Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

college

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Despite the veritable circus of animals i have lived with or adjacent to in my life, i have only once had a pet to call my own: a hamster, obtained from my sixth grade biology teacher. I remember that the event was quite a big to-do in my house at the time, although now i don’t see what was so incredibly unusual about keeping a rodent locked up in a tidy Habitrail cage. He wasn’t much of a pet, so much as i recall, except for that he had a hamster’s typical penchant for escape artistry, once sneaking out in the dead of night only to make a nest behind my door and another time squeezing out just to wait on my pillow for me to return home. I’m not sure why i didn’t play with him that often, other than that i was always afraid of being bitten and that i had a penchant for seeing him more as a proto-beanie-baby than a living breathing pet. An indeterminate time after i brought him home he died; one morning my gloved hand curled around his teddy-like body to find it stiff and unrecoiling.

Lindsay has a hamster downstairs, Mimi, who is either named after a character from Rent or Drew Carey depending on who you ask. To wit, she fits with both: loud, proud, and rather large. In fact, most visitors to the house estimate her to be much closer to guinea pig than hamster, and some even recommend that she has enough body mass to aspire to ferret size if properly stretched.


The most important thing about Mimi is that she is just about the best pet ever. She’s low-maintenance, eating only one full dish of food each week – which would seem to indicate that she has the most obscenely low metabolism known to man or mouse, as she has no trouble maintaining and increasing her near-free-roaming-pet size. She’s very docile, especially for a breed of animal who typically moves and sniffs as though its being electrically prodded from behind for even a moment of pause. She’s smart: smart enough to have outsmarted the typical hamster proofed roof of her cage as well as the lid to her ball. Her only fault, really, is the noise she makes at night; hamsters are, of course, nocturnal creatures, and she has a string of nightly exploits that include chewing on parts of her cage, running at a higher speed limit than her wheel is built to contend with, and generally moving things around in a rather noisy fashion.

I can admit that i was jealous of her, especially seeing as at the time i was the only housemate who didn’t own a pet. So, when Elise decided to take a day off for comparative snake-shopping, i half-heartedly began examining hamsters as we progressed from store to store. None of them were cute enough for me until our last store, hit upon as a bit of a lark, where after giving up on a rodent so belligerent that she couldn’t be picked up by an employee to a tiny scurrying doll that – after some contention – has become my pet hamster Stoli.

At night she has taken to gnawing on the tiny evergreen bars of the front hatch to her cage to fulfill her requisite noisemaking quota, and although it’s probably some animal escape-instinct at work on her part to me it is just the evil clicking-of-death at 4am. And 5am. Though, sometimes as early as 2:30am. I’ve learned that the only way to avoid these untimely wake-up calls is to engage her attention before i go to bed; i let her crawl around on my desk while i’m catching up on the day’s news, and then i find a nice clear surface for her to really run off some stream on before i head to bed. Tonight i took her out into my entirely bare sitting room and watched – bemused – as she careful sniffed across the entire space one square-hamster at a time. It seems to have worked, as she’s gone from recklessly leaping off the side of my chair three consecutive times thirty minutes ago to sitting quietly on the floor of her cage contemplating the hatch as i type.

Or maybe that has to do with the extra-whitening toothpaste i spread all over the front bars of her cage, the touching of which usually sends her scurrying back to her hidey-hole to wipe her hands off on stale food and cedar chips.

So, if you’ve been wondering why i haven’t been blogging all week despite having my classic AM timespot uncharacteristically freed up, now you know: i’ve been trying to wear out my hamster.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85376687/

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I am the sort of person that, once i have something fixed in my head, it overwhelms everything else in my life. That’s what happens when i ‘crush’, so to speak. I can safely reveal to you that this sort of attention is rarely paid to anything resembling work. When i’m at work i can become so focused on something that i’ll skip lunch breaks and leave later than expected, and i have been known to grow so engrossed in writing a paper that i forget to sleep or use the bathroom. However, the way crushing works is that it subverts other intended activities — and getting the records organized at work never crosses my mind when i’m working on a decent logic puzzle in the same way that writing a paper usually doesn’t distract me from writing a song.

