Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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There definitely are not any reasons for me to be awake right now, was the first thought to pop into my head at four-thirty this morning, when i found myself awake two and a half hours shy of my clock’s scheduled alarming. After i fully resigned myself to the reality that, yes, i was no longer within the depths of my dreams, my second thought was: What the fuck is making that godawful noise?

Obviously, the noise was not one that i could immediately recognize — not car alarm, nor overloud stereo, nor cat in heat. Actually, it sounded something like the first and the third intertwined and broadcast over the second, but that piece of information did not leave me any closer to knowing what it was. In case you haven’t already gathered, it was not a pleasant sound.

As i rose to a fuller level of consciousness, i initiated an internal round of twenty-questions to attempt to the identify the noise’s source. Where was it coming from? It was not interior to my room. It was not coming from inside of the rest of the house. It was not coming through the wall that i share with our neighbors. It was definitely from outside. It was coming from out back, maybe from the northern side of my block. It was coming at slightly irregular intervals, but with no discernible variations: squw-aw-aw-ah-ack … … … squw-aw-aw-ah-ack … … squw-aw-aw-ah-ack … et cetera.

What was making the noise? Certainly not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Probably not electronic, given the interval length. Could it be animal? Hmm. Would have to be vocal in nature. Not barking, not yowling, not chirping …

Just shy of my twentieth question, i ventured an internal guess that the sound must be that of a rooster who had found himself running slightly ahead of the sunrise schedule. However, i failed to locate any such creature upon poking my head out of the window, and was hesitant to climb out onto my spring-board-of-death/roof in my post-unconscious state. Lacking any other option short of throwing things out of my window, i closed it and retreated to my bed. Whatever it was, it couldn’t possible go on like that for much longer; i could tune it out.

I could not tune it out, and it would not stop. It was awful and piercing, pausing just long enough to raise my hopes that it might be over and then dashing them with another resounding squw-aw-aw-ah-ack. Soon i found myself grinding one ear into the sheets and capping the other with a pillow, altogether enveloped by my heavy blanket. Still, it came. And came. And so forth.

After a short while i began to entertain the idea that if i was forced to lay awake much longer i might get out of bed, dress in several layers of dark clothing, wrap a towel around my face and neck in a burqa-like fashion, go outside and around to the back of my apartment, scale some fences, and confront my nemesis/rooster. Clearly if i could not shake it from its activity i would be force snap the damn thing’s neck. Sleepless, i convinced myself that i would be able to do it. After all, it wasn’t as if i was a vegetarian because i like animals especially much. And the owner ought not to even have it in the city, let alone give it free vocal reign of the pre-dawn hours. It couldn’t possibly be hard to break a rooster’s neck; the trick would just be to catch it. And so forth.

I have no recollection of the noise ever ending, but after nearly an hour of imagining myself as a member of an elite ninja poultry-extermination squad i finally fell back into sleep. When i awoke (at the expected time) i could detect no trace of the noise and, upon reflection, decided that it could not have possibly been a rooster. A rooster? Just the delirium of being woken from deep R.E.M.-sleep talking. Probably some weird foreign car’s alarm. Anyhow, i had to get dressed and be on the way to my second day of work.

A short time later i was outside — halfway down my block, in fact — when i spotted an vaguely familiar neighbor leaving her house. I resolved not to involve her in my ruminations, but as she joined me on the sidewalk my curiosity got the best of me. I blurted: “Can i ask you something very peculiar?” She regarded me skeptically, but apparently decided from the look of my shirt and tie that i could no no worse harm than try to bum a cigarette. She made no move to break stride or reply, so i continued: “Did you hear anything odd last night… around four thirty in the morning?”

Another skeptical look. Today is, i realized, April Fools. She let my question hang for a moment and then wryly (though not icily) replied, “Like what?”

My mouth opened (certainly not a rooster, that’s for sure) and closed (nevermind) and opened again and, seemingly of its own volition, said “Perhaps a, erm, a rooster,” and, emboldened by her lack of immediate ridicule, then amended, “or some other animal that regularly greets the dawn of a new day with a terribly piercing squw-aw-aw-ah-ack sound.” (The sound came out perfectly … as if i had spent all night rehearsing it rather than being tortured by it. I hadn’t spent the whole night rehearsing it, had i? No, i had heard it … heard the rooster/ /foreign-car-alarm /unidentified-squw-aw-aw-ah-acking-object. Right… right?)

Her gaze suddenly renounced its skepticism, leaving a warmly-smiling face in its place. (Her rooster, perhaps?) Then: “Probably just one of the neighbors who’s involved in cock-fighting.” She sounded unconcerned; nonchalant, even. “I’m Dawn, by the way.”

