Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Year 01

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We are producing two student written plays that are very witty and funny and i got cast as the male lover in both of them against the same female lover. I didn’t really think about the reality of kissing someone night after night on stage when i was auditioning, but now it looks like i am adding one more person to my impeccably neat little list of lips i have locked with, and my irrational fear of herpes alarm bell is ringing like mad. And, chat logs are lame.

Peter: I’m feeling much more apple-pie than normal

Rabi: is it fun?

Peter: No, not really. Well, the kissing thing is very shocking, but of all the people i could be kissing it’s absolutely the person i’m most ambivalent about kissing … which is good, because – no trouble. But, which is bad, because i am a romantic and meeting a girl in a love scene (or a making out repeatedly scene, as the case may be) in a play works out in my head

Rabi: the thing about those romantic fantasyish scenarios is that they have such a slight chance of ever being as good as they could be in a story or a song or whatever

Peter: Well, one of the other people i could be kissing met her boyfriend freshmen year doing the play. So, i didn’t want to kiss her either, cause it would be weird. I really wanted the almost-kiss girl to audition, because we would definitely get cast against each other.

Peter: And, of course, in my head my current partner quits the play in a huff and her replacement is some perfect girl and we fall for each other madly, but that’s just how things work in my head. They have a certain sort of gravitational symmetry

Rabi: kismet ?

Peter: Yes, but Kismet in Peter’s-Head Romantic Gravitational Units (phRGU) instead of Real-World Romantic Gravitational Units (rwRGU)

Rabi: I totally read that as fargo

Rabi: phrgu that is

Rabi: in some ways though isn’t it better to imagine it than have it actually happen? or something?

Peter: Um….

Peter: I think that’s been too much of my life so far. I mean, you read my page, right?

That sums it all up pretty well, i think. And remember, equations involving Crushing Krisis always need to be equated into phRGU. Or, fargos, for short.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4494829/

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This weekend beat the crap out of me, and it didn’t help any that i got in tonight at 8. A lot of stuff transpired in my head but nothing made it onto here. I was walking home from the guitar store on Friday night and i passed the shell of a dragonfly dead on the ground; it was a battered exoskelton with the middles of its wings gone so it was just like a stencil of itself. I had something really profound to say about that on friday, but now i just wish i had a camera with me.

This weekend was exactly that… perceptions frozen in perfect little moments that don’t really click in recollection. Yesterday i swam for three hours straight, and i haven’t swam for more than a minute or two in over two years. It wasn’t easy, and today i’m in all sorts of aches and pains because of it, but i feel slightly more in shape now. I am out of shape. This weekend is the first time i’ve been in revealing circumstances (swim trunks) and people haven’t remarked on my thinness; in fact, they said i looked as though i had gained some weight. People think i’m joking when i say i feel heavy, but i’m not joking. I feel like some kind of parody of a supermodel always saying she needs to lose a few more pounds, but i honestly can’t stand myself at this weight. I know, i have issues.

People think i’m kidding about issues. I remember as far back as age 7 or 8 not wanting to take my shirt off at the beach because i didn’t like how i looked in just swim trunks. In middle school i got changed in the corner of the locker room because i was afraid that i was chunky enough that i looked like i had breasts (definitely not a valid concern). In high school i wore hospital scrubs in gym so that no one would see the round hairy legs that betray the rest of my build as being something other than slim or wirey. There’s a backstage picture of me from senior year where i don’t have my shirt on, and it looks like you can fit two hands around my waist or roll a marble down the center of my chest and it would stop in the puddle of my belly-button in the middle of my unreally flat stomach. I love that picture. I know that i was unhealthy and too-thin and that it made people uncomfortable, but i felt comfortable and didn’t mind showing my body off. Now i hide it… people at parties remark that i am spectacularly unglamorous latlely and laugh it off when i seriously reply that i feel too fat. And now everyone else is comfortable with my body except for me, and i don’t know which i prefer.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4459359/

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For those of you who didn’t realize that Philadelphia was the sexual technology Mecca of the East coast, check out this msnbc story about two women who were arrested for running a “sex dungeon” out of their residential “computer solutions” storefront. This local flavour story was brought to national spotlight [sic] by my local NBC affiliate, who didn’t even bother to blur out the number on the store’s sign. Good job, guys.

