Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

essays

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

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So i found myself sitting across a long table from Mr. David Someone who was at NYU when it was just a little hole in The Village’s wall, and he was telling our counselors how to do things. At first it seemed rather dashing and exciting and fun, but then when the counselors started to ask questions about if NYU does personal interviews and personal tours and handwritten envelopes from counselors suddenly all of the happy smiling applicants turned into sheep either being lead to the slaughter or the shears. And and and, and finally we got around to how financial aid works, and he said that SAT scores and family income have a perfect positive slope on his graph and so selective schools don’t have to worry too much about throwing excessive amounts of aid around. Because, if a student without too much money and merely above average grades manages to get in they will find a way to make up the difference if the school really matters to them.

And then, and then …. his favourite phrase came out. “Remember, you aren’t judged by who you accept, you’re judged by who you reject.” And, yes, i know we were talking about the college admissions process and about how NYU only has to accept 25% of each application pool to fill all of their seats, but it was like he was staring right at me from across the table saying that they are who they are because i got a big fat NO in the mail from them April 4th, 1999.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5119645/

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Two things were set into motion on Saturday, August 26th, 2000 that would forever alter the life of one jobless young Los Angeles area gaysian twenty-something named Ernie Hsiung.

The first was an ambitious little lark called SurvivorBlog, a somewhat nepotistically cast venture that featured some semi-regular Little Yellow Different linkees such as Kevin from Fury, Asian journalist du jour Min Jung, and hottie among hotties Gerard Reyes.

The second was an aimless little lark called Crushing Krisis – otherwise known as my blog.

I’m not sure what the true aims of either project were at the time, but i could venture a guess. SurvivorBlog was an attempt to pair the red-hot Survivor phenomenon with weblogging for fun and profit. Crushing Krisis was meant as a way to participate in the personal publishing revolution, and for me to have a place to bitch and whine on a regular basis. As luck would have it, both Sblog and CK were added to Blogger‘s directory sometime later that week, and the rest, as they say, is history.

(History being that we were deadlocked as #1 & #2 on PowerBloggers for almost all of our second week of existence, which was totally ridiculous, because i was trying to outblog 10 people all by myself. And, even more ludicrous i mostly won. Ha! Now, back to our story.)

Such was my introduction to Ernie and his addictive string of web reality games, which have brought him hundreds of adoring daily fans even more dedicated than myself. Of course, I despised him and his unholy creation with a passion throughout its entire original run because it represented something that i wasn’t yet a part of – something i never thought i’d lay hands on: relative blog-fame and a semi-attentive semi-regular audience. However, by the end of it I had stopped by so many times to check out the competition that I was thoroughly hooked, and so when SurvivorBlog2 rolled around I sighed a deep sigh and submitted a submission, and so began my entanglement with Ernie.

I don’t think i ever seriously expected to be cast on SurvivorBlog2, but somehow Ernie thought i’d push someone’s buttons, and so into the mix i went. And, out of the mix i came with double my normal visitors, having been cast as that annoying self-righteous boy who did nothing but write moody songs and talk about his girlfriend. After i got the boot life went on, i broke up with the girlfriend, and Ernie was off having fun as a nominee at SxSW along with various other sBlog cast members. I relegated myself to the background, content to post on PSB2 and occasionally commenting on Ernie’s site with the hope that people would recognize me and that Ernie might appreciate my contribution.

That all changed less then a month ago when i casually asked Ernie if he had any commenters lined up for his newest web-venture PuppetMaster. In that month i have seen Ernie procrastinate, speculate, celebrate, and hyperventilate while i’ve had some of the most fun i’ve had in my entire year of blogging. And that brings us up to the present: i would’ve never met Philo had i not hit on him for an entire month of PM and, somehow, when he decided to give Ern a little helping hand, he decided i was someone who should represent the cause.

August 26th is a less than two weeks away, and in the intervening year i went from knowing Ernie only as the creator of my most despised enemyblog to an actual friend who i’m planning to visit sometime in the near future. When he blogged about losing his job i was aghast, hoping that it was some kind of wicked PM crossover stunt, but alas it’s the god’s honest truth. In the wake of this news Philo has created a funddrive called ErnAid. It might seem like a bit of a light-hearted little lark, but know that this little lark really does come from the heart. I consider myself a fan and a friend to Ernie, and as such i didn’t hesitate at all to give a few dollars. If you consider yourself either of those things, think about doing the same.

