Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

You are sitting next to my wife.

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I’ve now been married for a little over a quarter of a year.

It’s been really swell, aside from the part where I was really pissed off in France for a day or two. And the quality of gouda there more than made up for it.

We’re still the newest newlyweds in most of our social circles, so we’re still getting those ever-so-nebulous questions: “How’s married life treating you? / Is married life any different?”

At first I thought there was inherent comedy in the idea that something so simple as a wedding would have fundamentally altered the nature of our unbroken seven-year relationship.

On second thought, I realized that some things are different. People treat us as more of a team than they used to. I feel more responsible to be a (dys?)functional part of her family. We own a car!

Really, the biggest difference is the way we look at each other when we’re at home watching a movie. I can’t describe it. There’s just something knowing in the glance, like, “I married you just so we could sit around and do this for the rest of our lives.”

That’s a little too intangible of a nuance for elevator chat, so I usually tell people the biggest difference is that now when people sit down next to Elise on the train I say, “Excuse me, but you are sitting next to my wife.”

They usually move.

Addicted to Twitter: Pt. 1 – Why Tweet?

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Twitter is a micro-blogging platform brought to you by the evil geniuses behind original-flavor Blogger: Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jack Dorsey.

The concept is simple and has been beaten to death by the media all this month: answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less, and follow the updates of other people you’re interested in.

To claim that as the definition of Twitter is akin to defining America as a democratic union of states. You leave out all the fun bits of the story.

The most immediate analog to Twitter is the Facebook status box, and many people who use both networks elect to sync their Twitter to Facebook, doubly updating their status with regularity. I had arrived by day two:

is apparently writing an Elliott Smith hip hop tribute song? I don’t know. It’s really confusing.

As the week pressed on I continued to follow people – friends, friends of friends, media figures. The more I followed, the more I began to understand – Twitter is an ongoing, multi-part, real-time conversation – and I could jump in with a response at any time.

After feeling things out with friends, I wrote a message @jacobtwop and he @krisis back at me! I posed a question @AmandaPalmer and she replied, as did Neil Gaiman to another @query.

Week one ended with me completely sold on the power of Twitter to connect famous and infamous folks to their fans. But did it really matter what I was tweeting about myself?

Check back for the next installment, in which my idle interest starts to become a habit. And, while you wait, follow me on Twitter.

Addicted to Twitter: Intro

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They say you can make or break a habit in just 21 days. If that’s true, today is the official confirmation of my Twitter addiction.

I had no plans of getting into Twitter when I made my first regular post on April 6. I was merely checking out the network for a project at work. Yet here we are three weeks later and I’m hooked.

Those three weeks happened to overlap with Twitter hijacking the news cycle, from Ashton’s joust with CNN to outrage about overhyped swine flu. Suddenly everyone was on Twitter … Oprah! My mother!

As with any phenomenon, the hype obscures the hit. My next few blogs offer a personal peek at my 21-days of forming a new habit. If I can get addicted, you can too. Start by following me.

The Life, It Is Good

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Last week I spent an evening writing about Tori Amos (which will surface here next week). In doing background research I came across the following quote:

A lot of people think darkness is making somebody emotionally defecate on themselves. That’s baby demon stuff. … These baby demons can be wonderful in some ways. Wonderful in some ways, highly conscious in some ways, but until they’ve done their work on their shadow, they are more concerned with the power of seduction and the control over another Being than anything else.” (Lucifer, per Tori, Piece by Piece)

I’ve been conscious of that lately – about the difference between having a negative opinion and trying to make someone doubt themselves. I’m a critic by nature, but I don’t want to be that baby demon. I don’t need anyone to feel bad to make me feel better. I’d rather give light than emanate darkness – especially not impotent baby-demon darkness.

Think about it that way – that everything you do either provides lightness or darkness. Every encounter – writing a record review; bumping into someone on the bus; being disappointed by a family member – in each instant you have a binary choice to make. Will you try to shed some light on the situation? Or, make it blacker – make it pejorative and hateful?

We all know that I don’t like warm weather, but I have to say that I appreciated our high-degree days this weekend. I sweat out all the toxicity I was fostering. The sky sucked it out of me like venom from a snake bite, and it oozed off me like tar.

I feel like I’m back.

Lambert Crosses the Gay Rubicon?

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A strongly-worded NYT Style Article about my American Idol obsession Adam Lambert, whose “is he or isn’t he” gay controversy is DOA.

Interesting, though, that the article is ostensibly about the recent Neil Patrick Harris effect – wherein “He crossed the Rubicon. He did the ‘sudden death’ play. Supposedly you come out and your career is over. He came out and his career is in better shape than it ever was” – and yet carries a sidebar pairing Lambert with Bowie, Liberace, and Prince – two flamboyant straight men who managed to plausibly deny any actual homosexual tendencies and a gay man in deep denial who was finally outed by his own lifestyle.

Essentially, NPH is the only example to date of the mythological Rubicon-crossing that Lambert is currently forging through.

And, not every hot, talented, triple-threat gay guy was Doogie Howser.

(from my stalkee J. Clifton on Twitter, who may have just hinted at having a farcical virtual Tori Amos listening party with me next month, the mere thought of which slays me. Oh, the list of bloggers in this country I could get into trouble with (Jett, I am looking at you).)