Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Bad Teenage Poetry Blogging Day

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Yesterday Rabi pointed out that Superlagirl had declared today to be bad teenage poetry blogging day, and issued a challenge for other bloggers to join her in participating.

Alright then, Rabi. I’ll see your four pieces of (debatably) bad teenage poetry and – against my better judgment – raise you my (less-debateably) bad teenage poetry website preserved in all of its framed glory, directly imported from Geocities.

Behold: Synonyms for Damage. Even the name is bad teenage poetry!

Honestly, I only reinstated it for the novelty of having it there – I wouldn’t encourage you to surf through it, as I will share the chief passages of note below.

[Read more…] about Bad Teenage Poetry Blogging Day

World of Whedon

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An extended interview with Joss Whedon, mostly on the topic of Dr. Horrible and how it represents a new revenue model for Hollywood, though how much revenue that entails is TBA.

(Also: a young YouTube auteur fills in the early years of Dr. Horrible’s video blog.)

Also, the never-before seen animation test for Buffy: The Animated Series just surfaced. As with Dr. Horrible, I wasn’t overly-impressed with it, but I can’t understand why no one picked it up:

(And, if you are a Whedon-fan who is truly asleep-at-the-wheel it may have escaped your attention that the official eighth season of Buffy is currently being released as a comic book. If you – like me – are a huge Buffy fan who is too busy and grown-up to be hoarding piles of individual comics you ought to consider picking up the first two collected graphic novels – The Long Way Home and No Future For You.)

(Annnnd, if you are a Whedon- and X-men fan you should have long ago purchased all four of the graphic novels of Joss’s run on Astonishing X-Men, the first two of which were one of the best X-arcs I’ve ever read: Gifted, Dangerous, Torn, & Unstoppable.)

If you enjoy keeping up with the world of Whedon – including Buffy, Angel, Firefly. Dr. Horrible, the upcoming Dollhouse, and all of the people that make them happen – you ought to bookmark the fantastic Whedonesque

A Casual Occupation

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Our VP of HR, who I think is the spitting image of Wonder Woman, informed the entire building that we would be business casual for the entirety of August so we can stay comfortable in the heat of our commutes.

That’s the longest streak of jeans-wearing we’ve ever had!

Elise scoffed when I shared this news with her, as her company allows year-round casual dress, where casual includes ripped jeans, board shorts, band t-shirts, and flip-flops. I remember the first time I visited there for a meeting I showed up in a suit and was greeted by a creative director in jeans and a black t-shirt.

Every so often I’m tempted to be jealous of their leniency of dress, but my specific blend of overachiever and fashionista would make it impossible to enjoy.

As it is I felt the need to purchase an entirely new casual dress wardrobe for August (from the newly revitalized Express for Men – oh, how I’ve missed your tiny sizes!). What can I say – I feel obligated to look sharper than everyone else in my building (except for, of course, the designers, who outstyle me every day of the week without even trying).

For the safety and sanity of everyone I don’t like to get into too much more detail about my workplace, but if you’ve every wondered what I do this video describes it pretty succinctly (and, furthermore, was forwarded to me by our own management, if that says anything).


http://view.break.com/542649 – Watch more free videos

(alternate link)

Taking a pass at success.

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Earlier this week Lifehack ran a thought-provoking article about the 10 skills you need to succeed (at almost anything).

Usually when I happen upon these sorts of articles I expect zeitgeist-y skills like “learn to recognize a tipping point,” or soon-to-be-obsolete accomplishments such as “cultivate a good Google-rank.”

This article was intriguing in that it featured neither; many of the skills it lists I would nearly label as traits:

1. Public Speaking
2. Writing
3. Self-Management
4. Networking
5. Critical Thinking
6. Decision-Making
7. Math
8. Research
9. Relaxation
10. Basic Accounting

At first glance at this list I thought, Wow, I must be pretty damn successful, because I am awesome at all of these things! However, upon further reading and reflection I realized that I’m not equally awesome across the board, and my various lacks of success in life can be easily attributed to my weaker points on the list.

I graded myself on each attribute on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 representing the pinnacle of that trait in anyone I’ve ever met, with the 3-5 area representing the skillset of the average, unskilled populace.

