Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Does anyone remember the days when Beautiful Freak was a mainstay of my sidebar? In the infancy of CK I’d trade sarcastic entries with its blogger Re every few evenings; she was mentioned about as much as i now name-drop Rabi in a typical month of writing.

I already talk about 2000 like it was ancient history, and that sensation was made all the more real by Re saying “Peter seems to be the only person that I read that has not gone to livejournal with their site on hiatus.” And, well, no i haven’t gone to LiveJournal, or went on hiatus, because no matter what happens to me, no matter how much of a battle it is to write, i never really manage to quit this.

Re, the entire year 2000, is such a long time ago to me. I still had both grandmothers. I still hadn’t had a girlfriend. I was living in my own apartment, taking music classes for the first time. I had never even heard of a girl called Rabi. I had never worked a full time job. So much life got set into motion after that New Year that looking back it seems like it occured in just two or three major symphonic movements, with the individual stories playing out like repeated themes from different instruments … the Queen of Darkness suite, the Loneliness Fugue, and the Girlfriend canon.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about that ancient history, and Re’s invocation of it just served to jog my memory a little more. People change, and cells regenerate, but i wonder if y2k me would even know what to say the nearly graduated boy sitting in my place today. Could he have ever suspected it? Would even believe it?

How much have you changed so far this millenium? What happened to you that you never thought would happen? What ambition have you lost that you never thought you would lose?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/12/107268084996775085/

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my hair : my website’s layout :: my handwriting : my singing

That was the final post of my first day of blogging. Over three years ago i said that i would elaborate on it, but in the absence of any elaboration the post became a kind of private in-joke, a punchline with no setup.

Honestly, i forgot what i had meant to say. For three years the post has stared at me expectantly from the top of that first archive page, as if to say, “Haven’t you figured out yet?” Today i finally did.

This morning i watched a co-worker addressing an envelope, and i caught myself thinking his handwriting was unbearably sloppy. Not because it was illegible, or irregular, but because he did not use any straight lines. The side of his N bowed inwards; the cross of his J was like a wry grin.

In that moment i was reminded of the post, and i suddenly understood — both the post and how i can spend four hours of recording the vocals of just one song, never quite satisfied. It’s not that anything about his writing and my singing is incomprehensible, or incorrect. No. It’s the unintentional lack of precision. I dislike my singing because i scoop vowels and slur consonants without consciously meaning to — i just sing the way that i would speak. It’s not wrong, but it’s not on purpose either. It’s exactly the reason i cringed at my coworker’s version of “NJ” on the envelope – he didn’t have any straighter lines to offer it.

I used to covet good handwriting — perfect, font-like handwriting. I strove for perfection, writing my letters correctly, perfectly vertical, perfectly rounded. After a few years the perfection came with relative ease, so i allowed myself to slowly slip away from it. I began creating my own font, stylizing my fs and as, not because i was sloppy, or lazy, but because i was personalizing. Making it my own. Whereas, i cannot yet force my voice to be perfectly rounded or piercingly straight, so i cannot afford to blur its edges.

From there, it’s easy to complete the analogy that has been plaguing me for so long. My hair is something i used to be so apathetic to that i just let it grow, hanging down my neck in a nondescript tail or surrounding my face in a bushy halo. I was specifically against styling it an any way — it seemed to be besides the point. However, in college i started paying more attention. Now, though i tend to wait a few weeks too long to get a new haircut, i always look in the mirror before i walk out the door. My page’s layout is the perfectly analogous to this — it’s something i used to treat as transparent, but that i now detail carefully, if not often. It has a function: it is part of my appearance — the impression that i give off.

In short, at the time i hadn’t yet exercised control over my hair and my handwriting, and had just got the inkling that i would have the same issues with my layout and my voice. And, three years later, i feel as though i have mastered the former and am just now beginning to consciously control the latter.

Wow, i just freed up a few brain circuits that have been locked up for the majority of my collegiate career. I ought to do a crossword.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/09/106259765349467294/

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I like to think of myself as the ultimate indicator of whether any particular cultural trend has reached zeitgeist levels of proliferation, but in what we collectively refer to as reality i can think of at least two more trust-worthy sources to defer to. One are daily newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer and the second is the Oxford English Dictionary.

Not coincidentally, within the last few weeks both have indicated that BLOG is a word that has been inexorably wedged into our collective language, through the above linked article and the (somewhat shocking) inclusion of the term in the next version of the OED.

