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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Every time I attempt to sketch some odd facet of my corporate life for you I find an equally strange element of it inside myself. Today I sat down to regale you with a story of in-building encounters with the socially inept, but as I described each character in punishingly amusing detail, I began to make myself queasy. Who am I to observe perceived shortcomings of innocent co-working bystanders only to reveal them to the internet at large when the whim overtakes me, rendering real people into surreally abnormal characters like Neckless and Clenching Lady? Would I be able to award myself with a new moniker as easily? I wonder.

I am not the most socially healthy person on the planet. My compulsion to wash my hands after I touch anything to be found in public borders on obsession. My fear that I will not reach the doors of the bus before it closes up again to carry me far far away from my intended stop is overwhelming. But, foremost among all of these, are my elevator issues.

It’s not the claustrophobia so much, though sometimes I find myself in the back row of a sixteen-person deep load gasping for breath behind a blissfully unaware suit yapping about first quarter losses or decreasing corporate spending. That comes with the territory. No, instead it is the conversations — the simple, witless conversations of nicety that are grudgingly targeted at any rider who looks even vaguely familiar.

I live in abject terror of those conversations. Weather. Sports. Television. As one creeps up on me I feel as though all of my internal organs are slowly sliding into the crevices behind my knees, leaving only a the hollow thump of my heart, captive to its highway of veins and arteries, to hold court in the preternatural vacuum of my chest. Rain. The Phillies. Survivor. Each topic can leave me in a dead sweat, especially when initiated on a relatively early floor.

I don’t know what it is, really. The utter casualness, I guess, that people attempt to tune in to the channel to which they are homogenized on. With glee, they discover similarities that they share with tens of millions of other Americans. It is the conversational form of Walmart, and I am not sure if I am more horrified by how alien the topics generally seem to me or by the few with which I have intimate familiarity.

I occasionally attempt to play along. Last week someone asked me what I had in my discman, and I replied: “The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They’re sort of a post-post-post-punk (so much so that they’re actually punk again) three piece lead by a woman who strikes me as a messy reincarnation of the, yes, entirely still alive Chrissie Hynde, which is not to say that the sound like the Pretenders at all, because they don’t, but sometimes you just get a vibe, huh?”

My rambling monologue took us from 22 down to 4, at which point the questioner returned a glassy stare. I smiled back. We rode down the last three floors in silence.

Funny how i am terrified of overwhelming homogeneity and they are petrified by anything heterogeneous. In a way I guess they are more afraid of me than I am of them, but it doesn’t make the ride any easier.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200312092/

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I feel as though there’s something i have to tell you — i really owe it to you. It won’t be easy, but i have to. But, first you should know that when i got back home last night from Lyndzapalooza i felt as if i had bruised everything that i had: fingers, muscles, voice, brain, and heart. I was, as i put it so eloquently to Elise, “a piece of hurt.” Not that it’s any excuse for what i’m about to tell you, but i just feel as though you should have an idea of the state i’m in.

I cried at the end of Armageddon. There, i’ve said it. I cried, not only for the characters on screen, but for myself — for having so knowingly bought in to a written-by-committee tearjerker that barely aspires to B-movie status because of one thing: Bruce. Bruce Willis. The man doesn’t always make the best movies out there to be made, and he isn’t always the best actor that could be found, but you just don’t kill him. Do you understand? Don’t kill Bruce. Because, in killing him, you force him to let loose, to lose control, to unlease all of the pathos and weariness that he has built up during the shooting of countless Die Hard movies as well as the physical emotiveness he reserved while dubbing his voice into the Look Who’s Talking series. And when you let me know that for the entire population of the Earth, including those of us spending our waning hours watching this bland by-the-numbers Bay/Bruckheimer creation, the only thing that stands in the way of our imminent deaths is the noble self-sacrifice of Bruce Willis then by god maybe the end is nearer than we think, because i will be blown into a thousand pieces by errant space debris before i’ll watch Bruce sacrifice himself again to save a pansy talentless hack like Ben Affleck who draw the straw of death fair and fucking square! Do you hear me?!?! Straw of death.

