Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

lindsay

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Despite the veritable circus of animals i have lived with or adjacent to in my life, i have only once had a pet to call my own: a hamster, obtained from my sixth grade biology teacher. I remember that the event was quite a big to-do in my house at the time, although now i don’t see what was so incredibly unusual about keeping a rodent locked up in a tidy Habitrail cage. He wasn’t much of a pet, so much as i recall, except for that he had a hamster’s typical penchant for escape artistry, once sneaking out in the dead of night only to make a nest behind my door and another time squeezing out just to wait on my pillow for me to return home. I’m not sure why i didn’t play with him that often, other than that i was always afraid of being bitten and that i had a penchant for seeing him more as a proto-beanie-baby than a living breathing pet. An indeterminate time after i brought him home he died; one morning my gloved hand curled around his teddy-like body to find it stiff and unrecoiling.

Lindsay has a hamster downstairs, Mimi, who is either named after a character from Rent or Drew Carey depending on who you ask. To wit, she fits with both: loud, proud, and rather large. In fact, most visitors to the house estimate her to be much closer to guinea pig than hamster, and some even recommend that she has enough body mass to aspire to ferret size if properly stretched.


The most important thing about Mimi is that she is just about the best pet ever. She’s low-maintenance, eating only one full dish of food each week – which would seem to indicate that she has the most obscenely low metabolism known to man or mouse, as she has no trouble maintaining and increasing her near-free-roaming-pet size. She’s very docile, especially for a breed of animal who typically moves and sniffs as though its being electrically prodded from behind for even a moment of pause. She’s smart: smart enough to have outsmarted the typical hamster proofed roof of her cage as well as the lid to her ball. Her only fault, really, is the noise she makes at night; hamsters are, of course, nocturnal creatures, and she has a string of nightly exploits that include chewing on parts of her cage, running at a higher speed limit than her wheel is built to contend with, and generally moving things around in a rather noisy fashion.

I can admit that i was jealous of her, especially seeing as at the time i was the only housemate who didn’t own a pet. So, when Elise decided to take a day off for comparative snake-shopping, i half-heartedly began examining hamsters as we progressed from store to store. None of them were cute enough for me until our last store, hit upon as a bit of a lark, where after giving up on a rodent so belligerent that she couldn’t be picked up by an employee to a tiny scurrying doll that – after some contention – has become my pet hamster Stoli.

At night she has taken to gnawing on the tiny evergreen bars of the front hatch to her cage to fulfill her requisite noisemaking quota, and although it’s probably some animal escape-instinct at work on her part to me it is just the evil clicking-of-death at 4am. And 5am. Though, sometimes as early as 2:30am. I’ve learned that the only way to avoid these untimely wake-up calls is to engage her attention before i go to bed; i let her crawl around on my desk while i’m catching up on the day’s news, and then i find a nice clear surface for her to really run off some stream on before i head to bed. Tonight i took her out into my entirely bare sitting room and watched – bemused – as she careful sniffed across the entire space one square-hamster at a time. It seems to have worked, as she’s gone from recklessly leaping off the side of my chair three consecutive times thirty minutes ago to sitting quietly on the floor of her cage contemplating the hatch as i type.

Or maybe that has to do with the extra-whitening toothpaste i spread all over the front bars of her cage, the touching of which usually sends her scurrying back to her hidey-hole to wipe her hands off on stale food and cedar chips.

So, if you’ve been wondering why i haven’t been blogging all week despite having my classic AM timespot uncharacteristically freed up, now you know: i’ve been trying to wear out my hamster.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85376687/

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Everybody has something that makes them feel real. Or, realer, if you already believe in yourself. Attention and applause generally fit the bill in the circles i move in, but sometimes the thing you really need is a little more tangible. Money. A nice place to live. Gourmet food.

Despite my obvious predilection for both applause and attention, there are some other things that i require to feel as though i am an actual and worthwhile corporeal entity that is actually meant to take up space and breath. Or something like that. Things that make me feel as though things are going well and i really ought not to go frolic in traffic anytime soon.