For more reasons to donate (including exclusive photos and a new song), check out my stint as guest-host of ErnAid tomorrow @ East/West.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5072807/

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On Friday night i had an argument with Justin about what was better: sex or concerts.


To understand the context of this discussion, you need to know a few things about Justin. First, he’s my “one male friend.” I don’t mean this to imply that i don’t consider any other men as close friends, but Justin is my guy friend… the only human being on Earth who you’ll catch me assessing the merits of an ass to, or talking about who i truly think is “hot.” Justin has impeccable taste in music, but it isn’t any of the organic thoughtful music you hear me whine about from day to day, it’s bump’n’grind and rhythm’n’blues with Prince at the helm of his collection as his own version of Garbage or Ani DiFranco. Finally, Justin and i have known each other for a long time, and while we don’t always agree with each other i tend to defend him in conversation just because i get to play advocate to his devil.

So, on Friday night we had taken one too many purity tests and everyone had ingested at least a shot of some sort of Jersey moonshine that came in an unmarked plastic anti-freeze jug, and somehow we started talking about sex and music. I opined that an amazing concert is better than good sex, and that a great song easily outpaces a good orgasm. And, Justin ripped me to shreds. How could i value something audible and intangible over sweaty lusty tangled bodies in heat? How could i rank singing along to a great song higher than getting off?

Two things became rapidly apparent in this conversation. The first was that neither of us were referring to “making love,” but to sex – and that in my book the latter doesn’t really exist without some semblance of the former so “sex” as an act wasn’t even comparable to a really shitty pop concert. The second was that Justin had only ever seen one or two concerts where the performer wasn’t merely reciting their catalogue of songs to the audience. With such incompatible views on sex and concerts, it became obvious within a few minutes that Justin and i were meant to agree to disagree.

Physical attraction is a wonderful thing, but in my world i lust after music. Imported singles make me hot under the collar. Newly announced release dates make my heart skip a beat. Getting good seats at a concert evokes a cry of passion. The day that Izabelle and i charged our Madonna tickets to my credit card my whole world was an excited explosion of joy and rapturous numbness … it was hard to believe i was living rather than dreaming. And, yet, somehow i’m sitting here at my computer and in four hours i’ll be seated inside of the First Union Center, and the lights will go down, and i will suddenly find myself in the same room as Madonna for the first time in over a decade. And, though i’ll be singing along to song after song about physical attraction and lust, i’ll know in my heart that it’s love that matters. And, right now, the love i will have for the woman singing to me from a stage in South Philly is greater than anything i could feel for anyone i’m sharing space, a bed, or body fluids with. When Madonna strums her guitar to open “Candy Perfume Girl,” or when she explodes into the vocals of “Ray of Light,” or when she closes the show with a electronically infused “Holiday,” i will be barely able to catch my breath – those moments will be ones i’ll try to replicate for years without ever being able to put them into words. The experience will be between Madonna and i and thousands of other adoring fans, and we’ll be the only ones who will ever be able to understand.


Maybe one isn’t quantitatively better than the other, but i think each of us is still a virgin with respect to what we’re not defending. And, the same way that making love to someone for the first time must eclipse everything that came before, tonight i’ll be like a virgin again; touched for the very first time.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4671183/

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So, i’m not a big gift-giver, but i still buy things for people all of the time. If i see a cd someone might appreciate, or a book, or a concert ticket, i buy it and give it to the person and when they ask what they owe me i tell them not to worry about it. These are unexpected prizes that life drops into your lap with no expectations or suppositions attached. Gifts, however, are awkward. Gifts require perfect amounts of attention, and people are allowed to be disappointed when they are expecting something, and then there is the moment. I hate the moment – the squinty-eyes smiling happy crinkly moment where both of you have said thank you and hugged and are then standing there with the gift between you like a UN mediator. Does the giver talk about how they chose it? Does the receiver gush more about how perfect the color is? Or, do you both stand there and crinkle until someone backs down.

I think it’s sortof like a tiny war… trying to maneuver the other person into saying their piece so that you can safely and predictably respond, ending the silence allowing you to escape. The worst is ambushing someone with a gift that was due to them at a time they weren’t expecting, which leaves you with that momentary suprise-party spike in adrenaline based anticipation and then denoument when you realize it’s just a tiny blip on your flatline daily radar and that (the screen / your heart) will settle back to normal in a moment or two.

