Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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In the Air

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A note for those of purchasing all manner of sexy netbook laptops such as my own, newly-acquired, darling, cobalt blue Samsung NC10:

Just because your laptop lacks a CD or DVD drive doesn’t mean you have to buy an external USB drive to use discs with your computer.

If the only reason you need the drive is for installing software or ripping music you can simply share the drive from any other computer on yor network by right clicking the drive in question and altering its share properties.

Sharing CD-drives in that fashion is a cinch; with DVD drives you might encounter the same error I’ve been hitting, which is that the drive is unavailable. (By contrast, Elise’s DVD drive shares with no issue.) As soon as I figure that one out I’ll get back to you with a solution.

Just now I installed mixing software from my tower’s CDROM drive to my new laptop over the airwaves of my wireless network so that I can work on mixes for potential freelance clients while on the plane to my honeymoon France.

If you told protozoic Peter I’d be doing that in 2008 his head would have probably exploded.

a protozoic peter

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I’ve been methodically tagging old CK posts in seemingly every spare moment ever since I first transferred from Blogger to WordPress in November of 2006.

At first the process was easy – I started with a list of my common post topics, and the content was new and familiar. It didn’t begin to get difficult until over a year later, when I found myself in the 2002 era. There I began to encounter memories I didn’t remember, or oblique themes I didn’t anticipate. I found myself walking over to E’s office to ask her about details I had forgotten, and constantly adding new topics to encompass some of my older worries.

As my excavation continued into the fall of 2001 I began to pass by the start of some topics – time traveling into the mind of a former me that had never been in a positive relationship, never met Elise, or never lived with Lindsay and Erika.

I already wrote about my sympathetic response in the current day, about how getting into the headspace of those old posts alters the current me. I’m past that now, though, past the first time I met Selina and the last time I was cast in a play.

It’s hard to imagine a Peter, less those milestones, but easy to understand why he’d seem so foreign without them. Every time I catch myself thinking, “this blogger is so young, so naive,” I remind myself that it’s not the years between us that cause that impression, but the experiences.

The last signpost of the modern me is Rabi, her personage and page omnipresent in my life for a seeming eternity. Yet, she too had a first post, and as I checked the box next to her “Rabi” topic I had a twinge of sadness that I wouldn’t get to check it again, so far back am I into my pre-history.

Two years after my big move from blogger and I am finally entrenched in my first three months, my first 900 posts. Posts about papers I had to write. Posts about days at the coffee shop. Naive posts. Posts about nothing. Posts prior to all of the major players in my current life. Is it even me that’s writing? Would that blogger recognize this current writer, content and a scant 14 days away from his wedding?

As I drilled through another dozen posts of tagging this morning I had an inkling that it might be time to give up, but there this OCD quality of mine to obey: I can’t let it go unfinished.

Will anyone care whether or not a three line post from December of 2000 is categorized in “rain”? The likely answer is no, but if I didn’t care about that I also wouldn’t care about a dozen other things that have kept CK lurching forward for over eight years. It’s the very point of CK – that I can excavate and time travel. It’s why I started it, and why it’s still here.

That’s the connection between your author here and your author then. That’s why I have to tag another 899 posts, no matter how tiny they seem from this great distance.

FaceBook flash mobs crash British bashes

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You might have to read this one to believe it.

The Daily Mail reports that police were called to shut down a local club when more than 500 youths decided to crash a private 18th birthday party that had been advertised on FaceBook.

The hilarity here is that the mob clearly didn’t log in to FaceBook en masse and click “Attending.” An agent of the mob took note of the event, and they colluded in some other way to converge upon it. They must have a special “mob of louts” social network, or perhaps a loutish bulletin board where such anarchy can be planned.

Even more hilarious is that this isn’t an isolated incident, but one in a string of flash mob usurpations of teenaged Brit bashes. Behold the final paragraph:

And in February, thousands of pounds of damage was caused to a house when hordes of louts barged their way in and staged a drug-fuelled orgy at 15-year-old Gemma Johnson’s bash in Worthing, West Sussex.

