audio over a month ago, but between Blogathon and setting up my new computer i’m just getting to listen to her songs. From a quick fifteen minutes of listening, i think she warrants a new-generation Tori Amos comparison much moreso than the incredibly boring Vanessa Carlton or the good-but-not-aptly-compared Evanescence (though i wonder if she’s more influenced by Fiona Apple after listening to her excellent Smolder).

Between this new find and my growing mini-obsession with Shannon Campell and Scott Andrew i have to stay that i am at once shocked and heartened that i am no longer singing in a vacuum (check out both on Nothing New, and Scott solo on The Big Lie That Solves Everything, respectively). It always seemed unusual to me that more bloggers weren’t also closeted muscians, and that more homegrown songwriters weren’t interested in narrating the life that goes along with their music, but within the last four or five months i feel as though i’m finally part of a blogging genre rather than being the whacky one-man-sideshow of the circles i am linked in. And, what’s more, Ariel, Shannon, and Scott collectively blow me out of the water with their vocals, mixing, and production.

Which, i think, means that the bar has been raised for me to learn how to rock the fuck out on this giant debt of a new computer.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106029774077580421/

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I’ve given up on trying to explain why i’m late to work. It’s not as if i’m not one to make excuses, because i am, It’s just that sometimes i know even before i speak that i’d be better off keeping my mouth shut.

Today i was ten minutes late. When asked, i gave the easy answer: i missed my bus. However, i know exactly why i was really late: because of my hamster.

Last night i was kept tossing and turning by something scratching my leg. Was it my blanket? Did i leave guitar strings on the bed? After almost an hour of intermittent sleep i finally sat up and flung the covers from my bed only to find Peaches contentedly nibbling on a sunflower seed.

A chase ensued, with me toppling chairs and guitars in my fury, and she hiding underneath any conveniently low piece of furniture. I finally nabbed her and tossed her back into her cage. Afterwards i settled down to try to salvage a good night’s sleep … which only lasted forty minutes before i again found myself playing the part of a rodent track-and-field stadium.

I promptly picked her up by the nape of her neck, tossed her into her cage through her still-open door, shut it, wired it closed with twist-ties (which she immediately began to chew through), and then constructed a clumsy (but effective) barricade against the front of her cage using a bandana, half-assembled habitrail tubes, and an empty box of tissues.

It was only then, totally awake and wired from my duty as impromptu hamster warden and too hot and bothered to get comfortable on my mattress, that i dragged my pillow and sheet to the floor in front of my air conditioner.

My rest was marred by my constant state of alertness whenever i heard a potential nibble or imagined something brushing up against my leg. This, in addition to the fact that i was now across the room from my alarm clock and under a mess of machine-white noise, led to my eventual awakening, naked and unshaven, at 7:59 this morning — a mere thirty-one minutes away from the time that i am supposed to arrive at my desk. And, despite the fact that i was dressed and out of the house in a record nine minutes, i still missed the bus that would have delivered me to work on time, leaving me stranded on the corner of 44th and Chestnut for another ten minutes — enough time to catch another bus, and not coincidentally the amount of time i was late.

Like i said, it was my hamster.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106010434685880372/

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Not to beat the whole Blogathon topic to death (too late, i know), but Crushing Krisis has been nominated in the Best Music Project category of this year’s Blogathon awards. I am nominated along-side Haunted Sky‘s excellent Karaoke project as well as the astounding Pet Rock Stars‘ collaborative writing project, which i sponsored.

I’m truly honored that enough ‘thonners tuned in to Crushing Krisis this year to even make a dent in the vote. I have to say that i was bordering on crushed last year when former blogger Danica (of fame in Tori Amos circles) beat me out for the prize after all the cash, sweat, and tears that went into my project. However, i have no such illusions as to who should win this year, as some excellent sites have already been omitted.

Regular readers (that would be you (unless it’s not)) cannot vote on this award; the Blogathon team decided that a static group of remarkable judges would vote on all categories to avoid the sort of ballot-stuffing that is inherent to most internet voting. B’Thon’s officially suggested listening includes collaborative originals Wait and A Few Bars of Goodbye.

(I would be so bold as to also nominate Hyperbole and Lindsay’s original Reflection as additional examples of the spectacular collaborations our Blogathon team generated, but this would ignore such astounding examples as Lindsay &; Anthony’s definitive Over The Rainbow and Gina’s arresting solo once-off take of November Rain, so it’s nearly pointless to single anything out to begin with. Seriously, have you been listening? The entire track-list is currently living on the sidebar to your left.)

Again, thank you to all who nominated Crushing Krisis for this distinction; i hope that all of you (regular and irregular) will continue to tune in for my weekly Trio concerts starting the week of September 22nd.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106001712683689265/

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Years are funny because their rhythm is just slightly different for everyone.

My years used to be empty stretches of barren land, awful summer droughts of excitement before the start of school effectively canceled out my birthday through coinciding with it then quickly escalating into Christmas only to dramatically collapse into Winter doldrums, which would only be broken by the end of school and the beginning of another punishing summer. I had no family events, yearly excursions, and special projects to look forward to. It was miserable.

Everything is so different now. My birthday has become part of a week of Welcome Back parties collectively known as MelonBowl, Halloween is treated with all of the pagan reverence it deserves, Christmas lasts for two or more weeks as i catch up to everyone i meant to give presents to, i inevitably get involved with a play in the winter, spring brings a combined Elsie/Ross birthday blowout as well as our newly inaugurated Lyndzapalooza, and then with June as a short breather i am launched into the frenzy of Blogathon, followed by a rushed retrospective as CK celebrates its anniversary on August 26th, which then leads me again into my own birthday preparations.

Early this week i fantasized that if i were to win a huge lottery i would whisk all the people responsible for giving me so many amazing things to look forward to away to a quaint little town in a Canada or France or China, and we would spend all year celebrating life, without a moment to catch our breath. And, then i realized, we do that here anyway.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/105984465766016276/