Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

college

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No, i will not do my reading on Modernity, or write five-hundred words about globalization in India without ultilizing the passive voice. I will do anything but. I will read every Metafilter post, complete with comments, from the last three days. I will floss my teeth, eat ramen, and then floss my teeth again — i like to think of it as an empirical study on ramen deposits in college students. Afterwards, I will aimlessly stare off into space while intermittently checking to see if i have any new email, because i would rather do anything but school between tomorrow and September, let alone now. And, let’s not even begin to mention the nine thirty communications class where, in the last session, my professor read out of the book FOR AN HOUR after making feeble attempts to evoke discussion from his dazed classroom of crusty-eyed twenty-somethings. Let’s face facts: I cannot communicate in a classroom setting before ten-thirty. It’s the gods’ honest truth; i’ve never received an A in a collegiate course that began before ten. And, well, now that i am a surly and jaded senior, may the gods be with you if you try to teach me how to communicate, study communication, or evaluate communication at any point earlier than that.

As for that “I’m so smart, i’m going to graduate with honors and go to a spiffy grad school” riff i was on last semester, it seems to be losing ground to the “Stuff my face with wild animal abandon whenever i get bored in an attempt to gain 20% of my body-weight before finals week” initiative and the “Who needs coursework when i have the Vagina Monologues? And who needs the Vagina Monologues when i can idly fuck with my website all day!” movement.

Last night i had a dream where i had graduated from college and all i could do was sob — because i had suddenly realized how much the worth of my life increased when accompanied by a silly little piece of paper. And five years of vaguely applicable torture, sometimes occurring at times when not even torture should be inflicted on a college student. Let alone theories of communications research.

Me? Frazzled?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/01/90253010/

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Clay under my fingernails now, even after a thorough hand washing. Serves me right for taking a class that involves visual art.

Bill couched it carefully to me… Production Design… it would help my emerging directorial conception. Very useful for identifying and bringing forward the thematic elements of a play. Close textual analysis of a Greek tragedy of my choosing, as well as The Tempest. Assurances that my less-than-meager skills as an artist would not limit my academic success (and threaten my near 3.7 GPA).


All of the couching in the world, though, could not have stemmed my alarm at spending forty whole dollars in an art supply store this morning. As for the clay, well… i do have that GPA to protect.

The first project sounded fairly simple. Pick a geometric solid and create it in any medium of your choosing. Pick a play. Create all of your set-pieces out of that geometric solid so that they can be puzzled back together into it. Simple enough; i bought bricks of super-light clay. It still makes sense… it will never solidify, so i can tweak it up until the last minute, and it will be easy to squish back together if i make too awful of a shape. I choose an irregular polyhedron that resembled two pyramids crashing into each other — figuring that something essentially square would be much easier to deal with than something that resembled a multi-sided die.

There i was, thirty minutes ago, in my sculpting glory: making a sturdy rectangle of clay, marking off the lines i need to cut, slowly peeling away the outer layers until i was almost there — one more slanted side to uncover with a quick slip of my newly purchased modeling knife. And, slip it did, directly across the knuckle of my left thumb, leveling off the entire side of it.


To my credit, i did not panic, even when the innocuous-looking flattened side of my knuckle turned quickly into seeping red. I calmly held my hand away from the clay and finished the cut to complete my polyhedron, and then walked to the bathroom and scrubbed the clay off of my hands. I intermittently passed my thumb under the water, transfixed by the way the steady running stream carried away the blood, leaving my thumb looking perfectly fine except for a vague squareness.

Satisfied that i would not lose my appendage to some strange clay-based infection, i left the bathroom only to be faced by my unsteady geometric solid, all-but tottering in place amidst a pile of scraps. I could see my mistakes immediately… too rash in tracing the sides, my crashed pyramids looked more like rectangles caught in the act. So, before heading off in search of a bandage, i decided to piece my clay back together into a rectangle so that it would be ready for another try sometime tomorrow. There i sat, bleeding thumb held back away from my hand in an attempt to forget that it was conveniently opposable, pressing together the clay i had just so painstakingly cut apart.

And this is only 5% of my grade…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/01/90211213/

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Fuck editing.

Drexel University has disappointed me more than a couple of times during my three and a half years here. Bad scheduling, botched financial aid, boring classes. But, for once, just once, they have come through for me. In this round of co-op interviews i was offered not one, but two jobs. Two. Both of them at major companies around the country and specifically in Philadelphia, both in Communications, and both very well paid. For once i am faced with the opposite of my typical Drexel decision; instead of trying to make the best of something i don’t like, i am faced with trying to discern what the best is between two excellent choices.


I haven’t got a clue, and i need to find one by Tuesday morning.

And, meanwhile, i’m sure you’re thinking “Yo, Peter, what happened to all that ‘i’ll be less busy next term’ crap? Where the hell have you been?’ Well, it’s a damned good question. I’ve been stage managing The Vagina Monologues. But, no, not just stage managing. Scheduling. Promoting. Publishing. Just about everything i could possibly do up through this point short of acting or directing. And, it doesn’t go up for another three weeks.

Anyhow, i’ll have more to say about that soon. There is something to this Winter, the verging on adulthood that is almost tangible. I’m not alone in this feeling, but i still feel alone in the sheer lust i have. I want everything. I want rock star, and i want business man… i want travel, i want home, i want love, i want happiness, i want maturity. I need more of everything; i need more time. The one thing i can say for Drexel is that it’s five-year program creates an illusion at once grand and awful… allowing you to put off the real world for that much longer but just making you want it that. much. more. badly.


I want all that and i’m sitting at my computer in my fucking jeans and a tee-shirt, listening to myself play guitar. I want it all and, as i’ve just found out, if i were to get it all i wouldn’t know what to do with it at all.

I think this calls for a drink.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/01/90206744/