Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Okay, so, let’s get some things straight. I love Tori. I am spending $300+ to see her on her current solo tour because i panicked when the Philly date was in question. I own all of her in-print singles. I like to talk like her. However, i wasn’t expecting a new album. I am still waiting to hear things she’s only mentioned like “Snow Cherries in France,” “To the Fair Motormaids of Japan,” “Like a Virgin,” and “Zero Point.” I am still looking for something to wipe the purple haze of To Venus and Back out of my mind.

Two years ago this Friday i had just moved into the Drexel dorms and it was the first day of class but i was having breakfast with the girls from Kelly #2, and i had just come back from French III in possession of this strangely shaped purple double disc. And, we sat drinking milk and gabbing about awful morning classes and those strange purple sounds began to creep in. I only awarded the disc three and a half stars in my effort to get published in the school paper, but i always undervalue my favourite artists on first listen to their new material. Soon it was custom; if i did not shut my eyes to “Bliss” playing on my headset i would not be asleep in time for “1000 Oceans” to drift away. But, i was still slightly put off by the purple taste in my mouth… the wrong songs from Under the Pink on the live album, faux strings where Tori would usually have a composer, melodies recycled and reconstituted, lyrics more obscure than observant. It was not quite what it was meant to be.

Two years later, Strange Little Girls is still not quite what i was looking for. At first the name seemed like it could be an all new album or even a beesides collection; Tori always refers to her songs as girls, so it seemed apropos. Even when a collection of covers was announced i almost assumed it would include such staples of her sets such as “Love Song” & “Landslide,” or maybe songs only teased at like Joni Mitchell’s winter ballad “River” or the Beatles classic “Hey Jude.” And, of course, Tori went and made an arty self-consuming project out of it.

Each song, she says, is a song by a man about a woman, and she is trying to get us to see the woman’s point of view without changing any of the lyrics. She’s subtle, or perhaps tricking us into accepting this album in lieu of the sure-to-come masterpiece that will follow the renegotiation of her contract. But, in the meantime, she has left us these 12 new windows into her world, and we cannot help but peer in with our hands cupped close around our eyes to make it seem like we are a part of her little blue world as it turns endlessly upside down.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5770910/

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Those poor Freshmen don’t even have a clue.


For the last two years i’ve been involved in move in, first as a student in the middle of hurricane floyd carting my stuff trip by trip up to the fifth floor of Kelly and then in that same building the next year trying to keep things orderly through pouring rain and hard beating sun. Here in my third year, i am finally disconnected from the class slowly seeping into the precious cracks of my campus that have been so dry and empty all summer. I would rather not caulk them in with this endless stream of fresh faces. I do not want lines in the book store. I do not want people milling around in the lobby of the theatre. I do not want to bob and weave through a crowd on their way to the cafeteria because they only know how to travel in herds.

Ironic that i work in admissions, isn’t it? Today i was in the bookstore pricing my textbooks and all around me parents were gasping at prices and tellings their students what’s what as they silently looked over their shoulders and stewed. It all seemed crude to me, pudgy pushy parents edging past me in the aisles trying to take control of a situation that they could hardly hope to dent, while their student idly followed with shopping baskets dangling behind them. Do you know that parents often fill out applications for their students here in the office? I might be a momma’s boy by some standards, but she never touched the interiour of an app, and you had better believe that i picked up all of my books myself with my own money.

I suppose i just don’t really understand it… the crash of over two thousand new students swamping my campus with questions and with too-wide eyes and with their domineering parents, secretly scoping for attractive people or where they might go to hang out tonight. Why i am i working for this perpetually in-motion machine that greedily sucks in student after student and pumps out cookie cut graduates every year? Because, i suppose, somewhere in the middle the push of getting in and the pull of getting out (or perhaps the opposite) – everything balances out perfectly and all you do is float until the gravity of the situation takes over for you again.


I am not there yet; i’m just about to be $435 closer to getting my feet off the ground.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5767392/

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MetaFilter mostly slammed Madonna for weighing in on the state of the nation during her Friday Los Angeles show, but after giving her speech a read i think it’s probably the most intelligent thing anyone has said in the past six days. To discount an opinion because it comes from someone of celebrity status is ridiculous, especially when it’s from someone who is so much more educated about the cultures of the world than some of the American’s who are so quick to give their opinion. Madonna is self-made, controls her own business, currently lives abroad, and has two young children. I think that alone would make me interested in what she had to say, but i think you’ll see that it wasn’t just interesting … it was true.

Howdy, Los Angeles! Having a good time? It’s kind of confusing trying to have a good time this week as you all know, and I want you all to know how privileged I feel to be in the position that I am in today.

We don’t…we’re not doing the show because we want people to forget, we’re doing the show because we want to remind people of how precious life is. And how full of joy it should be.

The tragedy that occurred this week is unthinkable but i want to think of it as a big fucking wakeup call. OK? But now that we’re all awake, we should stay awake. Acts of terrorism are going on in this country on a regular basis, ok? In England, in Ireland, in…Israel, in Palestine, in India, in Tibet, and Pakistan and Sri Lanka, in Africa and Bosnia and Afghanistan. I could go on and on. OK?