Except, doing a touch of background research reveals that Ms. Johnson was actually aiming for a drug-fueled orgy, which doesn’t seem to be the case in this new story.

Gemma had an interesting idea, but her execution was off. I think the ultimate in hilarity would be to stage a party that specifically benefits from being crashed, but I’m hard-pressed to think of any kind of event that benefits from the attention of over 500 drunk, drugged, possibly libidinous louts.

Thoughts?

out with the old, out with the new

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Being a consumate overachiever, I am usually all over “small changes that can yield big success” articles. Like, whoo boy, sign me up for micro adjustments that cause macro improvements!

Except, at this point I have made every micro-tweak I can make. I am fully tweaked.

Take, for example. a CNN article from yesterday that suggests five simple diet changes that result in 500+ saved calories a day.

Here’s what they suggested, in comparison to what I do.

Old: whole milk
New: 1 percent milk
Me: rice milk

Old: whole bagel
New: half a bagel
Me: low fat granola
(occasionally a bagel with non-hydrogenated, light spread)

Old: chocolate ice cream
New: chocolate yogurt or a Popsicle
Me: soy- or rice-based ice cream, fruit chillers, or nuts

Old: latte made with whole milk
New: latte made with skim milk
Me: chai made with soy milk

Old: be a couch potato
New: take a 20-minute walk
Me: walk 1-3 miles a day

I could continue to match them one for one – they’d say, “eat lean meat,” and I’d say, “eat fish.” They’d say, “no more extra cheese,” and I’d say, “no more cheese.”

Articles like this make me feel okay for being thin, because I have clearly eliminated every source of culinary indulgence from my life already, and have largely found replacements that I prefer to the original gluttonous versions.

(I wish that articles like this could also make me feel like I can stop worrying that I’m going to turn into a giant Italian balloon when I turn thirty like half of my family did, but I’m just going to have keep being anxious about that bridge until it’s crossed.)

My total tweakedness isn’t limited to diet, which means I react similarly to “small changes” articles about budgets or goal setting – I’m excited to read them until I realize they’re preaching to the me of 2003. I’ve made most of these adjustments already because they all dovetail with my concept of living marginally. I suppose it’s my personal version of being green – why waste money and time on frivolous things you don’t even care about, when you’d rather waste them on frivolous things you actually enjoy?

So, to CNN readers I say, “If you like your lattes with whole milk, go ahead and drink them.” Micro changes are nice, but it’s a major change of attitude that’s going to make the biggest difference in your life.

Stuff Takes Time

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I rung in 2009 the same way I spent December 25th – quietly at home with Elise. The reality is that every other day has become its own holiday spectacle, so the actual holidays are one of the few chances we have to lay low and relax.

Our wedding is a scant 16 days away. When we set the date for January I was concerned that it would compound all of the craziness of December. Now that we’ve crossed over to a new year I feel exactly the opposite. We’re changing in a time of change. The wedding extends the exfoliation of a prior year, as though our NYE kiss will last from midnight yesterday through when we touch down back in Philadelphia after honeymoon.

My mantra in 2008 was “stuff takes time.” If it sounds unspecific, good – that’s the point. The point that everything in life – my education, my music, my blog, our relationship, our music festival, my career, and our band – has taken a lot of time and effort to get to this point. The point is that no goal worth attaining is instantaneous. I didn’t have a senior position at work and four CDs with my band in 2004, yet here we are. We couldn’t have gotten married in 2004 or rented a farm for our music festival in 2006, but that’s where we’re headed.

It would be pointless to spend the rest of the post back-patting for all of my accomplishments in ’08 – I sortof already do that once a year, anyway.

Let’s not look back. Let’s just devote our time to the people and the things we love, and move inexorably closer to our goals, one year at a time.