Oh. Sure. One of those. “Oh. Sure. One of those.” I sounded considerably less unconcerned than she did; decidedly chalant, if you will. I quickly attempted to save face in the light of my seemingly puzzled reception of her very succinct answer by adding, “Right… right? (very smooth… for a jackass.) I’m Peter.”

After my incredibly comeback, Dawn and I carried on a sparkling conversation all the way to our bus stop, rooster-free save for her comment that “I’ll hear something more peculiar than that from one of my clients today, that’s for sure.” Which, i suppose, makes perfect sense if you are in the know about the neighborhood cock-fighting ring — which Dawn is. And, if you counsel weird people for a living, which Dawn does.

In comparison, my second day of work seemed entirely normal. Which definitely wasn’t the case…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/04/200082420/

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Well, i’m sure to go to hell now.

In case you don’t take statements regarding someone’s immortal fate for granted, allow me to elaborate.

I hate cell phones. Despise them. Though they have a lot of very important potential uses, not a single one of them is arming every Dick, Jane, and Moron with one so that they can chat it up while in a movie-theatre, driving a large motor-vehicle, or just walking down the street. Let’s be honest here… of the seemingly 90% of people who are chatting on cellulars as you pass them on the street, how many of them are important enough to even merit one? Or, hell, forget important, what about popular?

Of course, at college everybody has a cell phone. In some cases they are warranted — people are from far away and want to call home. Or, they have a boyfriend or girlfriend in a different state and are trying to save on long distance charges. However, warranted or not, everyone i know seems to have one. And, since they have them, they expect me to have one. Why not have one? Shouldn’t i be able to talk to anyone at any time no matter where i am or how annoying it is to the people around me? Shouldn’t my friends and family feel have the right to keep me on a electronic leash that that can tug at a moment’s notice via speed-dial?

I am going to hell because i now have one of these devices, these tiny electronic harbingers of societies impending doom. Not because i really wanted one, because i definitely do no, and not because i need one for any actual reason. No. I have one because literally every last friend i have (with the two rare exceptions of Gina and SL) have cell phones, and of those people over a third of the ones i ever need to call have their own cell-phones from different area codes that would cost an arm and a leg to call all the time via a landline. Elise has a Northern Jersey, Kat one that i assume is from California, and Laura from TrebleMakers is from upstate New York!


Now i am one of them. Not only one of them, but a special one: by an apparent grace of god my cell-phone got connected to a local 215 phone number, which immediately makes me eminently hipper than my friends in 610 and 267. Which, in my estimation, has the potential to launch me at least two circles deeper into the bowels of hell.

I just wanted to make you aware that i am one step closer to becoming everything that i hate and detest. Maybe tomorrow i’ll go and change my voter registration over to Republican and lease an SUV.


Oops, did i offend you? I’m sorry. Have a nice day.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/03/200063130/

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Lindsay, who just read the entirety of my archives and so is in the position to know these things, has informed me that i just have to write more often. If i write more often, she reasons, i will enjoy it more, and enjoying it will make it better.

This, historically, has meant that you (the reader) has to suffer through all kinds of crapola in the meantime. But, you didn’t have anything else to do, right?


“You’re on hiatus, huh?” It seemed like a funny question to ask me — of course i’m not on hiatus. When am i ever? I’ve only ever took one that i recall. One look at the date on my last post told me why i was being asked, though. Apparently just thinking about witty stuff doesn’t count for much in the blogging game .

As if it’s a consolation for missing out on daily updates from my decidedly droll life, i have somehow managed to notch my fourth consecutive quarter on the Dean’s List. To put that in more tangible terms for all of you literal thinkers out there, i am currently less than .03 away from graduating with honors. Not the dopey kind of honors you get from being in the “honors college.” Noooo. The kind of honors you get for being smart and doing well.

In an intriguing turn of events, i don’t remember a lot of being smart or doing well that happened over the course of this past quarter. Thinking about it is like trying to remember if i’ve blogged lately — i know that i got straight A’s, but i’m a little foggy on the when and the how of it. There was, of course, last week’s two days of hell as i built a Senior thesis paper from the relative nothingness of one interesting Scientific American article into a hulking five thousand word treatise on Globalization and Technology. I got an A in that class… despite not being a Senior and, oh, not even being enrolled in the major that i wrote a thesis for. Ha. And, people in the class talked about how the professor was the second coming of Vlad the Impaler, a veritable vampire of academia, sucking up lots and lots of work and leaving behind only the dried up dead husks of things he once regarded as students.


He seemed to like me, actually.

