Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

cold

Daily Demo: Icy Cold

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Here’s a brand new HD video of “Icy Cold” with beautiful hi-fi multi-track soundboard audio. It comes with a story.

Okay, story-time.

Ten years ago (less 24 days) I was a freshman in college, and I wrote a song called “Icy Cold.”

It was an odd one – very oblique lyrics in one of my more unusual alternate tunings (at the time) made it a challenge to sing and play. I left it off my 2000 demo CD Other Plans and, curiously, also did not consider it for my 2001 studio disc Relief. It remained bound to my apartment, where it factored in to a few of my favorite Trio recordings.

Around the same time I wrote “Icy Cold” – 86th in a rapidly-expanding list of songs – I decided that it was time for me to start playing shows.

Being rather ignorant as to what that entailed, I assumed that I would just phone up a local, mostly-acoustic venue where people I liked frequently played and explain that I wrote tons of awesome songs, and then they would invite me to play. (Later, after my initial flush of success, I could upgrade to playing the TLA or the Electric Factory).

The Tin Angel being the only local mostly-acoustic venue that I knew of at the time, I sussed out their booking information and rang them up.

That was the extent of my year-2000 booking experience at the Tin Angel. No follow-up. No booking. No flush of success.

To be fair, I would have been an utter disaster. I know some people so wonderful that their first ever show was at the Tin, but I was not that kind of wonderful in 2000. Sure, I had the awesome songs, but I could just barely sing, and I was playing a guitar that didn’t even especially stay in tune!

Over the course of the past ten years I’ve done a lot to rectify my singing and guitar-playing issues, and I’ve played in a lot of amazing Philly venues – including the Tin Angel, as part of a showcase with Arcati Crisis. Yet, I’ve never fulfilled that original goal of ten years ago – being featured solo on the bill at the Tin.

Well, that’s going to happen on Friday at 10:30 p.m., so when it came to choosing the first song to post in 2010 in this glorious new HD audio/video combo format it seemed natural to choose “Icy Cold” – especially given the slights it experienced in 2000 and 2001.

Plus, it’s really freaking cold out.

That’s my story.

PS: I owe the hugest possible shout-out to Tim Jahn for explaining Adobe Premiere Pro compression codecs to me via Twitter at the eleventh hour (literally) to make this beautiful video possible. Tim writes a blog of occasional, thought-provoking bulletins that I have been enjoying for months. You can also follow him on Twitter.

fear and loathing in the back yard

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Our neighbors are keeping two small dogs in their back yard. They look like they could be puppy dobermans, but I’m really not sure. However, they’re definitely being kept – they’re not strays.

As far as Elise and I can tell they are living exclusively in the yard – to the point that it’s been cleared of various detritus and set up as a dog-proof enclosure that’s protected from access via the alley.

I wouldn’t mind any of that, except:

(A) Our bedroom is at the rear of the house, and I have been having trouble sleeping this month. It only takes a few barks to rouse me.

(B) It has been hovering near the freezing point for several days (it’s currently 29), and the dogs seem to have only a small carrier to retreat to for a respite.

(C) The colder it gets, the more the barking turns into sustained whining/crying.

These are not neighbors we ever speak to – usually they’re just standing around outside smoking blunts when we walk up to the house. At the same time, they’ve never been unfriendly or threatening, and they’ve never once complained about us playing music.

Elise looked into Philadelphia’s policies on animal control, and we’re within our rights to submit a report about the barking if it persists more than 15 minutes on an hour. Also, clearly we can call at any time about the cruelty situation.

I know what normal Peter – mouthy, empowered Peter – would do. I would ask them about the dogs when I come home from work tomorrow, advise them cheerily that the barking is keeping me up and that I’m worried that the dogs are cold at night, and advise them that I could call the SPCA on their behalf of they can’t find a solution.

Except, that Peter doesn’t live here anymore. Not since this summer, when a slight mouthiness resulted in our home being vandalized in a hate crime.

