Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

Ikea & e-tailing, the twin inflators of my revolving debt

by

Inexplicably, we now seem to be in possession of lawn furniture for our concrete back yard. This is possibly linked to our cultivating what has now become a mid-sized container garden. (I found out that it’s just not chic to call it a pot garden. go figure.)

Being the son of “Elaine of the Black Thumb,” my experiences with gardening are limited to vicarious horticultural exploits with my father and grandmother. My father and I have the same way of needing to know everything about specialized or slightly obscure topics, and one of his major topics is growing tomatoes and peppers. At some previous point I seem to recall him having a pot garden in his basement, but I was always assured it was specifically for making superior quality rope.

In any event, i’ve managed to decimate a trio of strawberries, grow a tray of marigolds and eggplants from seeds, and keep alive a cheerily expanding blackberry bush that’s so cute that i might buy another.

Equally as inexplicable as my participation in the greenery, i am days away from being the owner of a brand new acoustic/electric guitar. I’m still not really sure how it happened. Something about having a day off of work, homemade cocktails, and eBay. I’ll report later this week on the results.

Pennies

by

I used to have this dream when i was sick that i entitled “the penny dream.” It would have been more aptly titled “the repetitive stress disorder” dream, or more colloquially “the Chinese water torture” dream, and maybe now you get the idea.

In the dream there was a set of balanced scales, and on one scale would be something improbably heavy, like a refridgerator, or a Buick. On the other scale, its weight would be ticked off by pennies steadily dispensed by some unseen hand. And, though the scales were large, inevitably as we approached the actual weight of the thing, one of the pennies would land just so that it sent dozens of other pennies cascading off of the scale, leaving me even further away from equalling the weight of the elephant or RV on the other side.

Any run of the penny dream that made it to the penny cascade more than twice almost always ended with naseau. Which brings me to today’s topic: the Hanon Exercises. Charles-Louis Hanon, evil genius and bane of piano students everywhere, penned The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises, a series of repetitive runs, arpeggios, and trills meant to strengthen all of the bits of the hand that are typically weak and lifeless.

Fine in concept, but then you merrily unwrap the book from its swoosh encoded box from Amazon to discover that past the first few exercises, just reading the exercise is going to be an exercise. And, furthermore, what looks like a fairly simple sequence with one or two skipped keys is actually the slow penny-dream-like torture of your pinky finger, until at the end of the first time you make it through four repetitions without hitting a stray note (for me, about forty minutes of warming up) and your pinky stretchs for the last perfect bass C you think, “yes, i will actually vomit on this casio fully weighted, graded, lifelike keyboard if i have to push down that key with my pinky.”

It’s after i reach that point with Hanon that i moved into the Bach, staying to the blessedly non-accidental keys and playing at approximately one eleventh of the speed that a professional player plays the exercises at, because professional players read eleventy times faster than i do. (Actually, i’ve discovered that if i’m allowed one run through a measure to screw it up i can usually do it correctly the second time, which means all of my Bach practices run doubly long, but i’m getting much surer much quicker than i expected to).

And, if i managed to get through the Bach relatively in one piece and with most of my dinner still intact, along with my pinky finger and my sanity then, depending on my mood and level of death-defying counting skills, i either play Tori Amos or Radiohead.

I don’t know if i could have ever really endured these piano-practice pennies as a child – i had a lot of patience, but not a lot of endurance, if that makes any sense. As an adult i realize that, occasionally, something tortorous is in my best interests.

Insufferably Essential (or visa versa)

by

I think the main reason that i’ve never been a consumer of classical music is that there is no tidy discography for me to steadily consume. Sure, Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco are prolific and untidy, but neither of them are Debussy or Bach – neither woman has every Tom, Schiff, and Gould releasing and re-issuing her major works once or twice a decade, only to have the best of them fall back out of print almost immediately. My inner OCD-completist is doubly stymied by the whole concept – once by the in-and-out-of-printness of it, and again by the idea of having to choose noit only my favorite composers, but also my favorite interpreter(s).

The thing is, i really like classical music. It’s beautiful, moving, rewarding, and very relaxing to listen to. However, for someone as anal as i it’s seemingly impossible to make a solid connection to some small facet of it. I joke with our Masters-in-music friend Anthony that if i ever get put on hold somewhere with good classical music i would three-way him into the call so he could identify the composer for me, as that’s my primary exposure to the medium.

The result has been that i don’t prefer any specific composer, and certainly no specific interpreter, but sometimes a specific work gets knocked into my head and never quite shakes loose. In high school our friend Sara was endlessly practicing a Debussy Prelude or Nocturne or whatever, and in college i picked up a two-disc set of them. At first it felt a bit indulgent – me, sitting in my room, listening to classical music. Now that i know the pieces a little better i actually love them – i sometimes play them quite intentionally, often on a loop at work for days at a time, humming along merrily to my favorite passages.