One of those things, for those of you who don’t pay much attention, is music. Whether i’m listening to it, making it, or just hearing it in my head, my life feels like nebulous between station static without a soundtrack to tune in on. I also need something to do … doing nothing or participating in something passively tends to make me stir crazy in a very short amount of time. Thus my general distaste for television, past the obvious Friends fixation and American Idol addiction. The list goes on and on, with varying assignations of importance, down to the little things: Jeans that make my ass look good, for example.


There was one thing that was missing from the assemblage that makes up the difference between my current glib happiness and the droll existence i lived late last year; one especially tangible item that my life seemed to beg, nay, yearn for. I was certain that having it would make me happier and increase my quality of life.


Elise bought me the blender about two weeks ago.


For two weeks it just sat on my kitchen shelf, looming like a Northern Star over my blended-drink-less life. It was an invitation to smoothies and daiquiris, health shakes and margaritas … in effect, an invitation to increase my happiness and well-being in the area of semi-liquids. And it was still snuggly nestled in its cradle of Styrofoam and cardboard … until Tuesday night. That night i gathered girlfriends, roommates, and our general partner-in-crime SL and her beau. All of us were ostensibly assembled to watch the aforementioned American Idol program, but we had the secondary purpose of breaking in my blender with a jumbo-sized TGI Friday‘s premixed Mudslide. And break we did.

Three days later, and i am noticeable a more chipper person than i was before i slit the tape on the top of the blender-box open. It isn’t that having a blender is about getting really sloshed, though – as we found out yesterday – getting a few drinks into me makes mopping the kitchen a lot more fun. It’s just one of those appliances i’ve always felt as though a real person might own. I mean, how can you be real without the capability to make milkshakes? Eventually i’ll need an entire kitchen full of widgets and whatsits to make me happy, but for now i’m happy to have a ten-speed jumbo-pitchered blender to brighten my days.

Anyway, point being, i have moved on step closer to my materialistic and self-centered version of Nirvana. Now all i need is a gold record and abs of steel.

What about you?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85330678/

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Waking up early reminds me of my old homes and of high school. How i used to be so sleepy that i couldn’t imagine moving, let alone showering or eating or walking to the car, but i knew that i didn’t have a choice. Being the first student into my high school at 6:59 just as they turned off our industrial strength alarm, and wandering the empty halls up to my homeroom where i would lay my head against the cool black surface of my lab table and drift off until other people began to drift in a half hour later.

Being adult about something is so jarring, so unusual. I make a decision that i know doesn’t make me happy, but it makes sense, and i wonder how i ever learned to do that. This morning at twenty to seven i could’ve just turned the lock on my door and went back to bed – ignoring the imminent calls of Lindsay and Kate for me to join the early edition of our car pool. I wanted to sleep another hour. I want to sleep another hour right now. But i didn’t, and i’m still not; i am here at work marveling that i am getting anything done despite the cobwebbed haze of sleep that is still shrouding my consciousness hours later.

There’s something about responsibility. There is something about appreciating it more, and also something about knowing what’s important. But, i sometimes still forget to differentiate between things that are important to do and things that are important to me.

In other news, i defragmented my hard drive, devirginized my new blender, and bought two really sexy shirts for $20 at the newly (and inexplicably) renamed Express For Men. How Have You Been?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85322298/

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Randomness.

Lindsay and i have far-ranging discussions from eight to eleven in the morning. Our words lilt out to the tune of folk music and classic rock as we alternatingly bag, scan, sing, bag, scan, sing. I am unafraid of saying things to Lindsay now; although i know she still has the ability to be upset about something i say, i also know that it will ultimately not change our friendship.

There is this: a step towards striking “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and the immediate backlash against it. Religion seems to be playing into this issue a lot more than Strict Constitutionalism, and i suppose that if we have to define Lindsay is a lapsed Catholic and i’m an Amendment-clutching agnostic. And we, apparently (though not shockingly), have differing opinions on the pledge of Allegiance.