I haven’t talked about it much, here or to anyone else, including Elise. But, for the first time in my life, I’m afraid of being me. I don’t know how to speak up. In fact, I don’t really feel safe anywhere unless I’m surrounded by friends. I’m afraid to sing karaoke or talk to people in bars or on buses or travel to any suburban or rural area because if I am the wrong combination of soft and assertive and they don’t like me they’ll just try to degrade me or something that I hold valuable.

I’m stuck. I’m afraid to talk to the neighbors, even though signs point to their being at least a little friendly. I’m afraid if I call in the dogs the neighbors will assume it’s me, even though it could be any of the five yards adjacent to them.

I’m afraid if I’m me people will hate me.

It was hard enough to sleep for a month after what happened – constantly bolting upright every time I heard a sound anywhere adjacent to the house. I’m already nauseous every time I walk up to my door for fear of what it might contain. And, unrelated to that, I’m already ragged and tired at home and at work, verging on sick.

I don’t need barking dogs to compound the situation.

Live From the Icebox

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I’ve convinced my inner OCD Godzilla that there’s no harm in randomly surfing through some NaBloPoMo blogs as long as I track them meticulously via a spreadsheet. He, in turn, will not consume my soul with the power of his Atomic Breath.

I’m realizing that Fussy, much like the Dooce, almighty queen of the internet, is a blogger with a small child. The difference would seem to be that Dooce was already in-progress on queendom when she had her baby (the adorable Leta), wheras Fussy began with precocious Jackson already in place.

In any event, young married women with adorable children (Alpha Moms? I’m not clear on what that means, exactly) seem to be Fussy’s primary demographic, so i have no doubt i’ll be encountering lots of cute little babies in my web surfing, which is fine, because i completely understand that while babies are cute they also scream indiscriminantly when you are recording a new song, and i am still way too self-involved to want to be responsible any sort of creature that involves my having to record more takes of anything. This also extends to birds and yappy dogs.

What’s a little disconcerting is that a lot of these people are totally my peers, except they spend their money on diapers and care about other people while i’m still spending money on concert tickets and am completely self-involved. It sortof freaks me out. I mean, i can withstand, like, ten whole minutes of pictures of cute babies, but the lack of self-involvement is a little disturbing. At least Fussy and Dooce are both still obsessed with themseves. And, they both still enjoy a strong cocktail.
Oh, right, websites. The first NaBloPoMo blog i happened upon is called Rudderless, and Loving It. Here i thought the title was just punny and figurative but – NAY – it is about a family who lives on a boat in the Florida keys (to which my response was OMG, they have internet on boats!!!). They link to quite possibly the cutest halloween picture of all time.

When i was younger my mom seemed to primarily date men who owned boats, and even though i could never fit my entire comic book collection onto one i really liked going for a ride because boats just make so much more sense than cars, and because i liked parking it in open water and then going underneath to take a nap. Also, the first time i rode on a boat it was with a funny older lady who had a cat and an inexaustible supply of oreo cookies, whereas the first memory i have of a car involves my mother locking a tiny, toddler-sized me in our golden Nova at a gas station.
And people wonder why i don’t have my driver’s license. Oh, right, topic. Back to the topic.
Pam Rentz blogs at You’re Doing It Wrong; anyone who ends a technical blog-related lament with the sentence “No doubt a bottle of red wine will be involved” is awesome. Also, apparently Lucy Lawless remade herself into some sort of blues-belting rock animal via a television show called Celebrity Duets? I never really watched Xena, but there is definitely something inherently awesome about Lucy that just got awesomer now that i know she’s an aspiring blues singer trapped inside the body of a Glamazon.

I just wandered downstairs and i think it is literally warmer in the refridgerator than in the rest of the kitchen. Gingerbread Latte often refers to herself in third-person plural and uses [redacted] in her blog, which i love. Gimme Sanity is stunningly gorgeous, lives in NYC, has an adorable baby, is a serious knitter and student, and runs marathons. She has pretty much won life.

Okay, i’ve been sitting on this post for an hour now, i need to just let it go. And maybe build a small fire out in the hallway.

