Profiles in Courage:

Crispen Stanbach : The Early Years.

We were cleaning out the top floor of my house, which is used for storage right now, in a fit of the rarely-seen-Stanbach-cleaning-escapade. We found a box of pictures that we thought were lost forever, and lo and behold, they exist.

Ye Gods, they explain a lot. For Example, the two I am going to show you today explain what was happening to me in my most formative years. First, the man who raised me :


The young Man in the Top Left is my father. He is the kind of person who would not only let me stay up and play video games, he would keep me up playing video games when I wanted to go bed.

I clearly remember hearing him, at One in the morning, say "Hey, wake up, we have to beat this last boss." By the way, we never beat the last boss in Super Mario RPG. It was rough.

Of course, the picture that is the most revealing about my character is this one. Its from my Kindergarten Graduation. I went to Blessed-Sacrament Huguenot, a small private Catholic School. I didn't fit in to say the least.



"Well, well, Crispen, we asked everyone to dress up."
"I... I did, I have buttons on my shirt. "

What was I excited about? Everything, I had just made it through a year of pure hell( my teacher refused to teach me how to read, because I was too happy, her exact words) and I was leaving. I would never see the halls of that school again.

I'm not sure why everyone else was so serious, but I was enjoying myself.

Just thought you might find these, at the very least, to clear a few things up.

A Common Happening This Time of Year

More and more often recently, I've been noticing a severe lack of hours in the day. I can't seem to find any time to do much of anything, between loving the people I love and hating my job, my brain is all but used up.

The worst thing I've noticed is how much this makes an impact on my diet. I don't really carefully plan out the things I eat, but I've noticed lately that its taking a terrible turn.

My Body is Revolting.

The weeks and weeks of Junk Food are being rejected like a bad transplant. My stomach had a stern speech with me last night, proposing a new 1 junk food item per day limit. I quickly told him who made the rules in this body, but unfortunately that isn't truly me.

My Brain tends to have the kind of subtle, constant voice that quietly creeps up on you in moments of moral inferiority. What is perhaps the most important section of my Body tends to tell me important things, like how I'm feeling, what I like, who I enjoy, so on and so forth.

Lately however, it seems to be that its telling me more and more not to eat Frito's and Funyans.
Or at least not JUST Frito's and Funyans.

My brain was whispering to me last night that this is my last chance, that I fly straight, or he is cutting me off.

He says he can live without me.

Anywho, I just wanted to say Hi to everyone, and since nothing particularly funny is happening right now, stay strong, and hold through for the night.

Dayplanners and Daytrippers, and I never, ever did it again.

Changing the month on your calender is a suspiciously dangerous act.

Cut, Print, Rip. Month is over.

But where did the month go?

When did the subtle ghost's lantern go out forever?

What did I do with my Time?

Have I achieved anything worthwhile?
Who knows, perhaps somewhere freedom exists. Freedom past the IRS hovering over you, telling you to change your calenders, because perhaps its tax season. Ready, Set, Change. Its tax Season. Freedom is Taxes and Calenders.

My calender is telling me it needs money. My calender is telling me to go to work. My calender is telling me I am getting older.
My calender controls me.

I can hear my day planner screaming from within my laptop bag, the piles of sticky notes calling to me : “ Paper Due 2/16!” “Read Pg 89909890!”
I'm afraid they've taken over.

They all merged together tonight. A calender for the Brain, a Planner for the body, and Sticky Notes for sustenance. Freedom had come to get me. It started as a low hum, pulsating, the kind of blank noise you hear in a room with a bad speaker playing nothing. It started to creep into my sheets, and grab at my legs.

It pulled me into my Google Calender, it made me run from play-dates and work-dates and dates with dates. It tortured me to death's door and brought me back to my bed.

I never, ever missed a homework assignment again.