Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

day in the life

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Yesterday was the day without motivation — having used it all up on Friday. I was recharging… incapable of doing anything with any amount of zeal. So, to follow it up, today was a day consisting of all of my energies focused into one thing that i absolutely know how to do right: clean. Yes, i just cleaned for seven straight hours. And, do you know what? It feels good.

It feels good because i spent the sum total of my emotional and mental energy on something entirely unlike cleaning on Friday, and was horrible at it. Or, alternately, i was terrific at it and it wasn’t well-received. Either way, i’m not entirely happy about the whole affair. By contrast, with cleaning you absolutely cannot fail. If you mop long enough, scrub hard enough, and fold precisely enough, everything will turn out absolutely perfect and no one can possibly argue with you. There is no arguing with something that is spotless; you can’t decide to like it a little while not being really thrilled by it. The sight and smell of something that is like Brand-New cannot be deflected or denied.

I did seven loads of laundry in industrial strength machines with spin cycles that lasted me through whole chapters of Infinite Jest. I mopped every piece of tile in our apartment, going back over the tough spots with All-Purpose cleaner and then clean water so that the floors wouldn’t be sticky. I refolded every piece of clothing that vaguely rotates into my daily wardrobe and reorganized my closet and bureau. I got down on my hands and knees with an industrial strength sponge and a can of Ajax and scrubbed the floor of my shower until all i could smell was the activated bleach and all my eyes were tearing up and i couldn’t even see if i had gotten the floor white yet through the haze of scrubbing bubbles.

It wound up pearly white. I had no idea.

Seven hours later my back hurts, my hands are dry and aching, my eyes are red-rimmed and sore, and i owe Lindsay a new sponge. And i did it all absolutely right, and no one can argue.

Meanwhile, i am inexplicably one of the only six hits for the term “boywhore.” When it comes to search placements one thing i’ve learned is to never ask questions…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7975856/

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Why, yes, life is exactly like that. However did you know?


Ah, the joys of our wondrous network of over-taxed collegiate bloggers. And, look, it only took three years of college to leave me vaguely stressed out.

Last night i came home miserable, which hardly surprised me — any day started off with a Venti Latté is bound to end up in tears or with me bouncing down the sidewalk like a Mexican jumping bean. Anyhow, my favorite two ways to cure misery are spending money and eating (yes, i know, it’s a very health set of habits). However, my attempt at the former was foiled by the bookstore ordering the wrong edition of the book i needed, so when i got home i was ready to do some serious binge-eating. At my disposal i had ice cream, ramen, pop-tarts, and all other manner of collegiate waste. Did i go for any of that? Nooooo. No, instead i decided to order a gastro-intenstinal nightmare sandwich with a side of cardiac arrest.


AKA : chicken cheesesteak w/extra cheese and a large side of cheese fries. Yes, you’re right, i could never be a vegan. Thanks for noticing.

Chicken cheesesteaks are a phenomenon i was just introduced to last year when i finally came off my vegetarian kick, and they’ve been one of the junkfood mainstays of my diet ever since. Somehow the two or three places where i obtain this death on a bun use incredibly lean and well cooked chicken, which is exactly why i don’t eat the beef variety: they’re nasty. However, the establishment i ordered from last night doesn’t use that lean, healthy chicken, but instead something i am currently referring to as “cheef.” Sure, it tasted nice and carnivorous on the way down, but not even a protective layer of deep fried potatos and cheese wiz could protect me from the wratch of cheef.


Said wrath basically is that over 24hours later my stomach is still twisted in knots in an attempt to cleanse itself from the greasy chow i crammed into it last night, and the only two options i’m seriously contemplating right now are an immediate switch to vegetarianism to placate my distressed digestive system, or a slightly more sinister plan than involves a lot of porcelain.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7493884/

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So,… so so so. So, today my classes were all sleepy, and i’m not sure if i learned anything. It’s not as though i didn’t get enough sleep, but this was one of those days where anything can distract me … and rest assured, that’s exactly what it did. I mostly owe this to a 20oz sized trip to Starbucks that i made with Lindsay this morning — having four shots of espresso in a drink before class is just about as bad as my having four shots of vodka instead. But, i digress.


I’ve been doing a lot of digressing lately, a lot of retreating. When i keep falling back over ground i’ve already covered it’s a little bit difficult to understand where i’m headed, but at least i know the way already.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7452884/

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There is a tiny spice cookie echo at the back of my mouth, and a similarly worn in feeling of comfort in my too blue attire — locked in from hours just spent on Lindsay’s floor. My birthstone is sapphire, and blue is my comfort color; today i am all in it, with just the tiny red racing stripe of interruption down each side of my jeans.

