Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Philly

Thoughts Right Now

by

I don’t really like chocolate, but believe in it. I have faith in chocolate. Because, even though I don’t really like it – the dirty smell, the heavy taste it leaves in my mouth – I find that I still love to eat it. I’ve probably eaten more chocolate so far this year than I did in all of 2004. I can appreciate that it does something for the brain. Sometimes I intellectually want chocolate, even when it’s the last possible taste that I’m interested in.

I feel starved. No, wait, not because I’m just eating chocolate. I feel intellectually starved. Usually after six months at a job I’m back to class. We’re going into month eight. My body is primed to learn something new and intense. I am afraid that my brain might atrophy, and try to cram in new facts from magazines and new songs by ear.

A friend of ours is playing at South-by-Southwest this year. He’s a terrific singer and guitar player, but I am not a fan of his songwriting. I’m sad because I’ve always wanted to go to SxSW, and because I’m sure that he will break there, and I haven’t even had a gig in a bar since 2001. I’m sad because no one is singing along to my songs.

This weekend Sara visited from California. I felt like such a nerd, but all I could talk about for a third of the time is how I wanted to go back. I still can’t tell if it was because it was the perfect vacation at the perfect time, or because I really liked what I saw of LA. All I am sure of is that Sara has so fabulously evolved past Philadelphia that talking to her about something that happened in Philadelphia is like someone extolling the virtues of a horse-drawn carriage – its quaint, but outmoded.

We’re moving, Elise and I. A company who we are not fond of took over the management of our building, and if the world operated exclusively on my parameters we would move out NOW, because I don’t like people I don’t trust profiting from me. I am sick of apartments; I have decided that we must rent an entire house. I want to know that everything that happens behind the front door is my responsibility; I am sick of letting people in because other apartments’ bells don’t work.

Elise complained a few days ago that I am always home. It’s winter, I told her, and I don’t drive. And I work all day. And, I don’t have extracurricular activities to attend. And, I never want to go outside or do anything or interact with other people and find out their opinions anyhow. So, really, I have no choice but to stay home.

There is always a choice.

by

I’m happy to report that the ever-popular summer West Philly guessing game “Gunshots or Fireworks” (and it’s inevitable winter counterpart “Guns Firing or Cars Backfiring”) has now inhereted a new plausible answer: Elise sneaking out of the bedroom to make popcorn.

You’d think that i’d eventually get better at a game i’ve been playing since age four.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/08/109316161958426496/

by

Also via Jillmatrix: A new Pennsylvania law on adoption that carried amendments that would have eliminated domestic partner benefits for state employees was stripped of the amendments shortly before the bill was passed on to the Senate by the PA House of Representatives earlier today.

The amendments, sponsored by State Rep Jerry Birmelin (Wayne), were introduced under the guise of shoring up the state’s defense against the nation’s current rash of gay civil unions. Brief background article here. This article does a good job of explaining what the intent of the actual bill is regarding adoption.

Philadelphia City Council voted unanimously to oppose Birmelin’s amendments. This article is the most comprehensive one i have found so far. I know many people in Philadelphia who are currently covered by domestic partner benefits, though this bill will only effect state employees. It also prevents unmarried hetereosexual couples from applying for the same benefits, and states “A spousal-equivalent relationship shall not be recognized in this commonwelath.”

From the first article: Addressing the House following afternoon caucus meetings, Birmelin let his colleagues know that the topics of same-sex marriage and health benefits “will be coming back in another day, perhaps in another form.” I will endeavor to follow Representative Birmelin’s actions; if he presents similar amendments in the future it is up to voters to let their opinions be known to their local representatives so that they can oppose the bill with confidence.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/03/107963719088926085/

by

I like to think of myself as the ultimate indicator of whether any particular cultural trend has reached zeitgeist levels of proliferation, but in what we collectively refer to as reality i can think of at least two more trust-worthy sources to defer to. One are daily newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer and the second is the Oxford English Dictionary.

Not coincidentally, within the last few weeks both have indicated that BLOG is a word that has been inexorably wedged into our collective language, through the above linked article and the (somewhat shocking) inclusion of the term in the next version of the OED.

My response is, of course, “I told you so.” After all, i have been doing it for three years now, to the day.