Like i said, i’m not especially emotionally stable right now. Apologies. Hopefully you don’t think any less of me for it.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200308389/

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Speaking of epiphanies: i am beginning to think of the stapler remover as the vampire of the desk supplies. I imagine that, after i leave, it slinks out of its place in my desk organizer and proceeds to terrorize my pens and highlighters mercilessly until a brave and intrepid pencil takes it upon itself to plunge itself as a stake through the remover’s cold metallic heart, leaving only a scene of scattered writing implements to hint at the terror that preceded it.

In the morning i always find myself thinking, How did my desk wind up so messy? Surely i cleaned it last night at 4:59, as is my wont. But now i know.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200302161/

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Halfway into what should have been my lunch break i found myself with five very short minutes to mock up a fold-out publication layout from a few simple black and white pieces that a colleague had expertly laid out, and i came to the near epiphany that i would be utterly and completely fucked without a glue stick. Yes. A glue stick. Which, incidentally, was the first piece of non-standard-issue office supply that i specifically requested for my desk. Much to my delight and relatively small surprise, said glued mock up was the toast of our meeting with the Medical department, praised as both “sturdy” and “informed.” This was reflected by a congratulatory email was circulated within our department afterwards.

So, basically, my job description involves an amalgam of both my pending Bachelor’s of Arts and tricks i picked up in third grade art class. Don’t ever let anyone tell you education isn’t important.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200302119/

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I was going to bitch about how I have no money. That was our scheduled morning blog. Indeed, I have no money. Less money, in fact, than I did previous to beginning my fancy corporate job. Only thirty-three dollars more than the time that I threatened to throw my roommate’s possessions out into the street if he didn’t pay me back rent. Anyway, I had this whole lament planned about how costs increase with the increase of income, and how I’m really just a victim of Philadelphia’s nine-to-five cost of living. But, really I can track my newfound poverty to a few very specific sources: smoothies & shoes. And don’t let me tell you anything otherwise.

As for the first, you know those Christian Relief Network commercials where they play all the schmaltzy music and tell you that you could feed a child somewhere in the third world by giving up your shitty 7-11 large coffee every morning because, really, you’re better off with Maxwell House than buying coffee from a place with a 24-hour self-rotating hot dog grill, and also because starving children in the third world will not be receptive to Christianity unless they’ve received some nourishment first? Right. Well, I could probably keep an entire block of these underfed unfortunates supplied with more rice than they’ve ever seen in their life if I could manage to give up my daily smoothie/salad routine. The smoothie is nearly $4 for some strawberries, orange juice, sundry other fruit, and honey for my poor abused vocal chords. As Erika pointed out last night: for christssake, I’ll put some strawberries and OJ in a blender for you every morning if you pay me $20 a week. Which makes me think maybe the Christian Relief Network should just tap into the overpriced smoothie market.

Point being, I am ADDICTED to having a 20oz all fruit kick-off to my slam bang cube-shaped day, and between that and my narcotic-like addiction to Caesar dressing alternating with wasabi drenched salmon rolls I’m shelling out upwards of a Hamilton a day just on overpriced city nourishment, which is half convenience charge and half just being ripped the fuck off. Time to switch over to bag lunches.

As for shoes, I bought some shoes. Okay, I bought four pair of shoes. I couldn’t help myself – never before in my life have I allowed myself the luxury of having multiple shoe options for the same occasion! Imagine me, a creature of art and logic, confined to only a single pair of black dress shoes every morning! Now the pre-smoothie portion of my morning routine has been brightened by the endless possibilities (that would be three, for those of you who did *not* major in Communications). My quality of living has gone up immeasurably.

The one pair I am most enamored with is an otherwise dorky pair of Saucony running shoes that are bright orange. When I wear them I feel like I have springs on the bottom of my feet – they make me feel effervescent. Last week I wore them on casual day and became convinced that if I really put my mind to it I could perform complex wire-work choreography from The Matrix. One slim hallway seemed to call out to me every time I would pass it on the way to the restroom, screaming for me to pull a Trinity-in-the-Lobby and run up the wall, only minus the sexy black leather and shotgun, neither of which would go with my orange shoes anyway.

So, next time I bitch about how poor I am, just remind me that: a) I could be feeding starving children who could otherwise be born again b) I just spent more on shoes than I did on guitar related equipment in the last year and c) I am more easily amused than a squirrel in a Planters nut factory.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200295528/