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.

by

The new bandwagon. Three or Five are false, depending on if you read them very literally or not. Enjoy the contemplation. Hints forthcoming:

  1. I have had exactly one serious scrape or cut, ever, and it wasn’t even that serious.
  2. I used to have a foot fetish before i understood what was supposed to be attractive about people.
  3. In my life i have consumed under 1 gallon combined of beer and/or cola.
  4. I still fit into my first pair of jeans.
  5. Before this year i had cried exactly twice since i left grade school.
  6. I haven’t shared a residence with more than one person at a time since i was 4.
  7. I was the reigning math word-problem champion in our Christian School League for two years running.
  8. I have never eaten a cut of steak other than fillet mignon when i was little, because my mom liked it.
  9. I have never been outside of this time zone.
  10. For the duration of highschool i claimed i had my first and only kiss to that point playing spin the bottle in 7th grade to avoid further romantic scrutiny.
  11. Until next year i will have spent a third of my life on welfare, a fifth of my life in braces, and nearly half my life without ever having a friend enter my bedroom.
  12. I learned to subtract from playing Monopoly.
  13. After my 5th birthday I have had a birthday party every even-numbered year of my life, until this year broke the streak.
  14. I briefly organized my 200+ cd spines to make a color spectrum, but the stress of having both black, gray and white Tori Amos cds made me give it up.
  15. Up until i stopped knowing what i wanted to be, i wanted to be a veterinarian.
  16. I was the worst reader in my first grade class.
  17. A girl kissed me approximately 3 years, 2 months, and 2 hours after when i originally asked a girl if she’d kiss me.
  18. The first time i was ever on stage i didn’t want to be there, and i forgot all of the words.
  19. In fifth grade i was the only student who decided to drop music class in favor of private (non-musical) study.
  20. I haven’t thrown up since 7th grade save for one nasty experience with Aftershock.
  21. I refused to wear anything coloured navy to the point of a temper tantrum until it became one of my school colors last year.
  22. Both girls i’ve ever asked out on a date wound up kissing my best friends.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3867120/

by

Webrings are definitely a funny thing in the world of blog because i’m almost positive that they’re redundant. Way back in the day when i was running my fanfic site (which will be five years soon, and yes that makes me very scared) i joined a slew of webrings to drum up more traffic. Back then it was a great idea; sites with such specialized content were few and far between and even the very huge ones were relatively obscure because not everyone had such easily centralized domain names. A webring allowed you to join forces with a gaggle of like-minded people and to share the modest flow of traffic each one of you brought to the table. I honestly can’t tell you why i ever joined any webrings for this site; i honestly don’t even remember doing it; i suspect that i chose the three that looked the most familiar to me from my various misadventures in logging because i figured if the name was that familiar i must read plenty of sites in the ring. However, the nature of blogging is partially a matter of linking, whether it be to more of your own content or to news or to other blogs, so that any given view of my index page probably yeilds at least an hour of reading material (and a view of an archive page probably exponentially more). With plenty of relevant content plus my own collection of highly endorsed links (not to mention my own musical meanderings) available via the same sidebar as that lonely little webring link, i can’t image why anyone would click it. I certainly wouldn’t.

In short, if a reader is looking for like-minded loggers they would probably just read all of the sites i link – all of which have their own (larger) lists of linked sites. So, why take a chance on a random ring site? It seems to me rings would be more effective as enforced cliques of loggers, because that way the coherency is assured. Of course, i don’t really belong to any cliques at this point, so i’d be linkless. But, could it hurt? At least they’d serve a purpose then.


Oh well. So much for idle thought.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3865486/

by

Perhaps this won’t seem especially ironic to you since my politics generally remain unremarked upon (though easily extrapolated from other details), but recently i’ve been getting a steady trickle of hits from this conservative political blog and i couldn’t figure out why. Occasionally sitemeter attributes referrals to sites that have no linkage to mine whatsoever, but every few hours i would see a hit from this self proclaimed “Big & Loud” politico and the regularity invited a more thorough investigation. Upon a more lengthy perusal of the site (including a bitter but fair appraisal of Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont) i discovered a link to “webloggers.” I’ve had a link to this blogging webring sitting on my sidebar for months now and i’ve honestly never clicked it, and never received more than a handful of hits per week from it (as is evidenced by the fact that i wasn’t expecting to see the link on this random log). Yet, by some magnificent irony-loving all-knowing god of blogging, the one site that actually delivers hits to me through the ring happens to be precisely the site that i’d least expect.


Well, for those of you just surfing in from B&L&F&R let me just say: Take that, poopyheads! We’ve got the Senate! Oh, yeah, and welcome to the neighborhood.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3865255/

by

For a while there was a flicker of light reflected on my change jar that seemed just the right red and gold to be the reflection of a fire, but after a thorough examination of the room to ascertain that there was an absence of flame i realized it was sunlight flitting through the trees outside my bedroom window. Today i feel like a flicker of something; hoping that i’m not outrightly extinguished yet sometimes blooming full and hot. I was too distracted to sing during my lesson today, but then i focused for half a minute to produce two notes that Becky thinks were my best ever. Inconsistent. I don’t think i did much at work today, but no one seems to mind. Tonight the sky is turning from blue to blue with the tiniest band of green on the horizon, and my neighbors yellowed kitchen light is peering around my crimsony sheet draped across the window. Everything is colors, but the fire in this room has gone away and left it black and white and gray.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3864767/

by

It’s a shame that my voice is being stretched to the limit on all of the choruses of Song #1 (below), because otherwise i think the vocal delivery sounds pretty ‘on.’ I haven’t got up the right momentum or distortion to get that down as a punk song, but rest assured that it’s more punk than anything else i’ve ever written. Except “Punk.” That’s definitely punker. I was a little concerned when i first started playing this song because the verses are essentially the same I-V-IV pattern as thousands of other forgettable songs, but i don’t think you really notice the simplicity as much as you do in “Under My Skin” because it isn’t nearly as repetitive. So, anyway, it seems to be growing on Izabelle and she’s the one who gets to choose what the first song on every demo is, so be afraid…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3836463/