Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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after a weekend

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I needed this weekend to recharge for September, always an active month in my world. And, that’s without the currently thrumming circuit of band, wedding, car, house that keeps me anxious at all hours of the day.

Aside from much learning of covers, virtual house-hunting, and watching Kristen Bell deliciously chew scenery on Heroes, this weekend also allowed me to decisively finish off the remaining glut of neglected posts in my Google Reader, the best of which I’ll now share with those of you who eschew Labor Day BBQs to get your September off to a properly lazy start.

#1 Link: Mark Larson points out that you can stream the documentary All Hands on the Hard Body via Google video.

The docu, about contest where the way to win a brand new truck is to keep your hand on it for the longest amount of time, has been on my Netflix queue since the day I joined. Totally what I am watching tonight. (originally via and add’l background from Kottke.)

#2 Link: Know Your Stuff is downloadable software that allows you to catalog all of the stuff you own. Great for prepping insurance applications, or if you are an OCD nut like me. Via Unclutterer and Lifehacker.

Similarly, via trusty Kottke, Daytum is a “home for collecting and communicating your daily data.” Personal annual reports? OCD Godzilla approves mightily.

A close runner up in awesomeness, I spent way too much time on Saturday futzing with Election Projection’s Interactive Probability Calculator. Allows you to set the probability for each state and then runs an endless series of matchups based on your probabilities to determine the overall probability of the election result. For someone like me, who believes that most surveys are crap – political surveys doubly so, this is a nice equalizer.

Also:

Philebrity just ran an equally edifying and hilarious Philadelphia Internet History Week, tracking the ignoble fates of a handful of prominent Philly web startups. I should collaborate with Lindsay on a tell-all Record Kingdom post ;)

Drinking Liberally engineers happy hour meetups with other liberals in your community. Seems as though Philly is in need of a new event (hint, hint, anyone?).

Mad science alert: The five experiments most likely to end the world. A link unique in that it combines Gina’s professional interests and prominent musical themes. Also: one step closer to a real invisibility cloak.

Remaindered from many months ago, photos from the perspective of your tongue. Also, I continue to love this photo of WWII women working on a B-17 bomber.

Great visual: Texas house sucked into wormhole, via Electicism.

Worksheets for those both organizational and visual. Via Akkam’s.

A photo-essay slash interview on Japanese bathhouses. Not safe for work, I suppose, but I think the nudes are far from sensational – they actual portray the relaxing atmosphere of the sento. Also: Japanese float parade.

Another oldie that found sudden relevance this week: Become an expert interviewer. I’ve got a bit of natural flair at interviewing (oh, and that journalism degree), but this is a succinct reminder of what to do.

From MLarson: The Superest is an illustrated log of off-beat superpowers, each one meant to best its predecessor.

Last, but not least: longtime fav Gingerbead Latte took a moment to recap her month, including an ingenious game of the top 100 words in the English language. I got only slightly over a third, but all of the top two rows. Similar results on the 50 largest countries, where spelling was a big challenge.

That’s all I’ve got. If you have any thoughts for an overarching September theme for CK, please feel free to share. Last year, as you may recall, I remastered and reposted my favorite trio tracks from the past seven years.

World of Whedon

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An extended interview with Joss Whedon, mostly on the topic of Dr. Horrible and how it represents a new revenue model for Hollywood, though how much revenue that entails is TBA.

(Also: a young YouTube auteur fills in the early years of Dr. Horrible’s video blog.)

Also, the never-before seen animation test for Buffy: The Animated Series just surfaced. As with Dr. Horrible, I wasn’t overly-impressed with it, but I can’t understand why no one picked it up:

(And, if you are a Whedon-fan who is truly asleep-at-the-wheel it may have escaped your attention that the official eighth season of Buffy is currently being released as a comic book. If you – like me – are a huge Buffy fan who is too busy and grown-up to be hoarding piles of individual comics you ought to consider picking up the first two collected graphic novels – The Long Way Home and No Future For You.)

(Annnnd, if you are a Whedon- and X-men fan you should have long ago purchased all four of the graphic novels of Joss’s run on Astonishing X-Men, the first two of which were one of the best X-arcs I’ve ever read: Gifted, Dangerous, Torn, & Unstoppable.)

