Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

thoughts

Disaster Recovery

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I like to be in control.

Does this come as a surprise to anyone?

I have a petulant OCD Godzilla tromping around in my gut making demands that must be met. The best way to keep him satisfied is to be utterly in charge of every situation. Things have to be just so. Otherwise, he starts breathing radioactive fire on my gall bladder.

Thus, the utter trainwreck of the past week of my life has me off-balance. OCD Godzilla is not pleased.

It all started when not one, but two of my external hard drives died within a day of each other. Kaput. The end. No chance of data recovery outside of a clean room, a magical place that exists entirely out of my budget to deal with this sort of disaster.

I’m a triple-redundant data keeper, which was the entire point of the extra HDs, so I haven’t lost anything critical. But the time I put in to organizing data, and the cost of the drives … I could have produced an entire new album and then taken a brief, very relaxing vacation.

Next, Gina’s trusty, unbelievably loud Fender amp up and died in the middle of rehearsal last night. Gina’s theory is that it simply could not deal with the power of our rock. That’s flattering, but we only rock at about 3 on the volume knob, so I don’t think that’s the cause. It’s always had a little extraneous buzz, probably indicative of a larger speaker problem.

Lest this rebellion be limited to electronic devices, my body is also rebelling against me. This is OCD Godzilla stomping on my soul, creating havoc from whence there was healthy. He went rogue over the weekend, and then I got super-sick on Monday night as I drove around the wilds of Chadd’s Ford PA, idling in ditches at the side of the road to try to get my bearings.

I typically live such a semi-charmed life that I don’t know what to do with myself in these situations. I can’t carry my data around, which has slowed down my blogging (long story – just trust me). The amp is working intermittently, which is inhibiting rehearsal. I feel like crap, which is putting a damper on all of life in general, and going to the gym in specific.

I don’t know what I’m more afraid of – how many more things can go wrong in a single week, or the state of my insides once my internal control-freak monster is through with his tantrum.

A Moment of Krisis

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Watch as I answer one of my friend’s recent Facebook Poll queries: “Is pure altruism real? Do people ever do anything out of concern for others that is completely independent of their own self-interest?”

I know my examples of altruism aren’t exactly the work of Mother Theresa, but my point still stands – I think even when we do the best possible thing for someone else we get something for ourselves, even if it’s just a bit of satisfaction.

Do you agree? Can you think of something altruistic that you do totally free of any psychological reward for yourself?

A Moment of Krisis

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Watch as I answer today’s NaBloPoMo writing prompt: “When you are writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?”

Somehow I don’t forsee these getting any more serious.

What I didn’t say in my moment is that I’ve also always been obsessed with the idea of permanence and archiving everything, so it makes sense that I don’t like to write things in pen – much harder to back up that way!

What about you? Are you a pen and pad devotee, even in our digital age, or would you happily elect to forget the dying artform that is cursive handwriting?

Monsters In Plain Sight

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I seem to have a magnetic, animal attraction to strangers with monstrous personalities.

Not in a sexual way. No, this is a totally platonic urge to toss myself into the maw of a crazy person to be shredded by the sharp teeth of their personality.

I will always choose the most terrifying, egomaniacal person to pair with given any group of relative strangers that needs to break into smaller groups. It doesn’t matter whether it’s for conversation or to board an amusement park ride – I will select the monster.

I apparently have a deep-seated urge to spend time in the company of sociopaths. I want to impale myself on the pointy bits of their psyche.

I’m trying to figure out why I keep doing this to myself. Is it a masochistic tendency? Do I get off on defending myself against these beasts?

Am I a Monster Hag? Like, is my inner OCD Godzilla looking for long term companionship with someone else’s terrifying personality traits? Do I feel like I am a monster who needs to wrangle with my own kind, like grown men on a movie set dressed in massive rubber suits.

Worse: Am I that monster?

I don’t think so. I certainly hope not. I might like to talk about myself, but I also have the journalistic urge to know more about other people, which hopefully tones down my horror as a chat partner.

I think it’s more likely that I see the potential for me to be a loudmouth in a pairing with someone slightly retiring, so I try to pick the one person in a crowd of strangers who seems more gregarious than me. Why have us both dominate conversation with someone else when we can banter loudly with each other? It’s just like dinner with my Italian family!

Except, I’m gregarious on limited topics. I don’t, to draw from a recent actual example, open conversation with a stranger with, “I think I know how we can fix all of your problems.”

What I forget is that my friends who can maintain conversational gambits with me, interrupting back and forth, are all (mostly) sane, (mostly) rational actors in life.

They are not monsters. Even my loudest, craziest friends did not start out as these disaster-movie drop-outs. No good can come of connecting with them.

The next time I get to pick my own social poison I am going with the opposite of my gut. If there is a loudmouth hand-raiser with crazy eyes, I am making a bee-line for the shy one with the nice smile.

It’s for their own safety, as much as it is for mine.

What about you? Do you find yourself facing off against conversation monsters? What is your exit strategy?

(PS: This post was drafted as “that girl is a monster,” but I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. However, feel free to listen to Lady Gaga singing “Monster” now that you’ve read it.)