Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

topics

sounding off

by

This is the first time all month I truly don’t feel like blogging. Between the acts of god and the blogiversary I am tapped out, dudes.

Chez Krisis escaped Irene with only the aforementioned broken screen door as evidence of the storm. Goes to show that all that wackiness E put us through with the several tons of dirt and subsequent weeks of hard physical labor paid off, as there was hardly even a trickle in our previously-damp basement.

I cannot believe that there are people whinging about Irene over-hype in the media. I hate local news just as much (okay: five times more) as the next person, but this was warranted. Overhyping a snow storm is one thing – it’s snow. We’re all gonna live through it and probably have a lot of fun getting bombed and using trash can lids as sleds.

Hurricanes are something else entirely. There is no fun aspect, and as a city used to “fun” apocalyptic weather patterns we needed a bracing dose of reality to make sure we’d be prepared for any eventuality. I know I personally ignore all local weather news, but at the point that the National Weather Service thinks it might be dire I pay attention and prepare.

(Did you know they are the ones largely credited for spurring passive communities into action during Katrina prep? Did you know you can input your zip code into NWS’s site Weather.gov at any time to see all the weather warnings for your area? If you hear any politician say something negative about this service, it is a sign they are a total moron.)

Did it hurt to get extra groceries and gas, clean up the stray stuff around our house, and check various batteries. Totally not, so no complaints here. Well, maybe I could have done without eating an entire loaf of Parmesan Pesto bread in the last 24-hours, but as my friend Sarah pointed out, I was simply carb-loading in preparation for feats of athletic exertion during the storm.

And, well, now I’m ready to hibernate and live off my own body fat, which I guess could have come in handy, too.

Crushing On: Twitter in a Crisis

by

I know, “duh,” right?

Let me explain.

With the vast majority of everyone I know battening down their hatches in preparation for Irene to blow through their area, I felt as though I had to choose a hurricane-related thing to crush upon.

Could it be the local farmer’s market, still appearing on schedule this morning so we could stock up on healthy food to carry us through the potential apocalyptic conditions? Perhaps it should be my handy pair of camping lanterns, holdovers from my 2006 trip to Bonnaroo? Or, Roman & Sons, who replaced all of the rickety 90-year-old windows on the first floor of our house earlier this year?

I’m crushing on all of the above, but the thing I’m really in love with at the moment is Twitter.

Something I excised from yesterday’s mammoth anniversary post was a paragraph about 9/11. Were you online that morning? All of the news sites went down. For a brief period there was no information, anywhere. Then, an amazing thing happened – blogs(including CK) started acting as a distributed network of information, reporting details more accurately and succinctly than the television coverage. People on the ground in NYC posted photos and eye-witness accounts, while everyone else helped to connect and cultivate that information.

In the intervening ten years, the world has realized that centralized news in a crisis is only effective when the crisis is affecting only a very small group of people. A hostage situation, a plane crash – traditional news excels in communicating information about this kind of news.

When it comes to revolutions and acts of nature, centralized news becomes less effective. Everyone is experiencing the same earthquake, hurricane, or plague of locusts. We are all nodes of information, we all want to know what’s happening as close to us as possible, and we all want to know what’s happening to our friends.

Twitter does all three. Tonight I’ve been broadcasting our status (so far the only casualty is a screen door), searching for mentions of our area and the local roads (the main road north of us is flooded), and keeping up-to-date with our friends (all safe!). I know Nan is fine in NC, where to find our nearest emergency shelter, and that I might need to drive our Shop Vac down the block to help with the baling at Cecily’s house.

Oh, and then there is the intermittent tornado warning/watch. I’m debating if I should remove some of my guitars from the attic.

I might be on pins and needles at the moment, but so is everyone else. We’re on pins and needs together, sharing stories and anxieties and laughter, and knowing that makes it less frightening and confusing.

Plus, no Fail Whales in sight!

Stay safe and dry, friends.

kismet, or something

by

There are some days that are just kismet, or something similarly serendipitous.

Last night was Filmstar rehearsal. I’m learning now that band rehearsals ebb and flow. For months you are learning new songs and battling new riffs, and then suddenly you realize you’ve arrived and want to work on something new.

I got there halfway through rehearsal last night, after powering through a particularly strong version of “Promise Me, Promise Me.” I think it is giving me arthritis, actually. The gradual decay of my aging husk aside, it was a good rehearsal. Good enough that I asked when we’d be learning another new song.

The space between rehearsal and bed is slim, if I want to possess even a modicum of sanity the next day. A few minutes prior to exhaustion overtaking me, I checked my blinking phone to discover we had the chance to play the Tin Angel the week of my birthday. I fired away some emails and nodded off, bedside light still on.

Today I woke up too early and thought, Oh, to hell with going back to sleep. I got to the office before anyone else and started my day in peace.

A few hours and several dozen emails into the now-broken peace, I noticed my phone blinking. It was David, who books local shows at the Tin; we were in for September 24th.

