Saturday, December 12, 2009

Cranking

Last night I went to a "crank" - a get-together at which people bitch about the world, which they call cranking - a nice reformulation of the word "cranky" into a noun and a verb. (And what could be more fun than that! ...especially a Christmas Crank.)

I thought that was pretty creative, but then I heard about complaint choirs. This is how it works: a group of the disgruntled gets together and each writes out their complaints, one per page, and puts the pages in a pile. Then they organize the complaints into themes (the group in the article chose public transportation, personal appearance, work, love, society, and the future). Then they give the compilation of complaints to a composer who turns them into a song, and the group sings it. Apparently singing ability is not a requirement (resulting in something new to complain about).

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