Having spent all that time setting up what doesn’t usually distract me to no end, now let me (predictably) contradict myself: in the past week an official job i have has superseded everything else i could possibly be doing: working, sleeping, eating, spending time with Elise, and even getting near Blogger. The job, as it were, is to arrange Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” a cappella for eight or more women’s voices so that everything about the song – guitars, drums, harmony, et al – is represented in full by the singers.


It was not easy. In fact, looking back over the last week i would say i’ve easily spent upwards of fifteen hours on this barely three minute song with its half-octave of lead vocal notes and its five essential chords. Fifteen hours in front of my computer playing back the same collections of three and four measures back over and over as i first change a sixteenth note to an eighth note, and then from a major fourth to a major third of harmony.

Almost a solid day’s worth of arranging later and i have suddenly realized that Drexel had managed to teach me something, because i couldn’t do any of this three years ago – or even two. Possibly not even one. I haven’t mentioned it lately, but i’m currently in choir. Yes, choir. Singing in a group of over twenty people, some of whom are very highly distinguished singers who have been in such groups for well over a decade. I, by contrast, have been in such a group for going on five weeks. I start each session frazzled and rigid and end each one relieved and smiling and ready to belt out just about anything.

Conclusion? Some things do change, but the most basic of things always wind up the same.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/07/85252415/

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“Photo is a major with personality,” i opined to her as we sat in the plastic institutional chairs and eyed the machine that was whirring and drying her prints. “Smells like a beach in here,” i told her, not meaning to go on to make fun of New Jersey, but doing so anyway. Minutes beforehand there had been four of them along the wall-length sink, all with their odd developing cylinders and odd-smelling chemicals. A major with personality, expressed in the cuts of their jeans and the way they agitated the shiny containers with their spools of film safely ensconced from any possible outside influence.

I followed her into the darkroom without really thinking about it; after all, i was along to watch her develop film. I should’ve noticed the quizzical look on her face before she shut the door, as afterwards i couldn’t make out anything at all in the broom-closet sized room that she had just plunged into pitch darkness. She had to brush past my entire body to turn the bolt on the door, and i interiourly chuckled at the thought that the entire scene might have a more seductive tone if she wasn’t intent on her film. “I suppose it’s just like flirting with me while i play guitar,” i thought to myself as i carefully slid down the wall to sit on the ground in front of the door, “i hardly even notice.” I was told not to move, and i was unable to see, and all there was for a few minutes were the odd metallic clicks of the reel and my eyes desperately trying to make out any vestige of the dull red light of the main room through the door. My fingers looked slightly less black than the rest of the blackness, but the wall kept coming as a surprise.

The girl at the end of the sink had on jeans that fit her hips awkwardly, riding too high up off of her thighs and low from her waist to show off the bottom of a swirling tattoo on the small of her back. For a second it reminded me of how Anastasia’s jeans used to fit her, unselfconsciously dorky and sexy at the same time, and for that second i imagined that it was her tapping her shiny container against the sink. Just my imagination, i chastised myself. Instead, the dull metal thuds that rang in the air were the product of a taller, darker girl who somehow managed to seem entirely plain despite her angular features. I suppose it was that… the ability to exude careful plainnness and inattention… that reminded me of the parts of my Senior Year spent idly hanging out on Anastasia’s bedroom floor. I had just been mentioning it to Elise the other night, and i had found myself immediately self-conscious of my mentioning another girl who i had written a song for.