Recently Elise and I have been learning to play piano, and she has already reached the point of playing some of the simple Bach pieces, including two from the Well-Tempered Clavier. Which, so far as i understand, is to piano music as Superman is to comic books.

Trying to be a sweet boyfriend, i bought the collected Books 1 & 2 – not realizing, perhaps, that aside from providing a handful basic piano studies that these 48 pieces were some of the most highly regarded and difficult works for the keyboard. Of course (surely you can see where this is headed) that just meant that i wanted to learn them too.

I mostly sight-read and largely flailed my way through two preludes in friendly key signatures over the weekend, planning to alternate them regularly with my Hanon exercises. But, f you’ve ever met me, or read my web page, or even looked at its title you know that at this point in my obsession with a newfound interest i absolutely require more things. Collateral, collectibles, delectable trivial knowledge. In this case a recording, or maybe several recordings, of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier.

You might think that with all the powers of the internet at my command i could be recommended one version of one of the most famous collections of piano music with some amount of uniformity in relatively short order. You would, of course, be wrong. The internet is an capricious mistress, and from her the best i could muster was that Glenn Gould’s versions were the quintessial interpretations of a tempo-mangling asshole. Or, as termed by one of Amazon’s more skilled reviewers, “Not for Bach beginners–fair enough?”

[In the interest of aiding other erstwhile searchers on a quest similar to my own, i’ll continue this excerpt from the charming wit of one Mr. Sanity Inspector, Top 1,000 Reviewer: From the very first bars, with the flowing ascending theme played partly in a counter-intuitive staccato, the in-the-know listener can tell that this will be a highly idiosyncratic rendering. … However, a newcomer to this work would do well to begin with a more conventional reading.]

My search continued past the obvious and oft-namedchecked Gould, for the moment. Of use to this endeavor was The J.S. Bach Homepage, which contains a modest but well-kept archive of reviews of major JSB releases. Between this and raptly reading along in our WTC book to 30-second Amazon song samples, i’m least closer to making an informed decision than i was two hours ago.

As of now i am down to Richter (a rather essential interpretation, apparently) or Bernard Roberts (moderate, recent, well-recorded, and affordable), or possibly Angela Hewitt (recent, technically proficient, researched, stellar liner notes). Gould, obviously, was discarded, and I saw Schiff described as “mushy” a few too many times for my taste (haterz always prevail on the internets) (also, check out that album cover; yeesh). A few others i passed on just based on the blah-ness of their C, D, and G passages (i.e., the ones that make the most sense to me) (says the incredibly inexperienced listener brandishing his music minor threateningly).

All that said i will – as always – also submit to the vast and whimsically cultivated knowledge of my readership-at-large. If you have a favorite version of the classic 48 pieces that compose Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 AND 2 played on piano and available on compact disc please don’t hesitate to recommend them to me at krisis at the venerable domain of uprush dot org.

The Bathroom Stall Was Just a Red Herring

by

Today at work I walked into the men’s restroom and began to open the door of a stall when, from within the other stall, came a voice.

“Uh, I wouldn’t go in there.”

I stopped in my tracks.

In my experience, communication from within a bathroom stall in the workplace is utterly forbidden due to social taboo associated with identifying yourself while on the crapper. I hadn’t recognized the voice of its inhabitant, and when I leaned slightly sideways to look at his shoes under the stall I swear he slid his feet backwards, out of my sight.

I addressed the closed door of the occupied stall, and the disembodied stall voice within.

“Is there something wrong with the toilet?”

“No,” the disembodied stall voice replied, “but, don’t try to use it.”

At this point the disembodied voice’s somewhat cryptic manner of communication was starting to bug me. Why not just say, “Watch out, that toilet is clogged,” or apologize from preventing me from using the bathroom with “Sorry, that one’s clogged,” which also tacitly apologizes in the case that the voice was actually the clogger?

Was there perhaps a little bit of guilt at play there? Maybe I was dealing with the clogger! Or, maybe he was so afraid of the taboo associated with stall-talk that he could barely string together a coherent sentence, let alone an informational one.

I decided to probe for more information, and to perhaps reveal the guilt- and/or fear- ridden, somewhat cryptic, disembodied voice’s identity.

“Did you call facilities?”

“No. uh. You should definitely call facilities. Good idea.”

Now completely frustrated with the lack of initiative of the guilt- and/or fear- ridden, somewhat cryptic, disembodied voice of the bathroom stall, I stalked out of the bathroom (still having to actually *use* a bathroom, mind you, rather badly at this point).