I didn’t have time to celebrate. Instead, I put out some fires, did crazy Batman-esque calisthenics with my personal trainer, and delivered a 90-minute long presentation complete with a little 5.5″ x 8.5″ instruction booklet I composed for the occasion.

(Actually, if you know me, that probably did constitute a celebration. Few things make me happier than crises, superheroes, print collateral, and public speaking.)

Eventually I wound up at home, after nearly missing my trolley stop as I nodded off to The Format crooning in my ear. E and I sat on the couch.

“Are you writing your anniversary post yet?”

“No.”

“Shouldn’t you?”

“I feel like playing guitar.”

Having long since given up on serving as a traffic cop to my creative whims, E noodled on her iPad while I strummed. I could tell that she could tell that I was working out something new. She stayed silent but set a curious eye on my over the edge of her iPad.

I hummed a little. I found where two different chord progressions connected. I picked a starting pitch.

I played the new song, rather coherently, with a few stops and starts to fit the uneven lyrics into the chords.

E has seen me birth many a song since we moved in together in 2004. The process doesn’t typical elicit a comment until I fish for one.

I played it again and she fixed me with a look over top of her iPad.

“New?”

“Yeah. Just now, actually.”

She waited, just long enough that I almost had to ask.

“It’s a good one.”

“Does it work?”

She laughed her little non-laugh that she laughs.

“Yeah. Really. Really.”

She gave a satisfied smirk. Later, she asked me, “Do you want to go out for water ice?”

I nodded back at her.

“Just let me play it once more.”

I played it twice.

I am exhausted in bed, again, with bleary eyes and sore muscles, but a new song and a belly full of water ice for my trouble.

I’ll take it.

Don’t you people watch disaster movies?

by

I work on the thirty-eighth of forty five floors, and sometimes the floor shakes.

This is the reality of working in a high rise office building. There is not always a reason for it. There seems to be a certain square of carpet positioned half the office away from me that, when walked over with vigor, causes my chair to shake.

I’ve never quite discerned which square of carpet it is, but yesterday a little bit before 2pm I was ready to find it because clearly someone with a little bit of heft to them was jumping up and down right on top of it.

I stood up from my chair.

I kept shaking.

Plan B. Maybe I was having a white-out? I used to have them in high school when my diet consisted entirely of allergy pills and Altoids. The world begins to go white around the edges and you have the sensation you are shaking and try to correct it, but really you weren’t shaking in the first place, except the shaking correction turns into you anti-shaking.

It’s all very confusing. Except, yesterday I didn’t feel confused. Well, I was confused about the shaking, but it didn’t seem to be originating from my person. And I wasn’t seeing white.

Also, I had just eaten a really big lunch.

It was at this juncture that I picked up my phone and tweeted:

Um, did Philly just have an earthquake? Our building is shaking.

Here my cultivation theory kicked in. If life is like the movies, we’ve all seen the disaster movies – we all know what not to do.

I checked to make sure my enceinte cube neighbor was okay, picked up all of my things (people are always going back for their cell phone or laptop), and walked to the doorway to the fire tower stairway, where I continued tweeting. After all, one wall of my cube is solid reinforced glass windows. Not where you want to be in the event of an earthquake or alien attack.

I just watched Skyline. I know what’s up.

Camped out by the stairs it took one swipe through my Twitter stream to see the shaking was not localized to Philly. I noticed mentions from Syracuse and Arlington.

We all know the story from there.

There is a beauty in shared experiences on the internet. And, while a pretty big percentage of people might see a certain television show or comment on a political revolution a world away, nothing tops direct, personal experience with natural phenomenon. Twitter was abuzz for Snopocalypse and it’s been abuzz during our summer deluge of rain.

For an earthquake felt by the entire disaster-deprived northeastern seaboard, it was electrified.

I felt only slightly reassured once tweets identified the source and magnitude of the earthquake was in Virginia. What about aftershocks? Or, what if it was just a pre-tremor tremble presaging the big one?

Also, there was still the alien angle to consider.

Plus, I still had that pregnant co-worker. If this really go down like a real disaster movie my chances of survival as a gawky meta-aware white guy were ever lower with her in the cast.

I have seen 2012.

With our expectant friend safely making her way home our office belatedly made an announcement about our relative safety and encouraged us to do the same.

Everyone in the building ran for the elevators. It was practically an aftershock. Because you totally want to be packed into elevators with 3,000 of your closest friends right after an earthquake. That sounds awesome.

I proceded back to the fire stairs and walked down them. All thirty-eight flights. I emerged from the lobby just ahead of my co-workers who took the elevators.

Then I walked twenty-five blocks. Sure, I could have jumped right on the El near my building. But I thought of people. People on the El are incredible stupid and rude on any day of the week. In the aftermath of an earthquake with the entire city dismissed from work all at once?

I have seen War of the Worlds. I know how that turns out.

I had no interest in being underground with other human beings. I walked to 46th street and waited in beautiful sunlight for the El to carry me home.