My response is, of course, “I told you so.” After all, i have been doing it for three years now, to the day.

While the OE inclusion is surprising, the Inquirer article left a bigger impact on me — if only because it neglected to mention this site.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Crushing Krisis could be the longest running Philadelphia blog (now that Rabi is conveniently out of the way in new york); I have to slog through all of the links here and here to make absolutely sure.

The concept is staggering; it doesn’t mean that i set a trend, but at least that i tapped into it first and have (so far) held onto it the longest. Through this passive act of ignorance i suddenly realized both how important this has become to me, what it really is, and how often i do not come through for it.

Long gone are those days, though, when i represented all that is common and exciting about blogging. I am not an active linker, and i do not engage in many of the trends and memes that are so often definitive of the blogging community. I am more interesting in reporting, either on my daily life, or on the people and communications i observe, and in singing and playing both my own songs and others’ through Trio and Blogathon.

Whether or not i’m putting in my best effort on a daily basis, new people continue to happen onto this page for the first time, some of them familiar and some entirely strange. All of my roommates (current and former) read it regularly, as do most of my close friends. Some of my professors have been known to stop by. This weekend, Rabi and I had just sat down to a refreshing Bubble Tea when my cell phone was rung by my god-brother, who i haven’t seen or spoken to in almost four years, but who had found this through Google. He told me that “Hide Your Love Away” was his favorite song so far, and said we should hang out sometime soon.

That’s what i love — how this has been woven together with my “real life;” not so much that you cannot see the seams, but well enough that it never quite unravels. I love that people i haven’t talked to, people i have forgotten, people i have never met can see a sketch or snapshot of my life at any given moment. Sometimes writing for it can seem boring, or tedious, or invasive, but if i were to stop, to actually give up for a single minute in the days or weeks that separate my posts, then suddenly this mirror of my identity would just turn into a photograph, taken from far away.

There have been times i have loved this more than i do now, and times that i have disliked it less, but i don’t think i have ever felt so comfortable about it. Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring. And, starting today, thank you for talking back in the comments section

Happy Birthday to this.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/happy-birthday-to-this-3/

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I couldn’t make that last post funny … really, i tried. For three days. It wasn’t gonna happen.

There’s a quote posted across from my desk: “I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” Mark Twain put it well; sometimes when i try to capture my feelings onto this page it comes out long and rambly and saying, yes, exactly what i meant, but not in a way i’d expect you to want to slog through just for a few easy punchlines. So i edit, i whittle, i carve, i tweak, but this time i came out with a humorless lump of coal rather than the snarky diamond of wit i so often aim for — neither concise and well-done or rambly and gleeful.

I think what i’m trying to say is that if you could giggle, titter, or chuckle just once or twice as you read it i would feel a lot better about it. It was supposed to be funny; give me the benefit of doubt. Just this once.

Please?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106138668774033306/

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I don’t write, i don’t call… you’d think that I don’t like the internet. Really, it is sometimes what keeps me awake, alert, and alive. Especially because of coffee.

I have discovered that I cannot ingest anything more than the most minuscule amount of caffeine. This falls somewhere between inconvenience and embarrassment when it comes to the caffeinated peer pressure that in inherent in the corporate environment. Each morning my co-workers invariably fuel up on coffee, breezing through the coffee station at the breakfast stand like a stealth bomber quickly refueling in the air. Coffee keeps them going, it makes them sharper.

Coffee does not make me sharper. Not in the least. Coffee fuzzes my edges, as if my body is a camera trying unsuccessfully to capture a subject in motion. An afternoon trip to Starbucks leaves me feeling drugged, unable to control myself or stop talking or just think clearly for a single second. Is this what it’s like, i think, to be on speed? Moving without even having to think about it.

I have resigned myself to empty-handed trips to the cafeteria at ten fifteen, when they are just heading for a reload. As they return, sipping their caramel-colored drug, i slip into my cube, surreptitiously loading Little Yellow Different or bluishorange or Wockerjabby and getting my fix and then, reinvigorated, re-attack my work.

You have so much energy!, is what they always say. I always extol the virtues of eight cups of water and a bottle of cranberry juice a day with no red meat and only a touch of liquor. I guess i should really just own up and tell them to get a blog.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106095459601423923/