Bleary-but-Wide Eyed

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It is in the general vicinity of freezing outside, and the incursion of said temperature into our house is the only thing keeping me awake and alert at the moment. And, in my least wakeful state the only two things i can really manage are playing guitar and blogging, and it’s way too cold to play guitar.
Elise went off to have breakfast at Ikea and shopping in other heated buildings, leaving me to suffer alone from my refusal to turn on the heat before Thanksgiving. Because, underneath this 25-yr-old wrapper i am clearly a stingy old lady living from pension check to pension check.
I want to start winging my way around the NaBloPoMo sites in order to try to catch a little of every writer, but Eden over at Fussy is not done updating the big list of urls (at least, i don’t think she is, because i’m not on it yet, which is OKAY), and the OCD Godzilla inside me says that’d if i start surfing now i’d just have to start over later when the rest of the participants were added. I’ll do whatever you say, OCD Godzilla, just please don’t step on my cold little house or make me talk in overdubbed English.
In the meantime, NaBloPoMoer Lane has created a NaBloPoMo randomizer that will satisfy your endless curiosity about what people would write about every day anyhow.
When i first followed that link i thought, hmm, Lane, that couldn’t be the Lane who i used to read on Trianide, who i loved because she had a webcam but wasn’t a whore, who took amazing photos, and who loved Fiona Apple, could it? This Lane is living in a completely different hemisphere. Surely not the same Lane. Well, from a quick glance at Trianide it turns out it that it is the same Lane! NaBloPoMo: Bringing people together.

Does it count as using the heat if i go downstairs and turn on the oven to cook something but then huddle in front of it to absorb its warmth? It seems like a suitably in-character thing to do if i’m going to keep acting like a batty, frugal, old lady with OCD. And possibly dementia.

10 Degrees of Human Endurance / Our Founding Fathers

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I am ever so slightly turning into my aunt, who would leave the heat turned low on even the most frigid of days. It’s not about saving money (though, with the Philly gas price hike, it should be) so much as it is about human endurance.

I can endure my house at 57 degrees in a light jacket and jeans and stay quite comfortable. Is my quality of life going to rise commeasurately with the temperature if i eek it up a mere 10 degrees to 67? Or, if i plunge myself into debt to attain a summery 70 or 71? Will i have acheived a perfect state of bliss if i can wonder around in shorts, eating ice cream without threatening to shiver myself off of the sofa?

Today Elise’s step-sister came through Philadelphia with a college friend from Oregon. The two of them snatched me up on my street as i arrived home from work, before i could get my key in the door. We did a sort of remedial tour of Philadelphia landmarks under Broad street, which included a trip to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.

I was hesitant to join them at first, being the jaded Philadelphia lifer that I am, but there was something special about being in those places so nearly empty – without the school kids that usually pack them full. Somehow it seemed more real to walk inside from the cold to these empty, echoing rooms wondering which of our founding fires got to sit the closest to the fireplace. Because, if the day was cold, the Continental Congress certainly would be – there’s not too much to those walls.

That thought sustained my negligence of our heater through the evening, but it hasn’t carried me through to fitful sleep. Our bedroom, an addition to the house, hangs precipitously over our back door, my side of the bed exposed to the bitter elements on five sides. Even at my most endurant iron-man moment my resolve to avoid using our heat evaporates upon entry into the bedroom – especially without Elise and her heating pad to huddle up against to osmose some warmth.

It is wooshing now, up from the basement and through snaking ducts, making its way into the frigid bedroom in a futile attempt to ward off the cold surrounding our bed from almost every side. Not futile because it won’t get warm, mind you, but futile because i am much more likely to fall asleep on the couch while watching a movie than to wait until the bedroom gets warm before going to sleep.

I’m sure Ben Franklin had much heavier pajamas than me, anyhow.

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No, I don’t know why it is snowing in Philadelphia in April.

Someone actually asked me about it this morning – in disbelief that it was happening, i suppose. Unless they thought that i might somehow know something Philadelphia’s meteorologists don’t. And, well, i do know things that they don’t, but those are all about responsible journalism, and not about explaining the weather.