1. Public Speaking – 8
2. Writing – 9
3. Self-Management – 7
4. Networking – 6
5. Critical Thinking – 8
6. Decision-Making – 5
7. Math (capacity-for, not knowledge-of) – 7
8. Research – 6
9. Relaxation – 3
10. Basic Accounting – 8

I wound up with a grand total of 67% – barely passing at success.

Of course, not every one of those traits has to do with every endeavor in my life, and I’m successful in a lot of areas.

My job, for example, is mostly reliant on 3-5-6-8, in which I score 26/40 – decidedly above the 12-20 average range. Being a singer-songwriter relies on a straight 1-2-3-4 dash, where I notch a weighty 30/40.

Still, it’s easy to see how each trait impacts the rest, and how a deficit in one is the detriment of others. I know for certain that my lack of Relaxation hamstrings my slightly above-average Self-Management, which means I churn out less of my quality Writing. And, my relatively meager Decision-Making and Research abilities can frequently hamper my most significant Critical Thinking.

It is possible to increase your ability in one area without losing ground in another? If our lives were D&D, would this system be more like rolling a character, or using a points-based allocation system? Will my Relaxation increase naturally with age?

Does anyone score much higher than 2/3? Are the Bill Gates and Richard Bransons of the world successful because they are higher than 80% on this scale?

How would you rate yourself?

Alla This

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On Thursday morning I was very much in my head while sitting on the trolley, listening to Ani DiFranco’s madly terrific new song “Alla This.” The song is partially about the intersection of the personal and the political, with Ani at one point delivering the following:

i won’t rent you my time
i won’t sell you my brain
i won’t pray to a male god
cuz that would be insane
and i can’t support the troops,
cuz every last one of them’s being duped,
and i will not rest a wink
until the women have regrouped

I already love the song as much as anything she’s done this decade, but at her concert earlier this month that verse sent a thrill through my body – in eight lines it succinctly hits commercialism, religion, war, and feminism. Amazing.

The verse ended as I stepped off the trolley, and my mind began to wander. I thought about Ani’s constant challenging of the patriarchal status quo, and how any form of discrimination ultimately connects back to that hegemony.

In the distance between the trolley doors and the stairs to sunlight somehow that rolled into my wondering about the Iraqi citizens, and if life has actually improved for those that exist outside of the patriarchy both of that nation and of the force the world is imposing on it.

I wondered, what about the gays and lesbians in Iraq? I knew nothing about this group, though I was sure they existed. What was their life like before the invasion, and what was it like now? While I am advocating for the rights of my lesbian friends to marry are their Iraqi counterparts struggling for the simplest of rights – for the ability to exist as themselves without fear?

Sometimes my brain and the internet do a peculiar zeitgeist tango, where the same day I wonder about a topic it shows up in my daily reading, and sure enough when I got to my desk CNN was running a story entitled “Gays in Iraq terrorized by threats, rape, murder.”

As it turns out, as the Iraqi government came unmoored the situation of their GBLT citizens deteriorated. Any hint of their sexuality risks not only their own lives, but the lives of their entire families.

What a terrifying closet to be trapped within.

.

Just a day later I was at the Philadelphia Theatre Company to see Elise’s brother in his weekly theatre lab.

One of his classmates – barely a teenager – wrote a brilliant play about how bullying can go too far, as the actions of a few are enabled by the inaction of their peers at large. Here the result was the death of a young girl at the hands of her tormentors – their faces unimportant, as all of her classmates were complicit in her fate.

In the play’s last scene Elise’s brother acted as a federal agent, gingerly interrogating one of the girl’s classmates, getting nowhere. Finally, grimly, he asks her:

“Is it true that the girl who was murdered had a crush on you?”

And then, brilliantly, sparking immediate tears in my eyes as much for his delivery as for the line itself:

“Have you ever heard of a boy named Matthew Shepard?”

So powerful, and from the pen of a girl half of my age. Vital proof that we still have some terrifying closets of our own, whether their doors are open or closed.

As the lights came up, Ani’s voice rung out again in my mind as the voice of murdered girl, of those Iraqi men, of Matthew, and of Larry.

i will not stand immersed,
in this ultra violent curse
i won’t let you make a tool of me
i will keep my mind and body free
bye bye minutiae
of the day to day drama,
i’m expanding exponentially,
i am consciousness without identity