Last night, last night we said a prayer for in a moment of silence, ok, 18,000 people shut up. Hard to believe but it’s true. We had a moment of silence where we said a prayer for everyone who died Tuesday morning, for all the family and friends of those who died. Tonight, I’d like everyone to say a prayer for peace. I’d like everyone to say a prayer that President Bush practices restraint in his decision making, and he does not retaliate this act of violence with another act of violence, ok. Because violence only begets violence.

So please everyone, no kidding, can we just keep quiet, bow our heads, grab the person next to you, I don’t care, but please, say a prayer. Repeat, because I don’t know about you but I want to live a long and happy life, I want my kids to live a long and happy life, ok.

[Long pause followed by chants of “USA! USA! USA!” from the audience.]

All right, all right, I knew it wouldn’t go on for a minute. OK, USA, yeah, but the whole world OK. Start thinking in a global way. Please! Thank you very much. Thank you. I said it last night and I’m going to say it again, if you want the world to change, change yourself.

[via MadonnaRama, who should implement permalinks]

All of the proceeds from Madonna’s Los Angeles shows were donated to relief funds related to last Tuesday’s events, including one for children who lost parents in the tragedy.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5740206/

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And, oh, hi, i also have a life. I think this week was one that was ripe for all sorts of essay-length posts from me regarding what i mentioned in Monday’s mammoth post, but then Tuesday happened.

In 1996 i was 14, and i had just created my first website when TWA800 crashed. For the entire summer the footer of my painstakingly hand-coded splash page bore the visage of Mr. Benjamin, a favourite teacher of mine who had died on the flight.

I remember my reaction very clearly… how i was unable to tear myself away from Good Morning America that day before heading out to camp even though i didn’t know yet; how my mother was silent when she picked me up all the way until Broad Street; how the bottom dropped out of my stomach when i heard; how loosing someone who i didn’t even think about every day had a huger impact on my entire life than i ever could have imagined. I took a day off from camp so that i could go to our too-empty high school to sit with friends who understood how i felt, and when i got back the next day everyone had heard. It felt like they were all at once telling my how sorry they were and asking me through our van window how i was feeling and treating me like i was some fragile thing in a china shop that you are always afraid to brush up against because you don’t want to have to pay for it.

I don’t think i had ever known anyone else who had died of something that wasn’t related to age, and i wasn’t braced for the emotions that would result. Or for the consolations. I was utterly wrecked by both, but i kept it churning inside of my stomach because i didn’t know i was allowed to let it out. I thought that just knowing someone who died and was mentioned on teevee was not enough for me to have the right to be sad in front of anyone but people who shared my own position in the matter because my grief was so different than what everyone kept expecting.

Flight 800 is the first “Do you remember where you were when you heard…” that i had in my life, and it just so happened that i had a personal connection to it. For other people in my generation that event might have been the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, or Oklahoma City, or Columbine, or Princess Diana … there was no single across-the-board bookmark in our memory. Until now.

The funny thing about nationally (and internationally) televised tragedies is that we all feel like we have a right to react to them no matter how large, small, close, or far they may be. Everyone certainly does have a right to their personal feelings on anything that goes on in America, but with any other national event our collective obsession with being involved in the investigative process is only dwarfed in its tastelessness by our insistence that we be involved in the mourning process. Of course, this event is different in scale, scope, and national ramifications. But, after i got over my attempts to ascertain what was going on i stood back and realized that i have almost definitely not lost anyone i know… and i realized that at this point in time there is no place for my emotional or personal reaction to the tragedy that has befallen us here or anywhere else.

I remember how people thought they were being comforting when they offered their thoughts and prayers to me when really they just made me feel more fragile than i already was. This is not my tragedy the way it is for people who lost friends and family, or even for people whose cities were permanently altered. I can’t ignore the awful politics inherent to this situation, or that some people i know suddenly feel the need to discriminate again people with a different skin color or accent of their own.

What i can leave out of my reactions, although certainly not ignore, is my emotional and visceral reaction to Tuesday. If you are gushing about Tuesday, or if you are delighting in watching the investigation continually unfold on the news every night, i want you to take a strong look at what your interest is. Over the years i have learned to separate my emotions from my voyeurism because i don’t think it is my right to want to grieve on the behalf of anyone else, or to hear news that doesn’t pertain to me.

Yes, i am a Journalism student who hates the nightly news… every invasive investigative informational minute of it. There is something to be said for staying abreast of the current state of the rescue efforts in New York and in Washington, and on stories about the victims and their families. However, I think it is safe to say that the majority of America is partially or wholly ignorant of the motives behind the horror we’ve all been a witness to, and i very much hope that most of my readership is mature enough to focus on educating themselves before wallowing in the network’s excessive coverage.


You might disagree with everything i just said, but ultimately i think that anything else i could say couldn’t ever mean as much as my respectful silence on the matter. My thoughts are with everyone this has affected and, for now, i’m going to leave it at that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5692813/