It wasn’t so much snowing as the wind was blowing about a frigidly icy mist, which i encountered at length on my lunch break. This should not have been the case; i did not have any reason to get so well acquainted with today’s weather. All i wanted was a salad. I thought, Surely there is a salad to be had in close enough proximity to my office building that i will not have to encounter enough weather to be forced to comment upon it when i return to my desk.

Actually, there was (a salad to be had); my coworkers recommended me to the “Oh-So-Good” eatery, which sits directly across a relatively easy-to-traverse intersection outside of my building. In fact, someone had just come back from there, and none of us even bothered to ask her about the weather. Perfect.

Oh-So is one of a new urban trend: it is like a lunchbox that packs everything … salads, sushi, soup, sandwiches, and also some things that do not begin with S. I not only gleaned this from my coworker’s description of it, but also because it proudly proclaims its one-shop-feeds-all nature in a series of simple-to-the-point-of-being-semiotic advertisements along their outer walls — they had vaguely registered in my memory from my walk to work, but i didn’t really connect them to whatever they were meant to advertise.

(Knowing me as well as you do, i’m sure you can sense that i’m about to complain about the advertisements. It is rather obvious that that’s where i am heading… why i even both to set these things up so dramatically is beyond me.)

As i exited the lobby of my building, the first advertisement to enter my field of vision was (yes) semiotic in nature. It was so effective that the pictographic on it screamed one and only one thing at me: PENIS!

Yes, it screamed penis. And, the picture that was shouting was not some virile erect vegetable of a penis, that carrot or cucumber that i might have expected since this was meant to be a sign for food and not for… well, not for genitalia. No. It was a remarkably unerect little penis.

Actually, it more resembled a shrimp…

A-Ha!, i thought, it must be a sign for shrimp!. Then, thinking some more, i thought: Surely their advertising people realize that the shrimp looks like a prepubescent penis that just participated in a Polar Bear Club activity. I mean… it barely even looks like shrimp. Or, at least, it definitely does not immediately register in the “yum, i want to eat that” category of my brain.

I continued with this line of thought as i neared Oh-So and it’s Oh-So-Shrimp. Something about the situation bothered me; it wasn’t as if i was suddenly (and uncharacteristically) having a typical male homophobic moment that lead me to fear or revile the shrimp. No. And, i wasn’t experiencing some sort of intelligence deficit that would suddenly render me offended based on some sort of right-wing moral obligation to the public to protect it from lude imagery. No, not that either.

Ah, yes, i had it. It was simply that i was bothered by the fact their advertising people were either too moronic to see that their primary food-glyph looked like an underdeveloped sex organ or too excited by its implication to make it look a touch more shrimp-like. Despite having isolated this, my problem, i found myself physically incapable of entering the building; every time i approached it i was overwhelmed by a lingering contempt by their idea of trendy advertising.

Long story short (too late), i learned all about today’s weather as i walked the two grueling ice-mist filled blocks to Lindsay’s favorite deli to get a salad there, and then another two blocks back into the wind to get back to my building so i could actually eat.

Despite this enlightening journey of the body and mind, i still have no idea why it was snowing in Philadelphia in April

In other cock-related news (ha! a pun!), i went rooster hunting when i returned from work this evening, after an unbelievable alarm-clock-like round of crowing this morning that ran on regular half hour intervals starting at five. I was unable to locate the foul fowl, despite some leads indicating that what i previously thought to be an errant chicken walking around behind CVS was actually said rooster, a pet of the man who lives on the corner. A thorough stalking of his premises revealed no such terror of a bird. I have resolved that if i am woken up at any point before 7am tomorrow by its crowing that i will go outside, find it, and shove it through its owner’s mail slot.

And still i’ve managed not to talk about my new job. Shocking. Maybe tomorrow i can squeeze it in between a discussion of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings and my discovery of an Oh-So-Sign that is implausibly meant to resemble a peach.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/04/200111619/