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 did not prepare a speech.

Today we overslept for work. Every time one of us stirred enough to wake the other she would ask “It’s not too late to go in yet, is it?” Not waiting for an answer, she would hit snooze again.


I couldn’t tell you the last Monday that i actually made it in to work. Hours later we drove to the mall, ostensibly to shop for gifts but really just to buy a quart of Ben & Jerry’s. It almost melted on the way home, balanced on my knee in front of the air conditioning vent. As she was putting it in the freezer i think she was talking to me, but i wandered upstairs and into bed. When she found me i looked right at her, and then closed my eyes and said, “Just for a minute, i’m so tired.”

Now it’s almost midnight, and i’m trying to think of what to say.


I originally intended this page to be a scratch-pad, with no edits and no regrets. Quickly it turned into an almost constant running commentary, with no room for reflection. Later it became a catchall… recording all of my feelings for when i might need to remember them again. This year it has been a diary, the place where i run to when i can’t tell anyone else what i am thinking.

I’m not sure what it is now, but somehow it helped to get me to where i am. It has helped me to get happy.

This seems like such a lackluster way to mark the second birthday of this page, but somehow it’s totally apropos; I don’t think a speech is really necessary. Thank you for reading, and happy birthday to this.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/happy-birthday-to-this-2/

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Sometimes that early-morning dew that leaves my room smooth and cool to the touch is really just grease, with the grit and asphalt of the city as its pan, and five hours later we are roasting and still sticking to everything.

The woodchuck on the label of my cider looks quite silly holding a raspberry up to his nose, and i opted for a cup and straw instead, which – i think – makes this day inconceivably more lazy than it was beforehand.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85378156/

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Kate works in an office where she occasionally has a few minutes to burn between projects, and ever since the blogathon she’s been filling all of those moments with a big heaping serving of Krisis. Seeing as i live with Kate and hang out with her on a day-to-day basis, she is definitely the regular reader most entangled in the actual living i’m doing short of Elise. After skimming for entries about her and then reading some random highlights, today she apparently resolved to read me all the way through, from day one on. I warned her that day one was about as long as June 2002, and she replied with a knowing smirk.

I’ve followed Kate’s lead and delved into some CK written from the old apartment, and it’s downright odd. I don’t remember writing like i did then – in constant fits and starts, or even thinking like that. Now every single post either sends me into a fit of laughter or a state of quiet contemplation, and sometimes both consecutively. And, though i’m sure it’s very amusing and thought-provoking on its own (heh), the highlights for me definitely connect to having been there when they were written… remembering how many times i fell to the ground in a fit of hysterical laughter on this night of drinking with Aim, laughing out loud at the nearly psychic advice doled out in this post, and remembering to read the commented out dream in this one, which i easily recollected almost blow for blow.


As much as i love making other people think, or laugh, or sing along, i think the best part of this is often just looking back and seeing exactly what i was like on a certain day nearly two years ago. It’s truly worth the effort.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85376788/

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Despite the veritable circus of animals i have lived with or adjacent to in my life, i have only once had a pet to call my own: a hamster, obtained from my sixth grade biology teacher. I remember that the event was quite a big to-do in my house at the time, although now i don’t see what was so incredibly unusual about keeping a rodent locked up in a tidy Habitrail cage. He wasn’t much of a pet, so much as i recall, except for that he had a hamster’s typical penchant for escape artistry, once sneaking out in the dead of night only to make a nest behind my door and another time squeezing out just to wait on my pillow for me to return home. I’m not sure why i didn’t play with him that often, other than that i was always afraid of being bitten and that i had a penchant for seeing him more as a proto-beanie-baby than a living breathing pet. An indeterminate time after i brought him home he died; one morning my gloved hand curled around his teddy-like body to find it stiff and unrecoiling.

Lindsay has a hamster downstairs, Mimi, who is either named after a character from Rent or Drew Carey depending on who you ask. To wit, she fits with both: loud, proud, and rather large. In fact, most visitors to the house estimate her to be much closer to guinea pig than hamster, and some even recommend that she has enough body mass to aspire to ferret size if properly stretched.


The most important thing about Mimi is that she is just about the best pet ever. She’s low-maintenance, eating only one full dish of food each week – which would seem to indicate that she has the most obscenely low metabolism known to man or mouse, as she has no trouble maintaining and increasing her near-free-roaming-pet size. She’s very docile, especially for a breed of animal who typically moves and sniffs as though its being electrically prodded from behind for even a moment of pause. She’s smart: smart enough to have outsmarted the typical hamster proofed roof of her cage as well as the lid to her ball. Her only fault, really, is the noise she makes at night; hamsters are, of course, nocturnal creatures, and she has a string of nightly exploits that include chewing on parts of her cage, running at a higher speed limit than her wheel is built to contend with, and generally moving things around in a rather noisy fashion.

I can admit that i was jealous of her, especially seeing as at the time i was the only housemate who didn’t own a pet. So, when Elise decided to take a day off for comparative snake-shopping, i half-heartedly began examining hamsters as we progressed from store to store. None of them were cute enough for me until our last store, hit upon as a bit of a lark, where after giving up on a rodent so belligerent that she couldn’t be picked up by an employee to a tiny scurrying doll that – after some contention – has become my pet hamster Stoli.

At night she has taken to gnawing on the tiny evergreen bars of the front hatch to her cage to fulfill her requisite noisemaking quota, and although it’s probably some animal escape-instinct at work on her part to me it is just the evil clicking-of-death at 4am. And 5am. Though, sometimes as early as 2:30am. I’ve learned that the only way to avoid these untimely wake-up calls is to engage her attention before i go to bed; i let her crawl around on my desk while i’m catching up on the day’s news, and then i find a nice clear surface for her to really run off some stream on before i head to bed. Tonight i took her out into my entirely bare sitting room and watched – bemused – as she careful sniffed across the entire space one square-hamster at a time. It seems to have worked, as she’s gone from recklessly leaping off the side of my chair three consecutive times thirty minutes ago to sitting quietly on the floor of her cage contemplating the hatch as i type.

Or maybe that has to do with the extra-whitening toothpaste i spread all over the front bars of her cage, the touching of which usually sends her scurrying back to her hidey-hole to wipe her hands off on stale food and cedar chips.

So, if you’ve been wondering why i haven’t been blogging all week despite having my classic AM timespot uncharacteristically freed up, now you know: i’ve been trying to wear out my hamster.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85376687/