Ten, er, Eight Things on Thursday

1. In the wake of eurisko97, who just added me to his flist and made my life better for it, "drama" is hereby OVER. My own take on this phenomenon (doo doo de doo doo) has been souring for some time now, and as overused concepts go, this one is particularly pernicious. The "drama queen" epithet and admonitions like "Girl, keep your drama out of here" are regularly flung as blithe means of illegitimizing valid concerns, complaints, or alarums, personal or political. Persons who proudly claim to "avoid drama" (the unspoken implication being they're all the "realer" for it) are first and foremost admitting their cowardice, their unwillingness to take a stand when a stand needs took. The world (/fortune) is a big, horrible, complex, wonderful, scary, angry, and utterly indifferent place (/bitch), and anyone who thinks he/she can get by without conflict or confrontation, who dismisses personal outrage and political dissent alike and out of hand as "drama" can suck my ass.

2. Speaking of drama :), after several impassioned and suggestion-ridden emails from various Cheese Lords regarding our poor performance at the Kennedy Center last Monday, our rehearsal last night was mostly congenial and constructive. At bottom lies the question of whether we are (to avail myself of a now-o'erused sobriquet) "a drinking group with a singing problem" or a singing group that really, really needs to shape the fuck up. If we are first and foremost a fraternal organization that enjoys singing early music (that is certainly how the group started in 1996), we can never hope to rise above the plateau of "pretty good-ness" where we've languished for a few years to be true, sharp, technically proficient musicians. If we don't actively search for, find, and appoint an external, permanent musical director or performance consultant and invest him with authority to improve us, up to and including removal of any member that is hindering the group, we will remain a democratic and social institution perennially plagued with the kinds of problems we suffered Monday. Of course, many of us feel the democratic and social foundation of the group is more important than performance quality; that, in any case, is SCL's default position. As such, the only way not to take Monday's performance as a punch to the gut is to willfully make myself not care as much. And that behooves nobody.

But there's a faction that really does want to revise the basic nature and bylaws of the group to ensure the possibility of removing a member whose inferior skills draw us all down in a maelstrom of suckitude. Our annual business meeting will transpire on June 25, and a number of us are doing behind-the-scenes hobnobbing to come up with a plan of attack that used parliamentary procedure to effect real change. Oooh.

3. In happier, hornier Cheese Lord news, our founder and president Skip invited a guest tenor to come over and eat and sing with us last night. In what was, for me, the best result by far of yesterday's thunderstorms, this young man, Sherwan (pronounced "Shervin"; I only suspect the -wan spelling based on my onetime acquaintance with a certain "Pawan") managed to get thoroughly soaked on his walk from the Metro to Stately Cheeselord Manor; and Skip (who I'm nearly certain invited Sherwan over in the Cheese Lord equivalent of an invitation to "look at Skip's etchings") kindly loaned his guest a dry T-shirt... and a pair of white terrycloth short shorts. Oh my. Instantaneous BOING here. Now, he's clearly not ready to audition for Cheese Lords—his sight-reading is almost nil—so that's a slight disappointment. But frankly, as far as I'm concerned, Skip can invite any number of hot, friendly, perfectly beautiful Middle Eastern men to stand around in short shorts—especially if they're inexperienced tenors who need to lean on me (at one point literally) for their line. Hell, I can work around that sort of distraction.

4. My journal of a thousand Metro woes saw an exponential expansion yesterday p.m.: a sardined and largely stationary bus that took a half hour to make the 6-minute trip to the Metro, and then the news that there was no eastbound service from West Falls Church to East Falls Church, and anyone going in that direction would have to take a free shuttle bus—ALWAYS a delightful prospect when Metro has to set up ad hoc shuttles. So I stood on the pavement with hundreds of people waiting for the unicorn shuttle bus to show... and of course it started pouring again. All in all, the commute took 2 hours 20 minutes, roughly double the usual time.

5. I was standing on the 427 Fairfax Connector bus in standstill traffic on the toll road (Rt. 267) between Tysons Corner and West Falls Church Metro yesterday afternoon when a new storm hit: first rain, then hail. Macadamia nut-sized hail. Loud-as-shit-on-the-roof hail. I was waiting for a "Day After Tomorrow" sized iceberg to stave in the roof of the bus and smoosh me.

6. What up with the yahoos at Yahoo!? This morning saw a subtle but annoying change in Yahoo! mail behavior. The "Bulk" folder has been renamed to "Spam", which ok but: in the switch Yahoo! seems to have done away with the user setting allowing one to nix the "ARE YOU SURE?" pop-up whereby one must confirm one's desire, each and every time, to lose said spam forever. The alternative is to set one's spam filter to delete incoming spam immediately without even storing it in the spam folder. Since I've occasionally caught Yahoo! IDing as spam personal messages from friends, this is not an option.

7. I have a little blue lump in my lower lip. First noticed it last Friday. First guess was a broken blood vessel (you know, with the blue and all) but it hasn't dissipated. So with mounting concern I started looking online. Disturbingly, it took a while to find any search results that were not personal "I've got a blue lump in my lip" inquiries that met with "Uh oh, that doesn't sound good" responses from non-health professionals. But I did find a number of accounts from people who discovered that their little blue lumps were indeed, burst blood vessels, or blocked salivary glands. In some cases, though, the lumps were removed and biopsies were performed, so it looks like I cannot rule out the truly nasty possibilities. I already have my annual physical exam with my GP scheduled for next Wednesday so I'm just going to wait to ask him then.

8. Splatcom has finally decided to hire a part-time as-needed resume expert. Management here decided that the current proposal effort (to be submitted June 30) should include as many as 80 resumes, pretty much the entire incumbent staff of two companies working currently on the two separate contracts that the new acquisition will combine. There's no way I can reasonably format 80 resumes and then hound the employees (none of which work in the same office as I) for missing information, all while managing the proposal team, editing and rewriting proposal text, etc. The temp starts in 15 minutes, so I need to be done with this entry...