essays

Personal essays from Krisis on everything from parenting to immigrant life to driving, and much more.

April 7, 2003 by krisis

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

March 28, 2003 by krisis

Well, i’m sure to go to hell now.

In case you don’t take statements regarding someone’s immortal fate for granted, allow me to elaborate.

I hate cell phones. Despise them. Though they have a lot of very important potential uses, not a single one of them is arming every Dick, Jane, and Moron with one so that they can chat it up while in a movie-theatre, driving a large motor-vehicle, or just walking down the street. Let’s be honest here… of the seemingly 90% of people who are chatting on cellulars as you pass them on the street, how many of them are important enough to even merit one? Or, hell, forget important, what about popular?

Of course, at college everybody has a cell phone. In some cases they are warranted — people are from far away and want to call home. Or, they have a boyfriend or girlfriend in a different state and are trying to save on long distance charges. However, warranted or not, everyone i know seems to have one. And, since they have them, they expect me to have one. Why not have one? Shouldn’t i be able to talk to anyone at any time no matter where i am or how annoying it is to the people around me? Shouldn’t my friends and family feel have the right to keep me on a electronic leash that that can tug at a moment’s notice via speed-dial?

I am going to hell because i now have one of these devices, these tiny electronic harbingers of societies impending doom. Not because i really wanted one, because i definitely do no, and not because i need one for any actual reason. No. I have one because literally every last friend i have (with the two rare exceptions of Gina and SL) have cell phones, and of those people over a third of the ones i ever need to call have their own cell-phones from different area codes that would cost an arm and a leg to call all the time via a landline. Elise has a Northern Jersey, Kat one that i assume is from California, and Laura from TrebleMakers is from upstate New York!

Now i am one of them. Not only one of them, but a special one: by an apparent grace of god my cell-phone got connected to a local 215 phone number, which immediately makes me eminently hipper than my friends in 610 and 267. Which, in my estimation, has the potential to launch me at least two circles deeper into the bowels of hell.

I just wanted to make you aware that i am one step closer to becoming everything that i hate and detest. Maybe tomorrow i’ll go and change my voter registration over to Republican and lease an SUV.

Oops, did i offend you? I’m sorry. Have a nice day.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/03/200063130/

February 25, 2003 by krisis

I never know what’s going on in my apartment.

There are four of us, spending all of our time alternatingly at work, in class, with our significant others, or on stage. The odds that more than two of us will ever be here at the same time are dwarfed by the odds that the apartment will be empty when one of us arrives.

The way i figure it, you and your college roommates would have to be absolute dweebs for this not to be the case. “Dweebs,” for sure, because the four of us are definitely geeks, so i had to find a word that had more of a “shut-in” connotation.

It’s not hard to spend nearly three quarters of your typical waking hours outside of your collegiate abode; it’s not like we do it intentionally. In fact, occasionally going days at a time without re-entering it really isn’t a challenge — especially when you’re dating someone with their own apartment.

What starts to occur is that, with so many lengthy departures, your home can hold something unusual for you upon your return. Different. It can be full of surprises. And, though these surprises might prove alarming at first, as the length of your residence increases the unusual circumstances that you find yourself entering into become less and less alarming.

Rearranged or missing furniture should not phase you, nor should strangers reclining on said furniture (even if they are the only people presently in your house). The appearance or disappearance of drastically large amounts of any kitchen items, including actual food or liquor, should be duly noted but not unduly fretted over. Finding a sign on your front door that proclaims “Ring hard and often; cover $5” should only bother you if you do not have a doorbell. You should expect to find large new appliances, game / home-theatre systems, or piles of laundry more often than not. You should strive to exhibit no surprise upon the emergence unexpected or unwelcome people from your roommates’ bedrooms. If any of your personal effects seem to be lost or missing, even from your own room or bathroom area, you should allow ample time for them to be returned or replaced before entering a period of mourning.

Then there are the notes. Even in this technologically advanced age, notes are the most effective form of roommate to roommate conversation. Why? You can blow off an email, but there is only so long that you can profess to ignore something that is affixed to your doorknob, disco ball, toilet-lid, television screen, Brita pitcher, or bedroom door. Additionally, you should learn to anticipate what will at first seem like non-sequitir content in said notes, which will eventually bloom to make a terrifying amount of sense once you put the correct context in place, as in the only vaguely exaggerated examples that follow:

Please extinguish your own toaster fires.

Do not poke at the holes in the bathroom ceiling.

For your own safety do not open the closet door until Animal Control arrives.

You have 24 hours to return all dinnerware to the kitchen before a fine goes into effect.

and, a personal favorite excerpted from Elise’s house:

Dear tenants … I am leaving the country to serve in the Isreali army, hopefully to return in March … These are the best years of your life; make sure to have fun every day … Signed: Your Landlord.

College… it’s an adventure.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/02/390367882/

August 20, 2002 by krisis

The primary reason that malls bother me is that i don’t think so much pop culture and watered down fashion should exist and commingle in one place. I cannot bare to look at another Lord of the Rings cross-promotion. I cannot watch my girlfriend try on jeans every fifty feet for three hours anywhere but a mall. I almost cannot stand the ability to comparison shop for video games, Magic cards, stretch jeans, and Pat Benatar cds all at once.anywhere but a mall.

New Jersey, for those of you not in the know, has almost reached mall saturation-point. Really. And, when Elise asked me if i wanted to go shopping today, i had no idea that it would be a multiple store, multiple mall, multiple highway endeavor. NJ needs its malls, because they represent a commercially and spatially sound means of starting up a highly visited business venture in a state that all but refrains from imitating the metro Philadelphia and New York settings that it exists as a suburb to. However, i don’t think that i need them.

There is something distasteful about obviously thirteen year old girls in tube tops and capri pants with little wicker purses trying to catch peoples eye. There is something gut-wrenching about the Disney characters pressed onto black cotton shirts in startling standard alternative store Hot Topic, whose should-be motto was on sale as a witty Tee. Express is hedging their bets heavily on pin stripes and retro-hemmed skirts, while Wet Seal is leading the pack of outlets selling peasant-style blouses in ridiculously busy prints. Aeropostale seems to be convinced that terrycloth, baby animals, and sparkles are the undeniable keys to fashion success – and are willing to offer you an obscenely cheap PDA with your $50 purchase to prove it. And don’t even get me started on how hard i laughed when i looked inside the store that was (nearly fictionally) titled Rave Girl, or about the swimsuit at the Macy’s entrance that appeared to be depicting a 9/11 memorial somewhere just above the crotch.

It’s not that the existence of malls bothers me so much as the ways in which people rely and depend on them. At a time when everything from the songs you hear on the radio to the fashions you see on campus are dictated just as much by brute force marketing as by public opinion, how can a mall be anything other than a virtual cesspool of what corporate America thinks you should buy? Of course they only have a handful of independent albums, of course their size six jeans wouldn’t have ever fit me in my anorexic heyday, and of course the price of Neverwinter Nights is nearly the same at every store we visit. It is not a coincidence, it is a calculation, and every striped polo shirt that you buy means that everything added up just as planned.

If my Communications degree means anything to me, it is the ability to see through corporate curtains to the strings being pulled, even if it also means Elise might never take me shopping again.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/385361875/

August 1, 2002 by krisis

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