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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Victory! Sweet, sweet, blueberry victory!

In other news: last night i played guitar for what has become a routine four hours, breaking only for the penultimate episode of Buffy and white pizza courtesy of Ross’s new credit card. This morning the skin on my fingers is rind-like and impervious to pain.

You could say that i’ve become a little obsessed with my practice regimen, ostensibly because i’m playing at a backyard festival this weekend and have vowed in public earshot to blow away all of the other performers. Really, though, it’s because i don’t know if i actually can. The recently revealed running order of the event finds me sandwiched between a duo of golden-throated music majors and a terrific a cappella group that i arrange for, with the entire day both book-ended and dotted by talented multi-instrumentalists and Philly pub performers. And in the middle is little old me.

At this late stage drilling finger exercises until i feel as though i’m going to vomit if i have to stretch my pinky to the seventh fret again probably isn’t going to do me much good, which is why i typically leave that until just before bed. The regimen begins as soon as i have stripped out of my corporate skin of shirt and tie, sometimes finding me strumming the opening chords of “Tangling” in an undershirt and low rise briefs. The run through the current iteration of my set quickly (and seemingly inevitably) descends into seething about my inability to pick complex patterns or endless fiddling with my amp tone, and rarely features more than a single complete song. Alternately, i could probably just look in a mirror and scream “you are worthless” for thirty minutes to achieve a similar effect on moral.

After this inevitably crushing warm-up routine, i turn to my Bible, The Complete Beatles Scores. What better comfort could there be to my inability to play my own misbegotten songs than to learn how to play some of the best songs ever written? Last night was a medley of Let It Be‘s A-Side, none of which i can carry all on my own. Still, the practice is useful because i am trying to match a specifically scored and recorded sound rather than some elusive cipher of a rhythm that only plays inside of my head.

After a solid run at the Beatles (always including thirty minutes on the riffing of “Dig A Pony” and at least two renditions of “Blackbird“) I am ready to perform my own set, minus the sniffling and whining. Or, rather, the sniffling and whining is restrained only to lyrical appearances. This set is typically much more affirming, though as a rule “Apart” sounds like utter shit. “Under My Skin” is placed strategically dead in the middle to remind myself that, yes, i can actually (write / play / sing) with some modicum of professionalism on a consistent basis. This is necessary, as my shot at “Seams” typically breaks down shortly after the key change.

I end with “Little Love,” because for a month i had intended to start with it and so bootstrapped it up past all of the intermediate levels of (total shit / shit / lyrical Alzheimer’s / inability to cross bridge / endless descent into ad-lib and riffing / constant Simon-Cowell-ing of vocal performance) to the point where i spent an entire hour last week walking around Center City with a guitar strapped on over my shirt and tie playing it and being asked my name and if i could be heard at any local bars or pubs. It isn’t “Under My Skin,” but it allows me to ignore (or, at least atone for) the two dozen false starts of “Apart” from earlier in the evening. It allows me to believe for a second that the forty or so friends that will be enduring me for a precious half hour on Saturday will perhaps clap out of something other than obligation.

Only after that do i brutally work my pinky fingers until my stomach knots with each effort. And then, sometimes, i go to bed.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200290435/

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As far as i’m concerned, there is only cranberry. I can literally loiter at the muffin stand for ten minutes eyeballing each fresh baked item trying my best to locate chocolate chips, or even blueberries, but no matter how sure or how random my guess is i still wind up with cranberry. I know the other muffins are in there somewhere — i’ve seen other people eat them. Still, today i chose a corn muffin only to arrive at my desk and find that it was, yes, a cranberry muffin in a corny disguise.

Once again, I am again kicking off my morning with a healthy urinary tract, muffin stand. Damn you, muffin stand, damn you and your insidious red berries!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200283418/

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I walk into the bathroom on 35 and it seems empty, but as the door closes i hear a strange rasping noise from the open stall at the end of the row. I slowly approach the stall and peer around its corner cautiously, hoping not to find any half-naked strangely rasping co-workers slumped Elvis-style over the throne. It is empty.

