Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
by krisis
Whoo! I’m having a big’n’loud music marathon to cheer me up, and right now i’ve got the best of Martha and the Vandellas on. Heat Wave! WhoO! If you were looking to have your own little dance party, download a quickly done demo of on of the new songs i posted the lyrics of earlier: “Hold On Me“
by krisis
I’m sitting here with a bag of frozen white bread and a tub of hummus that i accidentally stole from my girlfriend’s roommate two weeks ago snacking away while my ftp server mysteriously blinks in and out of existence. To get the white bread defrosted enough so that it’s not similar to eating cardboard i’ve got to hold it close to my mouth and breathe into it slowly, feeling the frost evaporate onto my fingers on the other side as my snack gets soft and flexible like it’s meant to be. I’m not sure if you’re actually reading this at this point because of my FTP issues, and that surely explains the lack of a new Trio despite my obviously having new material to work with.
The play goes up next week … 10 days from now. That’s scary. I mean, i can track my entire experience with the play through this log and it just doesn’t seem long or substantial enough. Not so long ago in the archives i was contemplating whether or not i should audition and now i’m contemplating if enough my extended family are going to want seat to gets a group discount. Maybe it’s because i haven’t had such a large role since high school, where we’d rehearse from January to nearly the end of March every single day, that i feel so grossly underprepared for this show; i don’t know my lines well enough, i don’t sing my song well enough, and i’m still finding my character. Of course, none of that really matters when i’m on stage, because somehow i just make it all work. I’m looking into getting some digital video to post to the page, so… we’ll see. I’m off to munch more hummus and rehearse for my rehearsal; take care of yourselves.
by krisis
I woke up shaking early Saturday morning. I didn’t really understand it at first, i was just shaking so hard that i could barely make it out of bed. As i got a little closer to my radiator i realized that my fever had spiked and the result was that i was shivering so hard i could barely stand.
Times like these i am appreciative of my conveniently located bathroom.
I don’t know quite why, but whenever i feel sick i head for the bathroom. It’s not always the best equipped place for me to be, but i always run to it anyway. Its big draw to me this time was that it’s a tiny room with its own radiator, so it would be at least twice as warm as my bedroom. And it was, but i was still entirely too cold. I sat on the floor with my fingers carefully woven into the open bits of the radiator for several long minutes, shivering and chattering, until i finally steeled myself to go get more clothes.
I came back in three layers and a winter jacket, and i was still midly shaking. The radiator’s waning heat wasn’t enough to pierce through all my layers, and i sat on my bathroom floor for another couple of long minutes trying to decide what to do. Eventually i turned on the faucet as hot as it would go and plunged my hands into the water. At first it was so hot that i could barely take it, but every time i pulled away my hands stung so badly that i had to put them back. Soon the temperature of my hands was responding to the water, and i could feel every pulse beating against the tips of my fingers as if they should open up so my hot blood could seep out and pour down the drain.
I sat like that for as long as the water lasted – maybe a half hour. When the temperature got too low to sustain me i pressed my warm hands tight against my face until i felt strong enough to crawl back to the bedroom, zip up my flannel sleeping bag, and crawl into it still wearing my winter coat.
I was fine in the morning; it almost seemed as though i dreamed the whole thing except how i was pasted to my tee-shirt in sweat and there was a discarded winter jacket kicked down to the bottom of my sleeping bag.
by krisis
I never blog from my girlfriend’s place, so she has no idea where my page is (though it’s rather easy to find via search engines). While this means less updates for the page, it also means i can bitch about her without fear of retribution :p … not that i fear retribution or anything, but god knows i’ve had issues with not being able to talk about my friends before because they snoop around, so i like the separation i’ve managed to establish.
Okay, so, as you might have gathered, i go over to her place a lot. A lot. There has only been a single day in the last 3 weeks where we saw absolutely nothing of each other. I’m fine with this, because i really don’t mind being intense or clingy or any of that stuff, but sometimes i just want to sit here. I like to sit here. My computer is here. my music is here. My bass is here.
This is apparently a problem, because she has fixed it in her head that i’m coming over when i’m obviously sitting here with a horrible head cold just wanting to ache all by my lonesome. I am a highly rational person, and as such i expect to not want to be near other people when i’m sick – because i don’t want to infect them and because i feel slimy. So, i am staying here.
In case you were wondering, my declaration of staying here caught me a lot of shit because she’s sicker and wants me to keep her company, but she needs to learn how to deal with that. While i would love to be with her 24/7 every day, i would also like to live my own life 24/7 every day, and i can’t totally sacrifice one for the other so they’ll have to find a middle ground. Maybe i’m supposed to give up the comfort of my own apartment so i can be trapped in her tiny dorm room every night, and maybe the fact that i don’t want to do that makes me less mature than she thought i was. Or, maybe she’s supposed to compromise and come here every so often. What i do know is that I am not a child’s toy that can be possessed, and sometimes i like to sleep in my own damned bed.
And that’s as much as you’re gonna hear about my girlfriend for a while.
by krisis
Matt’s amp is buzzing. To get any kind of volume out of it you have to turn up the Gain knob, which distorts the signal a little and leaves you with this constant amplifier hum. It feels expectant, as thought some rock band’s big sound is going to come crashing out of the amp any second in a tidal wash of big guitars and growling bass, but really it’s just me sitting on the floor trying desperately to read sheet music from the Bass Cleff of a Tori Amos book.
The apartment is otherwise empty. I did a lot of wash yesterday, so the bedroom looks somewhat organized. In here is another story … everything scattered – papers, cds, jackets, shoes. It’s really the fault of this weekend; i didn’t spend much quality time with the apartment this weekend. Saturday night Drexel had their homecoming dance and i have this single glowing picture of me with a tie tied around my head as though i was some kind of savage, sweating like a horse and smiling madly. I love to dance, that’s all there is to it.
It took me fifteen years to learn how to do the mashed potato correctly. I’m not sure that the learning curve is so steep … i think instead i had to spend time learning all sorts of other little rhythmic pieces of the puzzle before i could put it all together. A decade and a half is a long time to have spent doing anything. I’ve been in school for fifteen years now… i’ve been out of my first house for fifteen years… i’ve had my Thundercats for fifteen years. it’s funny, i only have a decade on my closest cousin and he won’t ever know the same things i knew as a child. Thundercats, GI Joes, Madonna, George Michael, Casey Kasem’s countdown, Johnny Carson, Ronald Regan, the Gulf War … all of those things are vivid emotional and psychological building blocks of my life.
I’m the only one of my cousins that will remember my Grandmother. My nine-year-old cousin Dale wouldn’t have any memories of her active and laughing since he was five or younger, and all of my other cousins are only four. I’m the youngest person in the family to know her; we spent hours sitting at her kitchen table playing solitaire, lying on her living room floor watching Golden Girls every week, eating Golden Grahams before i got picked up by my carpool on the way to middle school. Last night i was on the phone to my mother and she reminded me how long my father’s mother had been in a managed care facility … time had shrunk it down to only a year, but she was out of her own home months before we left my home of sixteen years in SouthWest Philly (which she owned).
That was almost three years ago. It’s been a long time since i’ve sat and played solitaire with her, but to me it doesn’t really seem so expansive. She’d always get up and dance when she won… singing “Let the Good Times Roll” and dancing around the kitchen. I eventually learned to jitterbug so i could join her, but by then it was too late.