Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Archives for November 2006

Endless Intake (or, Thoughts on Identity)

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I often move through my life feeling as though I have no walls – no resistance to the personalities and pop culture surrounding me.

For years I absorbed the opinions and styles of everything and everything else so much so that I had trouble getting a handle on who I was underneath it all. My opinions and reactions were just a collection of easily identified demographic influences – everything to do with what I consumed or the image that others projected on me, and very little to do with me.

I often manifested this uncertainty of self by acting out – needing to grow out my hair, or to wear flashy clothes and makeup, or to be the loudest most-opinionated person in a room. I still like doing all three of those things from time to time, but now I see that – taken as a whole – they were just my way of trying to create a tangible, distinguishable identity. No one could ignore or forget the long-haired boy in body glitter and black vinyl arguing with you at the top of his lungs.

My outgrowth of that phase might be why explain why I have given up radio and television altogether. People often express shock and horror at the fact that I don’t watch television at all; it’s as if they cannot comprehend even the idea of it. Too many people define themselves by the television show they spend the most time watching, and as a minor-league obsessive-compulsive and a major-league fan I was primary amongst that demographic.

After over two years of media deprivation and gainful employment I feel like I have a better handle on “me” than ever. I’ve found enough of my own opinions, tastes, and stories that I no longer need them to be sublimated by the tightly written copy of others.

However, aside from locking myself in my room I still haven’t found a way to resist the influence of people, and how they make me feel so fuzzy around the edges as their traits osmose into me. I pick up other people’s handwriting as if I am made of silly putty, the curves and splines of my letters easily influenced. My manner and style of speech is just is easily swayed.

I like blogging because it is a way of taking back me. I’ve always been the most comfortable with the written word, and keeping a written archive of my experiences and feelings allows me to re-experience – re-absorb – the aspects of me that matter the most. It makes it easier to get back in character because it represents the most crystalline, most consistent version of me.

I might not ever have a defense against the barrage of media and opinions that greets me each day as I set foot on my front step, but I now also have something much more indelible at my center. And that’s a good feeling.

Who Am I, Anyhow?

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With this month being my blog reboot, I thought an appropriate second post would be something resembling my bio.

I am a blogger. My blog is called Crushing Krisis because I crush-on or am-crushed-by anything and everything, and because my longtime internet handle is “krisis.”

I am a singer-songwriter often too shy or too perfectionist to allow anyone to hear my work.

I am an only child, which sometimes represents itself via my stubborn – often luddite – attitude towards change, as well as my frequent joining and discarding of various recreational activities that involve other people.

I am a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Drexel University. While I obtained my degree I worked one and a half years as a full time, fully paid intern as part of Drexel’s Co-Op program.

I am a Communications Representative at a major Philadelphia company by day, having given up a dream of Journalism in favor of making large(r) sums of money.

I am surrounded by a disproportionately talented and liberal group of friends, the vast majority of whom were made through my (often abortive) involvement with different theatre and music groups in college.

I am obsessed with improving the little things that impact my self-perception. I spend every day obsessing over and trying to improve my budget, my writing, my diet, and my musical skills.

I am a believer in karma – i think if you give good you will always get better.

I am currently the happiest and healthiest i have been in my entire life.

A Crisis on Crushing Krisis (or, Welcome to NaBloPoMo)

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You go to Wikipedia to look up one thing and it turns into your entire night. Not a night about that one thing, but a night about all sorts of things you never knew about before.

For example, I never knew that there is a shrimp capable of producing shockwaves with its claws that can kill small fish or break glass. And I didn’t know that DC Comics’ hero Animal Man could manifest that power, or the power of any other animal, proportional to the size of his body.

I do know a bit about DC Comics in general, which came part and parcel with being a young boy in the eighties. I can rattle off the origins of all the major heroes as if reading straight from the origin cards that came with their Super Powers toys: Superman the sole survivor from Krypton, Batman an orphan, Wonder Woman an Amazon, et cetera.

The problem that DC Comics was having in the 1980s was that the origins weren’t really that simple, and neither was anything else. As a new influx of readers emerged from the simplified realm of cartoons and toys they discovered that Superman wasn’t exactly a sole survivor… Supergirl was his cousin, and Krypto the Superdog was his long lost pet. So much for being Krypton’s last son.

Other heroes had similarly puzzling paradoxes. The problems weren’t the fault of any single writer or editor so much as they was the fault of almost fifty years of accumulated comics continuity. Eventually the continuity became so splintered that some of the odder stories were explained away as occurring on alternate versions of Earth, but even this couldn’t solve all of the confusion.

The result was Crisis on Infinite Earths – a DC Comics event whose stage was the entire multiverse (and every comic title), and whose stakes were the very existence of life as we know it. Various Supermen and Wonder Women from other realities were knocked off over the course of the event, along with their confusing accomplices (like the aforementioned Supergirl).

When the dust settled the DC Universe was “rebooted” with a single Earth, containing heroes with discernable backstories that could be easily portrayed by cartoons and toys. Ever since, any continuity-impacting event is a “Crisis.” Last year had an Identity Crisis, this year an Infinite Crisis.

I swear, there was a point to all of that. Hang in there.

Crushing Krisis has been around for an extraordinary six years without interruption; it’s the longest running blog in Philadelphia.

Longrunning blogs are just as confusing as those pre-Crisis comic book stories. Blogs easily mix the present with the past, and the longer a blog exists the more and more of the present becomes the past in the form of archives. Past personal dramas continue to be referenced and – aside from the occasional backlink – a new reader is expected to keep up with the narrative without the benefit of comics standards like toys, or trading cards. Or stories set on alternate Earths.

In honor of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), here at Crushing Krisis we are having a DC Comics style Crisis. A Crushing Krisis Crisis. Krisis’s Crushing Crisis. Krisis of Infinite Crises. I don’t know, choose whatever you think is catchy.

The point is that – for the entirety of November – I’m rebooting.

Because of my participation in NaBloPoMo I’ll be posting at least once every day, and my posts will contain everything you need to know about my life. Every character and plot strand will be introduced anew. No assumptions, no backstory, no backlinks – not even to reference things that were really funny the first time around. And, to up the ante, if I want to link to one of my original songs in order to refer to it, I will need to provide a brand-new recording of the song, commissioned especially for NaBloPoMo.

I hope this novel idea piques your interest enough to stay tuned through NaBloPoMo and Beyond, whether you are a regular reader or a random surfer. Welcome to the all new Crushing Krisis!