If you enjoy keeping up with the world of Whedon – including Buffy, Angel, Firefly. Dr. Horrible, the upcoming Dollhouse, and all of the people that make them happen – you ought to bookmark the fantastic Whedonesque

Taking a pass at success.

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Earlier this week Lifehack ran a thought-provoking article about the 10 skills you need to succeed (at almost anything).

Usually when I happen upon these sorts of articles I expect zeitgeist-y skills like “learn to recognize a tipping point,” or soon-to-be-obsolete accomplishments such as “cultivate a good Google-rank.”

This article was intriguing in that it featured neither; many of the skills it lists I would nearly label as traits:

1. Public Speaking
2. Writing
3. Self-Management
4. Networking
5. Critical Thinking
6. Decision-Making
7. Math
8. Research
9. Relaxation
10. Basic Accounting

At first glance at this list I thought, Wow, I must be pretty damn successful, because I am awesome at all of these things! However, upon further reading and reflection I realized that I’m not equally awesome across the board, and my various lacks of success in life can be easily attributed to my weaker points on the list.

I graded myself on each attribute on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 representing the pinnacle of that trait in anyone I’ve ever met, with the 3-5 area representing the skillset of the average, unskilled populace.

1. Public Speaking – 8
2. Writing – 9
3. Self-Management – 7
4. Networking – 6
5. Critical Thinking – 8
6. Decision-Making – 5
7. Math (capacity-for, not knowledge-of) – 7
8. Research – 6
9. Relaxation – 3
10. Basic Accounting – 8

I wound up with a grand total of 67% – barely passing at success.

Of course, not every one of those traits has to do with every endeavor in my life, and I’m successful in a lot of areas.

My job, for example, is mostly reliant on 3-5-6-8, in which I score 26/40 – decidedly above the 12-20 average range. Being a singer-songwriter relies on a straight 1-2-3-4 dash, where I notch a weighty 30/40.

Still, it’s easy to see how each trait impacts the rest, and how a deficit in one is the detriment of others. I know for certain that my lack of Relaxation hamstrings my slightly above-average Self-Management, which means I churn out less of my quality Writing. And, my relatively meager Decision-Making and Research abilities can frequently hamper my most significant Critical Thinking.

It is possible to increase your ability in one area without losing ground in another? If our lives were D&D, would this system be more like rolling a character, or using a points-based allocation system? Will my Relaxation increase naturally with age?

Does anyone score much higher than 2/3? Are the Bill Gates and Richard Bransons of the world successful because they are higher than 80% on this scale?

How would you rate yourself?

Various Musical Chairs

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Alright, while I recharge my personal anecdote powers you can linger on some musical links.

Daily Composer is a blog written by my dear friend Anthony, who endeavors to post a snippet of original composing each day, complete with midi sample. For non-musicians it can be a fun 30-second diversion in your day, and for the musical among us it’s a good exercise in spotting and understanding themes and – if you’re as rhythmically remedial as I am – also a trial in sight-reading.

Cover Lay Down is an MP3 blog that focuses on folk-tinged covers of songs you might know. They have a way of not only digging up incredible obscurities, but distilling the stories of the artists who cover them … like a recent post on the Kathryn Williams cover of “All Apologies.”

Also, Rate Your Music is one of my top ten websites of all time – a home to a vast database of ratings and reviews predominately cultivated by real live music lovers. They are currently engaged in a fundraiser to make up for some technical snafus with their ad serving in the last few months. Honestly, snafus aside, supporting a great privately run site like RYM is worth the money anytime.

More along the lines of Daily Composer is the blog of Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary. BSG has featured an incredibly compelling soundtrack since its inception, and lately Bear has been sharing detailed insight into the compositions in each episode. However, if you aren’t caught up on your episodes tread lightly – Bear spares no plot points, as often they motivate his compositions.

I have a whole BSG mega-essay rattling around inside my head, but it has to wait until my Hedwig master thesis finally finds its way out before I can pay it my full attention.

in my tribe

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Because you are savvier than I am I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now, but the BBC had pictures from Brazil of a tribe that has never had any contact with modern society.

The concept fascinates me. Here we are on the internet, sending each other mp3s and photos and links to porn while we burn through our fossil fuels keeping us alternatingly warm and cold, and somewhere out there people are still living the lives they’ve lead for centuries.

Unsurprisingly, they all seem to be staring at the airplane taking their photos. Way to obey the prime directive, photographers.