While the OE inclusion is surprising, the Inquirer article left a bigger impact on me — if only because it neglected to mention this site.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Crushing Krisis could be the longest running Philadelphia blog (now that Rabi is conveniently out of the way in new york); I have to slog through all of the links here and here to make absolutely sure.

The concept is staggering; it doesn’t mean that i set a trend, but at least that i tapped into it first and have (so far) held onto it the longest. Through this passive act of ignorance i suddenly realized both how important this has become to me, what it really is, and how often i do not come through for it.

Long gone are those days, though, when i represented all that is common and exciting about blogging. I am not an active linker, and i do not engage in many of the trends and memes that are so often definitive of the blogging community. I am more interesting in reporting, either on my daily life, or on the people and communications i observe, and in singing and playing both my own songs and others’ through Trio and Blogathon.

Whether or not i’m putting in my best effort on a daily basis, new people continue to happen onto this page for the first time, some of them familiar and some entirely strange. All of my roommates (current and former) read it regularly, as do most of my close friends. Some of my professors have been known to stop by. This weekend, Rabi and I had just sat down to a refreshing Bubble Tea when my cell phone was rung by my god-brother, who i haven’t seen or spoken to in almost four years, but who had found this through Google. He told me that “Hide Your Love Away” was his favorite song so far, and said we should hang out sometime soon.

That’s what i love — how this has been woven together with my “real life;” not so much that you cannot see the seams, but well enough that it never quite unravels. I love that people i haven’t talked to, people i have forgotten, people i have never met can see a sketch or snapshot of my life at any given moment. Sometimes writing for it can seem boring, or tedious, or invasive, but if i were to stop, to actually give up for a single minute in the days or weeks that separate my posts, then suddenly this mirror of my identity would just turn into a photograph, taken from far away.

There have been times i have loved this more than i do now, and times that i have disliked it less, but i don’t think i have ever felt so comfortable about it. Thank you for reading. Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring. And, starting today, thank you for talking back in the comments section

Happy Birthday to this.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/happy-birthday-to-this-3/

by

I am not a car guy, but this weekend i found myself catching my breath when I was first introduced to Ross’s gold 1967 Camaro in full daylight, its top just finishing its retreat to the back hood. We rode in the Camaro almost exclusively the entire time we were in New Hampshire. My favorite part was the looks… at gas stations and stop lights, wide eyed, covetous, keenly appraising the four of us in the car (five, after we were joined by Martha).

I had never been to New Hampshire before. The names and numbers of the highways that got us there were meaningless to me, made all the more alien by the day-early fireworks that exploded in the night all around us. The state itself was equally as foreign; different slang, different prices, a different way of driving. Vehicles on the Maine beach’s parking lot all open and empty, the Philadelphian in me feeling almost compelled to vandalize them for being so trusting.

It felt more real than Philadelphia, though, as if the commonality of an experience makes it less like reality. Like I was a trendy kid eschewing the new pop album to embrace indy critical darling, only with New Hampshire instead of something off of Barksuk records and irreverent, heathenish, treasonous wit rather than any kind of nationalistic spirit. I still wondering the same wonder: is it good because I like it, or because no one else I know does?

Friday morning I woke up at eight twenty seven, so that by the time I rubbed my eyes, stretched, and walked to the kitchen it was eight thirty. Time for work; not even alien surroundings can convince my brain that it is not time to communicate efficiently at half past eight. Saturday saw me rise at the same time, again unprovoked and exactly.

I resolved that over ninety percent of my liquid intake would be alcohol. I was that guy, the guy from the big city turning a peaceful sub-urban vacation into a bender. I was that guy, drink in hand at all times, but even while i went through the motions i knew that it wasn’t me; it felt exactly the same as playing a snooty New York writer trapped on a Pacific Island for my acting class: i knew the paces to go through, but I never felt connected to the character.

On Sunday morning, hung over and ready to head home at eight thirty on the nose, I finally felt like I understood the both of us; we were using a change in location to attempt to focus our image, but without any normal references to work from we were skewed, suddenly out of control and unlike the selves that we had grown accustomed to.

If New England can at once transform and fascinate me to such a degree, how would I react to Alabama or California, England or Denmark, India or Australia? How frightening to think that all of my weakness and confidence might stem from a place outside instead of a place inside, and that a simple change of scenery could alter or even invert it.

Not the sort of independence I had intending to be commemorating, but fitting nonetheless.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/07/105760143610820933/