Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

by

The shape of this quarter is starting to reveal itself to me… when i’ll wake up in the morning and when i’ll get home at night and when i’ll even think to spare a glance towards my computer. Yesterday my first instructor (a non-professor… my only one) assigned us what turned out to be a forty page reading assignment due for this morning, and i didn’t get done class until around nine last night. My bet is that she won’t possibly cover the latter fifteen pages of the assignment in one hour of class today, so i only read up to that point. When the instructor asked the class for a show of hands by non-business majors i was the only person to have fingers tickling the air; she assures me that i need not have taken any other business class to understand International Business Law, but i still remain skeptical.


I’m always whining about how boring and unobstructed my life and schedule typically are, but i’m starting to think that that just reflected the fact that i’ve never before in my life completed all of the work assigned to me in any one given academic subject. And, so far, i have accumulated a GPA that is just shy of the Dean’s List in the absence of any motivated effort on my part to do anything other than show up for class and write my papers. So, this semester i’m conducting an experiment … i’m taking seven courses loaded with reading and practicum skills and i’m only allowed to slack off in one of them (which has yet to be determined). So… we’ll see if working harder actually earns me a straight 4.0 or not in a matter of months, but i can tell you already that it’s not exactly doing wonders for my social life.

Thank god i don’t have much of a science requirement, that’s all i have to say about that…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5928426/

by

The first day of fall on a college campus is always a memorable experience… yesterday was that in two respects: the first day of Fall while on campus, and the first day of Fall term. Freshmen were everywhere, lines for food and books were long, and i spotted nearly a hundred people i haven’t seen in months (and lamented easily another hundred that i didn’t see). I ran into Gina with former roommate Michelle and walked them to the bookstore where i had a sighting of Laurel and Ben before i was distracted by Kathe who was eventually joined by Selina, but then i had class with Karen and afterwards ran into Matt A. before headed back to class, this time with Gina. And, that was only in the span of an hour.

Sometimes you anticipate your relationships to all of these people changing, and sometimes you expect them to stay the same. Or, at least, i do. I’ve been finding out that sometimes i’m right and sometimes i’m not – sometimes in cases i didn’t really expect. Who knew that one biting comment from one of my favourite friends would leave me seething and writing a nasty song about them on the first day of having them back in my life? Who knew that someone i generally despise would put a broad smile on my face while i was walking around aimlessly? Who knew that people would change so much, or stay so much the same?

I haven’t really thought about my ‘blogging schedule’ … last year i took alternate weekdays off. Today i am headed to International Business Law, Critical Reasoning, Basic Production, and Communication Theory. We’ll see how i feel about blogging after all of that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5903942/

by

Yesterday was impossibly full… two or three different days all slipped deceptively into the packaging of one. Shopping turned into lunch, which turned into a deep conversation about what made me who i am, which turned into a concert for my mom that ended with a concert that pulled out notes and chords from places i’ve never been before. That was one day… happy deep family day. Then there was my day to myself, with guitar and internet and music and napping and food. And, then, came my day with friends, which typically started out happy and fun and quickly descended into misery. I’m usually introverted enough towards the middle and end of big parties, but this time i had headphones with me so i just turned on the good bits and let everyone at the party do their miserable little social dance to the sounds between my ears. Eventually i got tired of waiting for the people i wanted to be with (the story of my life) and i went out on the front step and turned it up all the way until finally i set off for the apartment.

So many blogging things happened in there… things i’ll have to say eventually for me to make more sense. Somehow i explained to my mother exactly why i like to be thin and why i like the girls who i like and why i have to be successful at something and she understood it all with this wane little smile and tears welling in her eyes. I can’t imagine what it must have been like seeing me from the outside… i wanted to thank her for everything and so when she asked me to play “under my skin” i shut my eyes and opened up and poured things into it that she had never even heard before, and afterwards she sortof just stared at me and i was just sweating and breathing and smiling because somehow i opened the song up again just when i thought i had used it all up.


It’s hard to quantify 20 years in any kind of way, but somewhere in between my nearly mathematical proof that i’ve never had a male role model before Peter Mulvey and my gut-wrenching concert i think i was having a happy birthday. The only happy one out of the three.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5862553/

by

The office is empty as can be except for Fran and I, which is the way it usually goes around 6pm every night. My desk is unusually uncluttered because every trashcan in the immediate vicinity is full, and i am leaving today and never coming back. Except i am coming back… on Monday… probably a lot earlier than i’d unusually be here on a Monday. But, the clock striking 6:15 marked my last paid hour as a fully paid professional staff member of Drexel University, and i’ll miss it. It was a comfort having something so sure in my life every day; now it’s back to the normal ebb and flow. And here i go…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5833193/

by

Philadelpha Inquirer: Kiss My Ass! I left a phone message and email for the writer of this story only knowing that it would be about blogging teens and not about the disaster angle. Wouldn’t you know that she didn’t email me back about it even though i was (as far as i know) one of the first Philly blogs to feature any reliable fact-based coverage last Tuesday. Not only did she not email me back about being interviewed, she used Brendan at Bokane in her story as per my recommendation of him… again, with no email correspondence. Of course, Brendan can be located easily via Google and i am but a drop in the bucket of teenaged reactions to last week’s events, but i still feel vaguely shafted by the whole thing. You should read the article, although it’s honestly a sortof “bringing blogging to the masses” kind of thing; nothing shocking.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5807741/