Cults and Karaoke

(side note to Crew: I will never use the word "kewl." Because it's not.)

Yeah, I know it's been been a few days since I've posted anything. I wish I could say it's because I've been too busy doing exciting stuff. Actually I can sum up what I've been up to with a single lyric by the Artist Formerly Known As a Stupid Little Glyph: "Seems that I was busy doin' somethin' close to nothin'..."

Not much is going on here, and a lot of the time I spend staring at a blank screen, trying to think of something to write about that will be interesting for more than three sentences.

Here's a quick recap of the week so far:

On Sunday, I went to lunch with Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Diamond Doug at Kaldi's. Afterwards I went back to Zappagirl's in hopes of scanning in photos and old handbills for the Full Contact Poetry website. (My personal site is on the back burner, since I'm desparately trying to get the FCP site up and running before the show so we have a web address to put on the flyers.) It wasn't pretty. I'm not very proficient with the Mac, and I know zilch about scanning and formatting photos. Zappagirl gave me a basic tutorial and went to bed, leaving me to quietly berate myself everytime I messed up a photo crop.

On Monday, we discovered that the Mac had saved everything as HUGE files rather than jpegs. We fiddled around with the settings for hours and finally gave up to go watch VH-1. Folks, VH-1 is video crack. We spent two hours watching a countdown of the greatest hair metal bands of all time. Names of bands that I had taken years blocking out of my memory came back with a vengeance. (Dokken, anyone? Winger? Sheesh.) And I don't even want to start on Behind the Music. If I had cable, I'd never leave the house again.

Tuesday night was, of course, Buffy/Angel night. (Dear Joss Whedon: Thank you for finally making this year's villain scary instead of a twit, but please stop with the angst. You killed off Buffy's mom, you let Glory kick the snot out of Spike, and now you've let the hellgod of bad perms suck out Tara's sanity. Please stop hurting characters I've become attached to; I'm running really low on Kleenex. Oh, but keep focusing on the demon karaoke host on Angel - he's made a really bad running plot device entertaining as hell. Your fan, Myopic) I was so depressed about the ending of Buffy (and the freaking Dateline I watched about conjoined twins - don't watch these shows when anyone you know is pregnant, kids) that I plunged headfirst into a tub of Caramel Caribou ice cream in hopes of killing off my melancholia. Or at least giving it a nasty ice cream headache.

Yesterday was an icky day at work (the company I work for just completed a merger with a smaller company, and yesterday was the first day of dealing with our new clients), so I went over to Zappagirl's to watch Bring It On (yes, again...she started it this time). We stopped at the local Creamy Whip on the way from Kroger's (to buy coffee - what else?). Ahhh. Nothing says spring like messy soft serve ice cream dripping down your hand and making everything sticky. My ice cream dexterity apparently hasn't improved since I was eight; I had it all over my face and half expected my mother to appear out of nowhere to clean off my face with a Kleenex doused in mom spit. (Yes, gross. But everyone's mom did it at least once, right?)

So we're caught up. Was it as good for you as it was for me?

Today is a big to-do at work. I work for a brokerage division of a big humongous local bank (we're towards the top of the Barron's 500) that is slowly but surely taking over every little bank in the Midwest. I won't mention the name, but today's date is a big hint. But anyways, today is the official bank-wide celebration day. It's kind of like...oh hell, I don't know what purpose this day actually serves. It's kind of like a "thank you" day for the employees, but it's not all that big a deal. They gave us coupons for free donuts and bagels at Dunkin' Donuts, brought in a sandwich tray for the department, and we had a pot luck (and of course, I left my contribution sitting on the kitchen table, where I'd put it the night before so I wouldn't forget it in the morning). And of course, the company encouraged us to wear our "spirit wear" (the various articles of clothing bearing our logo that the company encourages us to buy all year).

Now this is where I start thinking it's funny. Every bank in the downtown area gives its employees little gold lapel pins with the bank logo, so during lunch on Fountain Square all you see are people in suits and these silly little pins. They give you these pins during orientation, and they expect you to wear them regularly. (In my department, they're only sticklers about it when we're having a division meeting or if someone important is coming up to the floor.) Why do they want you to wear the pins? Because it makes the CEO happy.

Folks, I work for a cult. Wear the pin! Buy the T-shirt! Wear the T-shirt! Give out the referral cards to all your friends, and we'll reward you monetarily if we hire them! We will pay your benefits in stock for our company, profit sharing through our trust department, and FREE CHECKING! (Actually, I'm not knocking the benefits. They rock.) Let the world know what a great company we are! Soon the entire Midwest will be ours! Soon the entire WORLD WILL BE OURS! Mwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

If the festivities at work aren't too overwhelming, Zappagirl and I are planning to go to Longworth's tonight to do karaoke. I've been a couple of times with Nash and actually worked up the courage to sing once. (The beer helped, too. I sang "A Common Disaster" by the Cowboy Junkies, if you're interested.) Most of the other nights I flip through the song list, looking for a song that I could hypothetically sing while I snicker at the drunk guy on stage mutilating some Creed song. (Creed, in my opinion, is painful enough to listen to. Creed being sung by a guy who's had a few too many Jagermeisters and can't read the lyrics on the screen...there should be therapy provided afterwards for the audience.)

Zappagirl has never done karaoke, and is a bit apprehensive. I personally don't think she has anything to worry about. I think I have a passable voice and don't really hesitate when singing along with the radio when there's someone else in the car, but Zappagirl was a music major, for crying out loud. My sad little alto pales in comparison to her singing voice. But then again, I do understand the fear factor, because it's there for me as well. It 's one thing to sing in the shower or in the car, but on stage in front of a microphone in a crowded yuppie bar is another thing altogther.

Who knows. We may both wimp out and spend the evening laughing at the drunk sorority girls who try to sing "Oops! I Did it Again!" worse than Britney does.