Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Debbie Millman

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Early on in NaBloPoMo I picked up Debbie Millman’s fascinating blog as a read, but i didn’t realize who she was. Debbie hosts a Voice America Business show called Design Matters, where this season she plans to talk to an utterly stunning list of communicators such as journalist and personal hero Malcolm Gladwell (on her 1/5/7 debut), NYT Mag Creative Director Janet Froelich, and authors Dave Eggers and Ze Frank. And, those are just the names i recognized instantly.

In her bio, Debbie is identified as “Managing Partner and President of the Design division at Sterling Group, one of the country’s leading brand identity firms.” With tongue hardly in cheek, a few days ago she examined the brand of Kate Moss.

Debbie has my dream job, and gets to talk to some of the most forward thinking people in the world in her side job as an internet broadcaster. Essentially, she is living my ideal life. I am in somewhat of a state of shock just thinking about it.

A Consumerless Christmas

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Heather Anne Hogan warms my supposedly scrooge-ish heart by putting the freeze on holiday consumerism through making Christmas charitable.

I love giving gifts, but I’ve never been comfortable receiving them. There isn’t much that i need or want – I work for a living and manage my budget, rewarding myself conservatively but appropriately throughout the year. I don’t like to rely on receiving gifts to fulfill my desires, and anything I don’t already have is probably exorbitant, anyhow. Correspondingly, I don’t like the pressure of seasonal wish fulfillment for the people that are important to me.

This means I’m typically unexcited by Christmas and the rush of holiday shopping that accompanies it. Every conversation from Thanksgiving forward seems to be about exchanging large sums of money for consumer goods, and if you look closely you can see me twitch with every additional shopping destination that’s rattled off. It just makes me uncomfortable.

Instead of just shutting out the materialism of the season (as i am prone to do), Heather Anne Hogan is transforming it. She sent a memo to her entire family that her Christmas giving-and-getting cycle was being devoted entirely to charity.

Her idea really struck a chord with me. A few years ago my boss at the time made a donation in my name as a Christmas present. I hadn’t ever received a donation before, and was honestly flattered and touched by the idea.

Last year my mother and I reciprocated donation-gifts when she bought me a flock of chickens and i bought her education for a year. Except my gift was deployed in Africa, and hers in South America. We bought other things too – gadgets and movies and socks – but the former pair were the gifts i wound up gabbing about all year.

I feel quite merry in announcing that I no longer want to be a consumer for Christmas. I haven’t started shopping yet, and now I think I’ll be making customized donations instead. Since in some cases it’s too late to intercept gifts bought for me, for every pricey gift I receive I’m going to write a thank you card requesting that the giver make a donation in 2007, or write me a check so i can do so on their behalf.

If you happen to be planning on buying me anything more expensive than a card this year, please consider contributing a philanthropic gift instead. You can still tell me all about the cool gift you thought of – maybe we can go shopping for it together!

Cool People Care offers a press release to get you started: “Christmas Is Not Your Birthday” (unless you are Jesus, Jimmy Buffet, or my dad). Afterwards, World Vision offers some great ideas, as does the more recognizable Heifer International, and the more local Donor’s Choose. Also, Water is Basic.

NaBloPoMo Round-Up #10b, or Possibly #11, but Most Definitely Last: A Splendiforous Surplus of S, and the Complete Abridged Works of the Fab Four

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Because i have a minuscule, highly-atomic OCD-Godzilla tramping around in my soul, crushing tiny mitochondria like so-many prop houses made out of cardboard, i almost couldn’t allow the Roundup series to extend to the hideously prime 11.

Then i realized that this is the eleventh month of the year so it would totally make sense.

I’m still not completely at peace with it, but Godzilla has retreated back to his radioactive hidey-hole so i can get down to business.

209 S blogs between here and recording more new music and writing real content. 209. 209. 209. I should record a whole song of me saying it over and over and over.

Seriously, my Beatles Complete Scores book actually has the score for Revolution #9. As if anyone has that at the top of their list of Beatles songs to play out of the 200ish in the book.

Okay, now i’m just stalling. Although, that book was possibly the most satisfying $50 i’ve ever spent on myself.

But, hey, that’s a great idea! I’ll listen to a tiny fraction of every Beatles song chronologically for every S blog i read! If a song ends my time is up, and the blogger gets an honorary link for wasting my time holding my attention.

Although, more likely is that I might hear 2 whole seconds of some of them while i frantically click away!

Just kidding. I actually average 46 seconds of attention per blog, which means this should take me about three hours, and plenty of catchy choruses.

Ready? [Read more…] about NaBloPoMo Round-Up #10b, or Possibly #11, but Most Definitely Last: A Splendiforous Surplus of S, and the Complete Abridged Works of the Fab Four

NaBloPoMo Round-Up #10: The Mercifully Interesting Ps & Rs

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Okay, now this is starting to feel a little bit like college. 30 hours left to do all this cramming in! No preamble tonight – straight to the Ps.

Foremost of Ps is Lane @ Pink Elephants. I read Lane loooong ago, before you knew what a blog was! And now she lives in Australia! And created the much beloved, addiction-begetting NaBloPoMo Randomizer! More exclamation points follow: ! ! ! ! [Read more…] about NaBloPoMo Round-Up #10: The Mercifully Interesting Ps & Rs

NaBloPoMo Round-Up #9: M Defeats, O Redeems

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I originally had intentions of doing M and S tonight, but the Ms really took the fight out of me. It was all I could do to squeeze in Os as originally scheduled and still write a normal post before midnight.

In honor of the nine-thousand and fifty-two mommy blogs i read in the Ms, i actually performed some baking, because i have finally convinced myself that the cookie dough is tastier baked* than raw.

* where baked does not equal microwaved into a smoking heap

Let the games begin. [Read more…] about NaBloPoMo Round-Up #9: M Defeats, O Redeems