Today was Accomplishment Day, with my brain like a slot machine that just lined up three perfect cherry red pairs of cherries, and all of my accomplishments were quarters sliding shiny out of my mouth. To wit, in Critical Reasoning we talked about the gambler’s fallacy, which would seem to indicate that just because i had a successful day today doesn’t mean i should anticipate having another one tomorrow. Of course, my brain is not quite the polished chrome model of a casino machine or the red-black-red of a roulette wheel, even if sometimes it’s wrinkles and turns would have me believe that it was as random as all of that. There is a bias towards winning in this system, because every time i do something right i am more convinced that i can do it again. Two weeks ago i got one quiz back marked with a fat red A, today i got three; i am a man convinced.

Like dawn welling up over New Jersey in the early morning sky, today in Communication Theory i realized that all of these numbers and letters on my papers won’t mean anything when i’m thirty, unless i’m still in school then. Drunken scholar Kenneth Burke informed me that it’s all about my inherent guilt-redemption cycle at nine o’clock in the evening. It felt like someone had hit the pause button on my academic life in the middle of a press screening to wonder aloud at how the writer/producer/director had just made his first (fatal) flaw. I was standing outside of myself watching my accumulate checkmarks and superlatives; i was my refrigerator door, magnets gleaming as they lay in wait for another tidy 10/10 quiz to get tacked on.

At nine thirty someone brushed up against the play button by accident, and a scant score of frames later i pirouetted down the divide between our campus and Penn’s singing at the top of my lungs: the cumulative total of red letters and accounted-for numbers and solid notes and actually getting something done, just this once. For once my day made a dent.

(Bang!)

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7109153/

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I was essentially at a loss for words, sitting at the quaint restaurant table with Lindsay and Dante trying to explain. I couldn’t figure out how i felt about New Hope… i felt like we were trapped in one of those quaint tourist trap towns and that it was like walking around in a life-sized dollhouse where nothing was real. It was more than that, though… more surreality like rose flavored ice cream that made me feel like i was in a novel somewhere other than circling around Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware.

So, we were at dinner and Lindsay decided for me that i should have brought a notebook with me, and i’m sure that i should have because i lost everything i had meant to say. I suppose i’m just so obsessed with being in a city and being metropolitan that it seems impossible to me that people live just around the corner from these shops… selling strange musical instruments and fantastical ice cream and ultra-hot salsa only to walk back home and lay down to sleep under those same stars.

Oh yeah, you could see stars. Everywhere. Our trip straddled Pennsylvania and New Jersey and we walked back and forth across a bridge whose wooden foot path was so worn that it seemed just like walking on a dirt road. We all wondered at once where the state lines were drawn… the middle of the river, or the middle of the bridge? I finally figured that they’d probably be indicated on old claimer’s maps, but then it came down to where exactly those hand-drawn maps would set the border in real life and we were back to where we started.

Other things happened too, that i can’t quite put back together into the blog they were meant to be. There was an armor store that was selling arrowheads from 200bc, and i couldn’t fathom how just anybody had the right to own something that old and have it sitting in a display case with a “please inquire” pricetag on it. I kept arguing with Lindsay that nothing could taste like a rose after we first passed the ice cream shop while still in the car, and finally she just replied: “it tastes just like it smells. You can taste anything you can smell!” And that was that until i actually bought my triple scoop and the owner made me try it first because “some people taste it and then just walk out on me.” And it tasted like… rose petals. It was flavored in that subtle way that green tea ice cream is, with the ultra-dark pastel color and the taste that slides off of your tongue while you’re trying to absorb it.

After we had walked around for a while i finally got used to the idea of everything being real, but i still can’t figure it out. It feels like it should be some tiny historical town tucked into Massachusetts because i always forget that Philadelphia is the exception to the rule of Pennsylvania and not the other way around. Everything in New Hope was vivid… all the local teenagers we saw working in the shops were like caricatures of people i know… three times as many piercings or hair twice as outrageous or poise that’s so much more postured. I realize that somehow it’s their reaction to living in a sort of suspended time where all of the shops and streets stay the same and people from outside come in to gawk, but at the same time it felt like i was looking at a catalogue of teenaged stereotypes trying to find the ones that matched my own friends.


Of course, those are all just snippets… glimpses into my surreal afternoon, because i should have bought a notebook instead of the two cds i bought. Live and learn.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/6883375/