The had voice set up a wonderful catch-22 wherein I either took responsibility for calling facilities or be forced to feel guilty about the next person who tried to use the toilet. He was also playing upon the fact that only he and I would know the toilet was clogged in order to compel me to leave a “Do not use” note on the stall.

I was, in fact, embroiled in a twisted case of bathroom blackmail at the hands of the initiative-lacking, guilt- and/or fear- ridden, somewhat cryptic, disembodied voice of the bathroom stall. (Hands… of the disembodied… never mind)

Forced into complicity with the blackmailing, I phoned facilities.

“Hi. I work on 35, and I’d like to report a problem with the left hand stall in the men’s restroom.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Uh. I’m not sure. Someone told me to call facilities about it.”

“So, it won’t flush?”

Actually, I wasn’t even sure what was wrong with it.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what happened when you used the toilet?”

“I didn’t use it. I was going to use it, but…”

Here I paused, afraid to allude to the blackmailing, initiative-lacking, guilt- and/or fear- ridden, somewhat cryptic, disembodied voice of the bathroom stall for fear of some unspecified retribution.

“…something seemed wrong. So I didn’t use it.”

“Something seemed wrong with the toilet?”

“Yes.”

“So you didn’t use it?”

“That’s correct.”

“So, what sort of service does it require?”

Again, I was stymied. What sort of service did it require?

“Um. someone should just come up and take a look at it.”

“Okay. I’ll just enter a ticket that you experienced a problem.”

“No, no, I didn’t experience it. I’m just aware of it.”

“Okay. So, you’re aware of a problem – an unknown problem – with the left-hand stall in the 35th floor men’s bathroom.”

“Yes, perfect.”

The facilities operator hung up on me, presumably out of disgust.

I quickly scrawled a “do not use” note, attempting to disguise my distinctive handwriting (link) so that it would not seem as though i was responsible for the stall issue.

As I walked the note back to the bathroom, I began to wonder – maybe my blackmailer wasn’t really the actual blackmailer. Maybe I was called upon to resolve the stall issue not by an original blackmailer, but another victim of bathroom blackmail (much like Mr. Wadsworth leads everyone to believe in Clue). Perhaps the not-actually blackmailing, blackmailing, initiative-lacking, guilt- and/or fear- ridden, somewhat cryptic, disembodied voice of the bathroom stall was a sympathetic character who, after seating himself in the stall, heard a dreadful gurgling from the next stall and witnessed from under his door a pair of feet quickly fleeing the scene. Maybe his crypticism was only a function of his fear!

I checked back later in the day to see that, though my note was intact, someone had in fact tried to use the stall. And, without going into details, I can affirm that horror ensued. Or, did it? Maybe my blackmailer (or, more specifically, the original blackmailer, as I might have been on a second-tier blackmailer) had used the toilet specifically to enhance their blackmail of me, or even to pin the blame on me after I had left my incriminating “do not use” note – which I now dare not retreive lest my dress shoes be subjected to the horror that had ensued.

Moral: Don’t ever talk to anyone in the bathroom unless they’re at a sink.

Or, this could be the moral: Don’t take responsibility for something you didn’t do. Especially in a bathroom.

But, this is really the moral: The next time you ask me why I don’t post more often, be prepared to endure the insane ramblings produced by being stuck inside a high-rise for the entirety of the nicest day of the year so far. And by being blackmailed by a sympathetic, possibly not-actually blackmailing, blackmailing, initiative-lacking, guilt- and/or fear- ridden, somewhat cryptic, disembodied voice of a bathroom stall.

by

See what happens? I get too much facial hair and then I don’t blog for a month because I’m too busy sneaking around everywhere incognito.

Yesterday I missed work not because I was too sick to go in, but because I had a headache. That’s the sort of ridiculous SEL reason I usually mock my middle-aged co-workers about but, let me assure you, this was a seriously bad noise-hurts, light-hurts, moving-hurts, breathing-hurts headache. Initially I thought that I could take my typical 4x suggested dose of Ibprofin and merrily skip to work a mere hour late. Boy was I wrong.

(I should point out that I have to take 4x the suggested dose because the suggested dose really doesn’t register at all to me. I could just as easily eat one m&m to try to solve my aches and pains. It could also have to do with the fact that I spent my entire childhood surrounded by women who would take, like 1600mg of Motrin and a glass of wine for cramps, which might also explain why I always found Karen Walker to be so lovably familiar.)

Today was blustery and spring-like, and I headed out for work. I’m certainly not using two SEL days for a headache, was my thinking. Again, boy was I wrong. (Sense a trend?) I could not focus on the screen, could not carry a work-related conversation for longer than two minutes, and was generally a Motrin-gobbling miserable excuse for a human being.

So, that’s life in my world, at the moment – headache that makes me reconsider existence, leading to major grumpiness.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2006/03/114204628084179292/