Ad hoq Meeting Minutes

Special Theme: Commitment

ESIs Present: 4th Dwarf (scribe), Coyote, Agatha, Chair
Guests: Anonymous Woman, Grumpy Guy
ESIs with better things to do: Independent Observer, Conch Shell

Location: Not the usual place.

• Grumpy Guy (GG) asks how the metablog is going now that it’s back. “It’s a little uneven, but we’re finding our feet,” says Coyote. “Ah, ha, sophomore jinx!” says GG. 4D pulls out his notebook. “Write that down,” says Coyote.


• “So, are you a blogger?” GG asks Anonymous Woman (AW). “I used to be,” says AW, "now I only drop in on Coyote's Blog." The others are silent. Until the waitress arrives.


• Beverages are ordered. 4D orders water with his “coffee”.


• The beverages arrive. Coyote starts drinking 4D’s water. 4D takes this well but observes that one could go into a rant about how the server should bring everyone water when one person orders it. “I might have said that,” says GG, “but if I did, 4D would have said I’m always grumpy.” “That’s right,” says 4D, “I would have said that.”


• Agatha arrives, forcing the group to move inside to another table. Where we are surrounded by Roman Catholic images and iconography. We have brief fun swearing in French Canadian as there is a sculpture of Christ holding the “tabernacle” on a shelf behind Coyote.
  


• Our new server places a tall lit candle on the table. She has a remarkably brilliant set of tattoos on her right arm that provokes a lively discussion of tattoos when she leaves. The ESIs and guests all conclude that our commitment issues preclude the possibility of any of us ever getting a tattoo.


• When the server returns, Agatha compliments her tattoos and we receive a brief presentation. The tattoos, done by the gentlemen at five cents tattoos are flowers that represent herself and various women in her life. The flowers relate to the women’s astrological signs and birth months.


• The Chair arrives. AW asks why he didn’t reply to the invitation emails. “He doesn’t reply to these emails,” says 4D. “Not when I can’t commit,” says the Chair, “and I’ve been very busy.”


• The Chair starts to order a pilsner, but when the server is confused, chooses a lager instead. 4D observes this is good because a movie star on Letterman said that guys who order pilsner in Britain are “pussies”. The others ask which movie star. 4D strains his foggy memory and finally recalls it was Tom Hanks.


• A lively discussion ensues about Tom Hanks' new hairstyle. When this topic is exhausted (which took longer than the dwarf would have expected) we move onto the Da Vinci code. Coyote’s review of the movie: “Stupid, but great fun.”


• 4D wonders whether there are any hidden messages in the religious images around us. We discuss the source material for Dan Brown’s novel. The Chair announces he will be working on a new project “Da Vinci’s Postal Code” “It could be D3V 1L5,” suggests 4D.


• Over the evening, several conversations are sparked by the poster above the left urinal in the men’s room. “Viagra” it says on a large blue pill and “Talk to your doctor” on a line underneath. 4D suggests he would like to add some text to the sign but cannot think of anything worthwhile. Neither can the others.


• A conversation ensues about the use of Viagra. “The dick is very complex,” observes the Chair. All agree.


• AW decides to go chat with friends from her old home town of [redacted] at another table.


• GG announces he must leave to “take care of some things.”


• The ESIs notice that there are now only metabloggers at the table and begin to talk about the state of the metablog. “GG put his finger on the problem,” says Coyote. “What’s that?” asks the Chair. 4D consults his notes “Sophomore Jinx.”


• “Of course,” says the Chair. “We put everything we had into our first album and now we’ve got nothing for the second,” says Coyote.


• “How do we get through it?” asks the Chair. “We just push on through,” says the Dwarf, “we have to get through the bad stuff before we can get to the good stuff.”


• We discuss Agatha’s failed attempt to draw out the 5th Muse. All but Aggie believe that 5M is not blogging anywhere and not reading the ESIs.


• We discuss what other blogs we could metablog and conclude that we have not yet found a suitable replacement for the 5M. Qualities necessary for a replacement:

Literary merit (or readability);




Drama (or the kind of stuff people talk around a water cooler); and




An anonymous author who won’t be freaked out by us analyzing everything they write.

• Possibilities put forward but decided against:
  

Hannah Rockhead – well written, funny, but too infrequent, not enough ongoing character development




Naked Condo Guy – Vetoed by Aggie out of hand (having just checked him out to get the hyperlink, he just seems to be about naked pictures now anyway.)




Asteroidea Press and Matilda Zine – Highly readable, dramatic, but not anonymous.




Tap My Glass – Anonymous. But where’s the drama? And cleaning out a colon doesn’t count!

• The ESIs decide to continue looking.


• AW returns.


• The conversation moves on to the horrors of childhood road trips and our father’s reaching over the seat to attempt to whack us in the backseat. We determine that this is no longer done because parents no longer hit their children and DVD players and playstations mean that children on road trips are silent. AW shares horror stories of otherwise intelligent adults who are ruled by their children. Agatha contributes a story of a mother whose toddler picked up a pair of sharp scissors. “It makes me anxious when you pick up those scissors,” said the mother.


• “I’m glad I was raised to be the emotionally distant person that I am,” says the Chair.


• “I had a brief relationship with a man who was raised by therapists,” says Aggie.


• “That’s like a step away from being raised by wolves,” says the Chair.


• Aggie: He would say things like “but Agatha, I’m just honouring my feelings.” “Oh, yeah,” I’d say, “honour this!” {Agatha makes a gesture that uses only one finger of her right hand.} He was the most manipulative person I ever dated…. The only person I ever got violent with.


• Coyote: Violent?


• Aggie: Oh, yes. I hit him… stuff flew across the room… I tore a clock off the wall. It was two-thirty AM and I yelled “Do you know how long we’ve been fighting?”


• The evening winds down. The Chair returns from the mens room and reports that the gentleman using the urinal with the Viagra sign had failed to trigger the infrared sensor on the automatic flusher. “It was like he was a vampire or something. It gave me the willies.”


• “No pun intended,” says Agatha giving us the last line recorded by your faithful secretary.


• Someone notes how short the candle on the table now is and 4D takes a photo.