As a sensible American who enjoys upholding the actual text of the Constitution, i have never supported the mention of God in the Pledge. For those of you still ignorant to how it got there, NO, it wasn’t in the original pledge. Not by a longshot. In fact, it was adopted in 1954. Yes, that’s right, while one of my parents was alive. Without ever having known this, i refrained from reciting the pledge for most of High School, but now i see that i wasn’t just another young punk flouting the will of the administration. Lindsay seems to think my idea is crazy, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Ninth Circuit Judge Alfred T. Goodwin, who wrote the presiding opinion, stated that “A profession that we are a nation ‘under God’ is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation ‘under Jesus,’ a nation ‘under Vishnu,’ a nation ‘under Zeus,’ or a nation ‘under no god,’ because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion.” Indeed. Many might note that we have God’s name on our money, for god’s sake, so why make a big deal about the pledge. However, the bone of contention isn’t merely the mention of God – at least, not legally. In fact, it’s all about implementation.

According to the court, upon President Eisenhower signing the legislation that inserted he wrote that “millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.” Not because he wanted it to be consistent with our money. Not to be consistent with all the flowery language about “Nature’s God” in the Declaration. No. Not for any of those reasons, but because in 1954 President Eisenhower thought that it would be a good idea for every child to be reminded of God – his “Almighty” – every morning in homeroom. Not Zeus. Not Vishnu. Not Satan, god help us. God. The God. You know which one i mean.

Says the court: “The Pledge, as currently codified, is an impermissible government endorsement of religion because it sends a message to unbelievers ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.'” While that might be a little excessive, personally i think he’s got to go. God, that is. Either that, or we need to make a clearer and more pertinent phrasing of the original 1954 law to make it clear what God’s purpose is in the phrasing.

Lindsay seems to disagree. She voices the opinion, shared by many, that God is a small thing to be squabbling about right now. The divisiveness introduced by an argument over something that is at once so trivial and yet so vital is exactly the sign that we aren’t the country we need to be. My response is that our country is built upon the foundations of inclusiveness and Constitutionality, and to suspend that just because we’re involved in a greater conflict is a sign of how weak we truly are. Unfortunately, my labeling us as already weak and divided apparently undermines my argument solely on the fact that i am just not patriotic enough in the first place. Which is probably true. However, i’m sure there are plenty of bright young patriots out there who have actually read the establishment clause and can see that this is an issue of constitutional interpretation … not of lapsed nationalism and atheistic ideals.

*sigh* … back to work i go. I’m sure you can find a better news source than me for more on this story – it should be interesting to watch both political parties swallow all of their stances on interpretation as they attempt to rectify this very real inconsistency between amendment and law. I say we shouldn’t vote any of them back into office.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85304687/

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Listening to 25/24 on loop for the last two days whenever i’ve been in my apartment, and real music at work today seems positively surreal. You mean, there are cds that exist that i wasn’t on CntrlRm-Out headphones for? Totally a shock.

My life is totally a shock sometimes. I raised just shy of $300 for Planned Parenthood, and i’ll probably write a check for the difference; i figure this probably breaks me even for all of the training i got from them for free when i was a Peer Counselor in High School. Leaving the ‘thon page up seems halfways like bronzing a baby’s shoe and half stuffing a dead pet. Did that just make any sense at all? In a way i feel as though it’s memorializing the first step in what will (hopefully) be years of high quality recordings from me, but in another way i feel like i should be getting back to normal.


It doesn’t feel normal right now, i don’t feel normal. To go from a week of all anticipation to a week all of denouement is jarring, and i just feel like i’m standing in a shadow. I had an honest to goodness panic attack last night, which isn’t exactly a common occurrence around these parts, and to this point i’m not sure why. Lindsay has become fairly convinced by this point that i really was locked in my room in a gibbering mess rather than fooling around with my girlfriend, but i feel like everyone else is looking at me strangely sideways. Not that i went around advertising it, you know, billboard: “Total headcase here, please pull around.” But, i like to be able to talk about things once i’ve got them on my chest, lest i suffocate.

I’m not sure how long this layout will remain or what will follow it. I think it’s simple and pretty and white, and i don’t mind that being my virtual impression right now. But, until i figure out what will be happening after it’s gone i definitely feel like a guest on my own blog.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/07/85296632/