Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

x-mas

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Airports and planes are abuzz with holiday spirit of rushing and nastiness and “the air is safe now; i’m staying away from buses.” At Ft. Lauderdale’s Terminal 4 there was a two-hour-long line to the Air-Tran ticket counter that almost nearly turned into a riot thanks to yours truly, a young married couple from Delaware, a model toting a small terrier in a carry-on, and my 80-year-old grandmother. I still have yet to figure out which of the five of us managed to convince the other four not to pummel the people cutting in line to death with our luggage. Furthermore, i had a gun slightly inclined at me during the whole metal-detector ordeal, and i think one of the kids sitting behind me on the plane was trying to peel the other one’s face off while being beaten back by a bag of complimentary pretzels.

Yes, Christmas. Can you feel it? I have exactly 20% of my Christmas shopping done and our DSL hardware is in UPS limbo and my brain would have exploded in Florida if it wasn’t for Jill with her sensible car and our Mexican Cuban restaurant — you have to love a fine dining establishment that features entrees like “Chicken Chunks” and “Fried Beef” without qualifying them with any sort of description. None. Whatsoever. But, they had bitchin’ sombreros…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/8136899/

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Everyone in my entire family commented on all of the weight i’ve gained and how good i look now. In a way it’s nice, because none of them ever compliment me on anything so i know i must look healthier, but since i’m not entirely comfortable with my new 20 pounds i’m not exactly thrilled that it was a big subject over Christmas Eve dinner. I think my issue is that i’m filling out well enough, but i’m not really shaping any of the weight, so if i gain any more i might look a little pudgy, which of course would make me very upset. My whole body-image is a very fragile thing, and i know i sound like a teenaged girl, but i’ve always been very thin and this is taking some getting used to. Not to mention that i definitely have a big wheezy fat gene on my father’s side of the family. I should obviously give up meat again… and god help me if i ever start drinking beer… (well, god help us all…)

https://crushingkrisis.com/2000/12/1769939/

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My mother has this compulsion to open Christmas presents entirely before Christmas morning whenever possible. After trying to persuade me to open gifts last night, tonight she finally trapped me when she just woke up and wandered downstairs on what is undeniably Christmas morning. We went light on gift-giving this year (although she’s helping me shop for a new guitar), but she did buy me my very own compact disc copies of Like a Virgin & Young Americans, both of which i wanted very badly all this year. So, yay for intuitive gift-giving! Now i’m off to listen to a digitally remastered “Dress You Up” (why, oh why, wasn’t that song on Immaculate Collection? I’ll never figure that one out…).

https://crushingkrisis.com/2000/12/1763954/

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Speaking of god, today i saw in religion everything i don’t like about it. All of the families in my aunt’s parish flocked to church on Christmas Eve, so much so that the church was holding two simultaneous services at once to accommodate the rush. This alone was telling; on any given Sunday the church is no more than halfway full yet the Christmas season twists everyone’s arm and they all show up to look good in the eyes of their neighbors and god. Secondly, the parish is almost entirely composed of families with children under ten years of age, yet despite this the service was as long and dull as any other church service and made no attempt to accommodate the children in the room that easily outnumbered the adults.

Church has always been a silly and irrelevant thing to me, and that view has always put me at odds with the rest of my entirely catholic family. I just never got the point of doing something every week that you took no pleasure in, and that was so stodgy that it never bent to accommodate the ever-changing crowd that attended. To the church’s credit, at the service today there was a whole gang of people with guitars and basses who accompanied all of the songs, and the long readings of scripture were kept tidy and relevant, but still i don’t feel as though anyone in the room could have possibly been re-affirmed by what went on.

I’ve always been a sucker for small Baptist congregations that welcome you with open arms and clap madly when they sing their hymnals. The way i see it, why not have a smile on your face while you’re in the house of God? Of course, God and I have some issues other than a bit of smiling, but i think after all these year’s she’s managed to respect my avoidance of church service as much as i’ve managed to grudgingly respect those who attend every week with their faces set in stone.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2000/12/1763377/