“A major with personality,” i said, and as i surveyed the room for a second i found myself thinking of Anastasia, who maybe was the first quirky girl with a camera i really got to know. There’s something about the clicks of a camera, the sureness of the fingers, the rotating it ninety degrees around the careful eye. Something about plastic binders full of black and white photos and sheets of negatives makes me think of her, although now she doesn’t even seem to talk to me in the odd moments i run into her on instant messager. I don’t think Elise was too jealous; after all, it’s not much use being envious of someone who never really cared for the songs i wrote about her over three years ago. And who never took my picture.

It must be something like watching me tune my guitar — that’s what i had thought when i watched Elise carefully advance a fresh roll of film earlier. An unrelenting attention to the instrument that acts as an extension of her eye, and my ever increasing ease with the shiny silver tuning instruments of my guitar and the chiming harmony the strings should wind up in when i’m done.

Her pictures versus my songs; a fair trade, i suppose. Except, now i owe her several thousand words more of them.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/04/75051512/

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While cruising around on Meg’s Not So Soft tonight my attention was drawn to a story concerning college apartments and seating rules. Having recently had a number of guests in my house that easily outstrips the available number of seats in both the parlor and kitchen, i am well aware of our accepted seating policy: we function on the “fives” rule, where seats are up for grabs unless the person vacating calls fives, which will reserve the seat for a span no longer than five minutes. This doesn’t always leave everyone happy with the seating situation, but not too many people complain.

Meg’s college apartment apparently only featured two pieces of furniture suitable for planting one’s bottom on, and so it was strictly every man and woman for themselves. It is here that her story begins…

I can’t really say anything else without ruining the story … just trust me on this one. As if Meg isn’t funny enough without surefire oddball material to work with.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75039207/

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As quickly as this strange week began it ended with Elise and I fitting two guitars into her backseat ontop of a puzzle of luggage piled ontop of Kat and Jason. I was back up the stairs before they pulled away… maybe in a rush to attempt to write it all down, or maybe not really wanting to see them all leave.

The plan started out simply enough. Kat had no intentions of flying back to California for break, and instead was going to split her time between Jason’s oft-mocked farm somewhere else in Pennsylvania, and Elise’s in New Jersey. The plan was for her to crash here for a night or two inbetween destinations.

Of course, i know better than anyone else that plans change, and then you make other plans. When initial Jason-related plans fell through Kat decided she’d spend a few extra days here, and then Elise decided that she didn’t really want to go home for more than a day or so, which meant that Kat and Elise were effectively staying in my apartment for the entirety of the week. Add Jason driving in to Philadelphia on four separate days to hang out and Kat’s friend Nika flying in from California yesterday morning, and we had a house chock full of people.

Even with my normal roomies and all of their various guests here at any time, i never feel like this house is full. They are rarely my guests, even if they’re my friends, and so i can float in and out of their conversations on a whim to retreat back to my room and play guitar, blog, or sleep. This was different… not only because all of the guests were mine, but because Lindsay and Erika were largely absent for the rest of the week. The result was the bizarro perception that Kat & Elise were my roommates … they have their own roommate interactions down to a science after six months in the dorms, Elise and i have our own special back and forth banter, and Kat and i have a comically natural ease around each other.

So it was a week of living outside of my life while being directly in the middle of it … a week of inside out. A week of making breakfast and dinner, and calling to say when i might be home, and running to the grocery store because we had drank all of the milk. A week of belting out Ani songs with Kat for hours in a row, and of Elise making wry commentary on … well, on just about every silly little thing i’m prone to do on a day to day basis.

Everything’s back to normal now… everyone’s back from their various Spring Break exploits, sitting in my living room basking in the glow of the credits of Jay and Silent Bob. And, you know, for a minute i was a little bit jealous of the fact that none of them spent the entirety of the week in Philadelphia. But, honestly, i had a vacation from my day-to-day existence too, and i didn’t have to pay, fly, or drive to get to it.


My apologies for the many silences i’ve left you with in the last week — hopefully i’ll be back to normal starting tomorrow. If you can call this normal ;)

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75034035/