Philadelphia’s NBC10 news crew is the largest local collection of yellow journalists and hyperbole artists that i’ve ever had the opportunity to witness in action, and their newscast tends to be aimed directly at people who circle Access Hollywood and Wheel of Fortune in their teevee listing every week (which is a double whammy, because not only are those two syndicated gems typically aimed at the lowest possible denominator possible, they tend to be on at the same time every night and thus don’t generally require circling). Lead stories on their news teasers feature (in this order) (without fail) death, fire, breaking news on weightloss, & NBC-centric entertainment news. This station followed each NBA Championship game with a half-hour of local coverage featuring reporters standing in every sports bar in the Greater Philadelphia Area rather than run the normal nightly news or the NBC post-game show. They break into soap operas to report a dusting of snow that had been forecasted the night before. Their anchors are local glamourpusses who marry local politicians and are in-turn reported on by local gossip columns. In other words, it’s a quality all-American news organization that focuses on the subject-matter that an alarming number of Philadelphians actually care about.

Please don’t fail to take note of the wholly unspecific and incidental (though ironically written) reporting on this story by Lu Ann Cahn, who recently reported on a “Flash Fire” at Drexel that was really a small propane tank explosion. Aside from her tantalizing lead-in mention of the women possessing a “large knife,” there’s the explicit name-dropping of “medical bondage.” Unless Lu Ann has mistaken “bondage” for the ever popular “masochism” angle of S&M, i can’t imagine what she meant by “medical bondage” other than maybe wrapping ace bandages around unusual body parts. My favourite part of of the article was, without a doubt, friends and neighbors who didn’t mind the (apparently) openly operated sex shop as long as “they would be dressed real nice” and that their customers were “guys in Mercedes.”

B&D, S&M, E&P, and the shocking news about your favourite Friends star’s personal life, tonight on NBC10 at 11! And, for more unsual explorations of sex and computers, head over to Ernie at LYD, who blogged the article all the way from California.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4364274/

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Almost-kisses are some of the worst things in the world, but generally not a terrible idea in retrospect. Bodies twisted with hands braced against each other and noses touching in their own tiny eskimo kiss so that you can feel the breath pass from her mouth to yours and then you feel that cellular-level inertia telling you that this is supposed to be a kiss but your brain maintains control of your locomotion and a minute later you are just talking again.


I don’t know how much i like my brain. For every almost-kiss i’ve participated in there’s been some pretty shitty consequences to be had in exchange for a kiss, but sometimes it might be worth consequences. However, sometimes almost is enough. And sometimes i might just be an idiot. But, at least i’m an idiot with a brain.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/4317521/

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The office is a tiny quiet forest of brown boxes with giant sideways E’s emblazened across their sides. We are all getting brand new computers to replace our PentiumIIs that can hardly run our admissions software. The counselors are all in a prospect management meeting for the entire day, and we have no visitors, so it’s just the five ladies from the Visit Desk and me.

Next to my desk is a Dell-Computer-Box tree that towers high above my head and i am waiting anxiously because i am sure someone is about to yell “TIMBER” and send it crashing down upon my desk. There is a small Dell-shrub across from me next to Fran’s desk. The sound of breeze through the leaves on branches is replaced with the dead silence that almost infers the tiny whirring of microprocessors that will proceed it. I feel as though tiny foraging animals should be roaming around to replace our single office-rodent, who has been rendered obsolete by these unedible towering monoliths.

My mouse is due to roll down the side of my desk to escape into the brush any moment now, i’m sure.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/4267537/