What Whatever Club is Not

Whatever Club is not just something to put on your resume.

It's an exercise in commitment. It's being a part of something
bigger and greater than oneself.

Whatever Club is not a gang.
We do not promote violence, even against piñatas.

Whatever Club is not hypoallergenic.
Express yourself with utmost sincerity and passion and at least
one of its members will tell you the reason you are wrong or stupid.

Other Observations
Excuses have a peculiar odor. Vapid and lingering, excuses lounge like e. coli particles on the undercarriage of children’s sneakers. Let them be, and a few moments later, you have pink eye and sniffing yourself in public seems normal.
Last night, Hyemoon had to play with her blackberry. Black raspberries are the only black berries that I can think of.

Last night, Hyuncher had to come up with a topic for her paper. She said that she hadn’t been sleeping well due to the stress. Can one squeeze one hour of peaceful rest out of a fitful three hour pre-dinner nap?

Last night, KFCee-Lo, Croptop, Yewool, and Whatever met under a green neon light in the corner booth of a Ukrainian bar in the east village. The music was mellow. Radiohead and Prince held hands while Boy George was reading the paper.
The members drank wine and Irish whiskey and played scrabble. After his third whiskey, KFCee-Lo started to realize that the rest of the group wasn’t playing his strategy which was to just make words on the board.

The game’s purity was being dipped into a dark pool of triple word scores and double letters bonus points. Each dip would illicit an inner close-fisted rebel yell rarely felt or heard above the mason-dixon line. And each subsequent dip made the tint on the glass darker.

KFCee-lo would look up intermittently after placing a word on the board, and on the other side of the window with the neon sign, he’d see a man with a weird accent wag his finger at him and shake his head. This man wasn’t a hallucination. This man did his thing for the words “Jew” and “Qinedy” (as in John F. Qinedy).

At one point, KFCee-Lo, after having assisted Croptop on so many triple word scores eventually wanted a sip from that fountain. Croptop finally and begrudgingly allowed him one but only after anarchy became law on the board. Interestingly, anarchy only applied to certain members as they spelled words backwards. For KFCee-Lo the idea of breaking away from the scrabble formation and spelling a word away from the pack and on a desirable triple word score would spark wailing and gnashing of teeth of biblical proportions. He didn’t think institutional racism could exist on a board game. No one was there to defend him at the court of Milton Bradley.

All in all, it was a nice meeting. On the way back home, KFCee-lo asked Croptop for some advice.

“Triple word squares are crucial. You make them too easily available to your opponents with your sloppy play.

You have to try to weigh up how many you score against what your opponent is likely to get. A play which covers the double letter square which is to be found 4 or 5 spaces from each triple will considerably depress the scores available on a triple and make the likely score from your opponent much lower.”

“OK, dude, good night. Thanks sorta. See you tomorrow.”