Or, if you like to avoid para-military diplomacism in the realm of unexpected presents, you can just throw little things at people all of the time. More adlibbing, less stress, and you get much better karma for doing a undeserved good deed than you do for begrudgingly throwing money into a gift-shaped hole in someone’s life.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4623153/

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There’s a whole story that goes along with this post but this post is a story in and of itself, so maybe i’ll tell the other part some other time. Anyhow, here is the crux of it: We have 20 high school guidance counselors from up and and down the East Coast staying with us here at Drexel while they receive training from the National Institute of Technology. Seeing as how i work in the admissions office and that i’m (apparently) some sort of secret weapon with my disarming naivité and big city customs, i’ve been deployed repeatedly to help out these counselors (with the hope, i would suppose, that they’ll want their students to apply to Drexel in the future so that they can be as jittery and disarming as i am).

My position as designated schmoozer has left me with ample time to sit back and observe the N.I.T. instructors at work and in their own conversations, and i have to say that their technical merit is nearly as uninspiring as their name. The two most intense technical conversations i’ve personally eavesdropped were one about using Mailing Lists effectively and another about setting up an FTP server hub, both of which i understood very simply (hell, i eat that shit for lunch. After all, i am a regular reader of Linkstew and Fury). As for their work, they’re training the counselors in basic internet applications using IE, Netscape, and Powerpoint, and therein lies my problem with this whole charade of technological advancement.


At a reception for the counselors last night more than one of them remarked to me that they had spent time at similar trainings in the mid-90’s, but that technology had obviously advanced so much since then that they needed to train again. While this is true, i began using the internet in the mid-90’s at the most basic entry-level without a hint of instruction and now i’m certainly able to do anything they’re being taught this week at Drexel. So, where’s the difference? Don’t say that it’s because i’m young and because this is a hobby, because we all know urban professionals who’ve picked up the same ‘net fluency on the job over the last half decade. The problem, and the difference, lies in the fact that they’re being trained on application use instead of technology use.

The best example i can give is that in learning how to design a simple webpage for their counseling department to have a mailinglist signup on, they were all instructed to do so with Netscape Composer. When it came time to inform the counselors that they could change the colors of their background and their links, the counselors were shown the wonders of the ‘Fonts and Colors’ menu – which they ooh-ed and ahh-ed at enough to make me slightly naseous.

Now, i’ll be the last person to propose that we teach all of the counselors raw HTML coding from their first day on the job, but the flaw here is inherent in the design. They’re learning page construction on Netscape4.x, which is already obsolete, and they’re barely even learning how to change link colors. They have no concept of what’s going on behind the words and colors and italics of their page, and they are being trained not to care. This training will be out of date by the end of this year; had the instructors instead taken an extra thirty minutes to explain the tag and hexidecimal color values, the training would last them for nearly another half decade (not to mention the fact that really everyone uses style-sheets for color now, and that style sheets are dead-simple to learn from scratch when you don’t have a misunderstanding of HTML to get in your way and that they control a hell of a lot more than just color). So, these counselors are essentially paying money for airline tickets and “continuing education credits” to get barely fluent in software that is barely considered competetive, with the instructors knowing full well that they’ll have to run a new training session in another year or two when Netscape4 is finally put out to pasture as it should have been earlier this year.

Right. Stuff like this annoys me. When i taught my mother the rudiments of how to use her computer, i made sure not to root them in a single program suite. I taught her how to save files and copy and paste in something as simple as NotePad, and she scaled those skills to Microsoft Works and Netscape without batting her eyes. Similarly, in Netscape i taught her what to do rather than how to do it so she could figure it out on her own in IE if she ever switched over, and while she certainly doesn’t have her own subdomain of Uprush i’d like to think that she is savvy enough and well-prepared enough that she could learn PowerPoint or Composer in a fourth of the time these counselors are taking (neverminding how long it would take them if they were being taught the right way).

By far the worst part of this is that i keep schmoozing the instructors and they smile patronizingly at me when really their company’s website isn’t even coded as tightly as this shoddy little adventure held together in CSS, PHP, duct tape, and arcane prayers to the gods of blog. But, they all carry cell phones and wear business-casual shorts and have funny little conversations with each other about “downloading-to-floppy” and “maximizing user potential” and it’s all i can do not to bust up laughing.

sigh. No wonder i’m not an IST major; i couldn’t put up with all the bullshit.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/4287276/