As I wash my hands I hear the noise again, but do not bother to investigate. Maybe if I am lucky I will find myself cast in a real world retread of the classic Gremlins 2, where the sneaky critters invade an otherwise innocuous office building and precede to wreak havoc upon its unwitting staff. A worthy sequel to an already campy first flick.

Careful not to touch anything that might re-germ my now sanitized hands, I think am I unwitting?, closely followed by Surely there were a couple of people who died in bathrooms. I really ought to buy the DVD to check that out.

Two minutes later I am back at my desk firing off an email about compiling a master style guide for our department. So, essentially, you’ve just been missing out on my trips to the bathroom.

Oh, and I won a wine-drinking contest, bought four pairs of shoes, saw X2, passively participated in buying a new house, and wrote a song with Gina. But, really, that’s about it.

sigh

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200279537/

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Say what you will about being a corporate employee, but there’s something to be said for the feeling you get when you enter your boss’s office to discover her scrambling frantically to locate the report that you spent the last weeks compiling because it’s absolutely key to her three-thirty presentation, which is to say: you are somewhat dismayed that your spiffy white binder of findings had been so easily misplaced, empowered to see that your work is indeed an important keystone in your departments archway of communication, and secretly jealous that you cannot tag along to reap the obviously forthcoming compliments on your deft handiwork.

In other news, i learned that an employee is “absolutely prohibited from developing her personal website while at work even if she does so during her lunch hour.” Lucky for me, the policy seems to only apply to female employees. In your face, female employees!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/04/200200388/

200176393

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It’s very corporate. I remember the qualifications that i set when i started college: nothing where i primarily spend time with computers, and nothing too corporate. I cannot help but wonder: did i compromise, or just change my mind?

I am usually the first in the building from my department, save for the other intern. At eight fifteen i dutifully check all of my email accounts and scan CNN and Metafilter for news as i drink my Paradise Lust, though i tend to stretch my muffin (alternately blueberry and chocolate) until quarter of nine. Really, though, my working day starts the previous working evening, because i have been staying late. Not obscenely, workaholic late. No. Just late enough to finish whatever i have in front of me. It is the business world’s version of the Clean Plate Club. Which means that the next morning at nine, after i have resolved my urgent emails and made myself some tea, i have to start the process all over again. From a clean plate.

The hours between are immaterial, marked by endlessly attentive hard work punctuated by trips to the water cooler, bathroom, director’s office, and outside world. To the latter there is but one venture, which i prefer to enjoy in solitude (though i am not rude enough to turn down anyone’s invitation). My co-workers are adamant about this: you really ought to escape while you can. For lunch, that is. I found their warning ominous at first, but i understand it now. Air is out there; air that we can only look at through our reinforced unopenable windows. Yet, once i am outside i always want to return — how is it that i can feel so lost and alone in the middle of my city during my hour of lunch?

Thus, every day i return with a half an hour to spare, always with some iteration of chicken caesar salad. One day it was in a wrap, the next on a sandwich, the third with a side of salmon sushi. Somehow the predictability cheers me in how it thwarts the tiny “what did you have today” conversations that crop up around three-thirty when everyone is sated and ready to leave. I am usually ready to leave at ten thirty, but i change my mind by lunch, opting instead to stay late… to power through… to clean my plate.

In my first paycheck i cleared eighty two cents on every dollar, which is one and a half cents better than i did in Admissions. I do not get upset; i do not tithe on the behalf of god, and so i tithe to capitalism instead. Even after that, i am left with an unreal amount of money. Did i earn that? For my work? Really? I boggle myself for a second, too excited by the spending possibilities of my modestly large check, and marvelling that i could be worth over fifty thousand dollars a year with a bachelor’s degree.

I have yet to deposit it. There are so many things to buy, to see, to hear, that i am afraid to turn their numerals and decimals into cents and dollars that i can spend. At the top of my list are a four-track, a laptop, a guitar, and trips to the movies. I imagine a different list superimposed on top of my own: a mortgage, a washing machine, car insurance, and trips to the movies. People making less than i am have that list rather than my own, yet cannot afford to be paralyzed by indecision between buying an actual four-track or simulating it with mixing software.

Indecision is a priceless luxury that earning potential can often afford, and i am indecisive by my very nature. So, did i compromise, or just change my mind?