I could go on. Somehow i’ve gotten to this place, this place where i am successful and smart and yet i feel like some small part of me is living outside of it, wondering how someone could be so successful. And smart. And so goddamn charming.

Okay, so, maybe i made that part up….

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/03/200052935/

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I’m having trouble deciding what i feel about anything except for sitting holed up in my room protected by womb of thick walls and loud music. Yesterday on my way home from class i walked a block out my way – out of boredom, i guess. I had never been on it on foot before, just in a car passing by. The feeling was indescribable, as if i had stepped off of my front porch and onto the set of a television show (because i had never seen that block before except for through the glass of a window/screen).

I think that sometimes Elise feels bad that i don’t write so many songs anymore, as if it’s her fault. It guess it is a little bit, because i am happy and not creating stupid scenarios in my head to connect me to every person that i pass by on the street out of utter desperation to be a part of someone else’s day. It’s confusing to look at the entries in my little grey book from a year ago, while Elise was still new and confusing enough to evoke my typical lyrical ramblings. At a point not too far after that there is a disconnect, and suddenly i am not writing out of my gut anymore, from where my songs used to spring covered in bile and blood. Every time Elise gets used to me not having anything new to sing at all i surprise her, the other night with four new songs that she had never even heard a hint of before. They make me uneasy — i have trouble feeling them and so they are hard to sing.

I have thirty four weeks of college left after i complete my last co-operative learning experience this summer. I said a funny thing last night to Erika about that. I said that i wasn’t returning my mother’s phone calls because she would have to get used to not hearing from me and being worried once i left Philadelphia. I talk a lot about what i may or may not do after i graduate, everything from going abroad to going to grad school, and usually it has an air of fantasy and speculation about it. Last night, though, i said it without thinking. It felt like singing one of my old songs, half diaphragmatic support and half a punch in the gut. I don’t know where i’m going to go, or what i’m going to do, but apparently it’s not going to be here.


Or so i say. But, for as many streets there are in this city that can make me feel alien there are other cities on this planet that i’ll never see. I really ought to start working on that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/03/90595788/

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I never know what’s going on in my apartment.

There are four of us, spending all of our time alternatingly at work, in class, with our significant others, or on stage. The odds that more than two of us will ever be here at the same time are dwarfed by the odds that the apartment will be empty when one of us arrives.


The way i figure it, you and your college roommates would have to be absolute dweebs for this not to be the case. “Dweebs,” for sure, because the four of us are definitely geeks, so i had to find a word that had more of a “shut-in” connotation.


It’s not hard to spend nearly three quarters of your typical waking hours outside of your collegiate abode; it’s not like we do it intentionally. In fact, occasionally going days at a time without re-entering it really isn’t a challenge — especially when you’re dating someone with their own apartment.

What starts to occur is that, with so many lengthy departures, your home can hold something unusual for you upon your return. Different. It can be full of surprises. And, though these surprises might prove alarming at first, as the length of your residence increases the unusual circumstances that you find yourself entering into become less and less alarming.

Rearranged or missing furniture should not phase you, nor should strangers reclining on said furniture (even if they are the only people presently in your house). The appearance or disappearance of drastically large amounts of any kitchen items, including actual food or liquor, should be duly noted but not unduly fretted over. Finding a sign on your front door that proclaims “Ring hard and often; cover $5” should only bother you if you do not have a doorbell. You should expect to find large new appliances, game / home-theatre systems, or piles of laundry more often than not. You should strive to exhibit no surprise upon the emergence unexpected or unwelcome people from your roommates’ bedrooms. If any of your personal effects seem to be lost or missing, even from your own room or bathroom area, you should allow ample time for them to be returned or replaced before entering a period of mourning.

Then there are the notes. Even in this technologically advanced age, notes are the most effective form of roommate to roommate conversation. Why? You can blow off an email, but there is only so long that you can profess to ignore something that is affixed to your doorknob, disco ball, toilet-lid, television screen, Brita pitcher, or bedroom door. Additionally, you should learn to anticipate what will at first seem like non-sequitir content in said notes, which will eventually bloom to make a terrifying amount of sense once you put the correct context in place, as in the only vaguely exaggerated examples that follow:

  • Please extinguish your own toaster fires.
  • Do not poke at the holes in the bathroom ceiling.
  • For your own safety do not open the closet door until Animal Control arrives.
  • You have 24 hours to return all dinnerware to the kitchen before a fine goes into effect.

    and, a personal favorite excerpted from Elise’s house:

  • Dear tenants … I am leaving the country to serve in the Isreali army, hopefully to return in March … These are the best years of your life; make sure to have fun every day … Signed: Your Landlord.

    • College… it’s an adventure.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/02/390367882/