Dear Zoom and GC,
The first one of you to contact me and offer me a bribe gets to know the secret location of this temporarily parked* Woody.
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Tuesday
Monday
Emergency Meeting Minutes, April 7, 2009
Emergency Meeting Minutes, April 7th, 7:30 p.m. Usual Spot
In attendance: Aggie, Woodsy, IO, Coyote
Absent: Conch Shell (occupied); the Chair (occupied); 4th Dwarf (down with the bubonic plague)
Aggie arrives first, on time. No one is there. She calls 4th Dwarf, but he is so ill, he cannot respond. Woodsy struts in. The IO saunters in, followed by Coyote, sporting a new jacket he is really proud of.
The conversation begins with sock monkeys. Woodsy discusses her plans to go on a date with the sock monkey workshop lady who is apparently delightful.
Aggie brings order to the meeting and directs the group to the agenda and issues of blogging. Aggie first makes it all about her and talks about the challenges of maintaining 3 blogs. The IO doesn’t seem to know about Aggie’s new crafting blog and asks “How is this different from Aggie’s blog?” Aggie takes offense to the question and gets all insecure and demands encouragement, because, after all, she is doing WAY more than some other team members. Things get negative, and then positive again when people acknowledge the strengths and qualities of team members. Aggie asks team members to offer one-word for each absent team member:
4th Dwarf: “bossy” (Coyote), “insouciant (the IO), “cutting edge” (Aggie, who realizing that that was two words, reduces it to “cutting”, "REDACTED" (Woodsy).
Conch Shell: “salty” (Coyote), “engaging” (IO), “(delightfully) complex” (Aggie), "REDACTED" (Woodsy).
The Chair: “masculine” (Woodsy), “meshy” (Aggie), “overstuffed” (Coyote), “indestructible” (IO).
Then, the conversation moves to the Fifth Muse, who some still view as the “absent” team member.
Woodsy: “unknown”
Aggie: “enigmatic”
IO: “Is she still reading us?”
Coyote: “fierce”
Aggie asks Coyote if he is flirting with the 5M with this “fierce” comment, to which he answers, “always”.
The real question on the agenda, though is “why so few Emergency meetings?” The IO complains that some ESI members have gone all domestic. Aggie responds badly to this. Others offer other one-word explanations: “busy” “full” “adrift” “fragmented”. A few complaints are made about the Usual Spot, but the group is ultimately unable to come to agreement on the reason so few meetings have been happening.
Woodsy and Aggie take a time out.
The question of the Emergency meetings gets abandoned and there is a creative burst of energy and blog ideas:
1) ESI Anniversary Celebrations which includes a banner change
2) Best of ESIs series
3) Research assignments
4) Viable plans for the economic disaster
5) Never released “backchannel emails”
6) ESI gala at the Usual Spot.
7) a garden party
8) a garden gnome party
9) stealing good ideas from other blogs
10) more “breaking news”
Finally, there is a motion to hang 4th Dwarf out to dry. Woodsy seconds. Then, a motion to bring Conch Shell and the Chair together at the Usual Spot for a private shaming session. Coyote seconds that emotion.
In attendance: Aggie, Woodsy, IO, Coyote
Absent: Conch Shell (occupied); the Chair (occupied); 4th Dwarf (down with the bubonic plague)
Aggie arrives first, on time. No one is there. She calls 4th Dwarf, but he is so ill, he cannot respond. Woodsy struts in. The IO saunters in, followed by Coyote, sporting a new jacket he is really proud of.
The conversation begins with sock monkeys. Woodsy discusses her plans to go on a date with the sock monkey workshop lady who is apparently delightful.
Aggie brings order to the meeting and directs the group to the agenda and issues of blogging. Aggie first makes it all about her and talks about the challenges of maintaining 3 blogs. The IO doesn’t seem to know about Aggie’s new crafting blog and asks “How is this different from Aggie’s blog?” Aggie takes offense to the question and gets all insecure and demands encouragement, because, after all, she is doing WAY more than some other team members. Things get negative, and then positive again when people acknowledge the strengths and qualities of team members. Aggie asks team members to offer one-word for each absent team member:
4th Dwarf: “bossy” (Coyote), “insouciant (the IO), “cutting edge” (Aggie, who realizing that that was two words, reduces it to “cutting”, "REDACTED" (Woodsy).
Conch Shell: “salty” (Coyote), “engaging” (IO), “(delightfully) complex” (Aggie), "REDACTED" (Woodsy).
The Chair: “masculine” (Woodsy), “meshy” (Aggie), “overstuffed” (Coyote), “indestructible” (IO).
Then, the conversation moves to the Fifth Muse, who some still view as the “absent” team member.
Woodsy: “unknown”
Aggie: “enigmatic”
IO: “Is she still reading us?”
Coyote: “fierce”
Aggie asks Coyote if he is flirting with the 5M with this “fierce” comment, to which he answers, “always”.
The real question on the agenda, though is “why so few Emergency meetings?” The IO complains that some ESI members have gone all domestic. Aggie responds badly to this. Others offer other one-word explanations: “busy” “full” “adrift” “fragmented”. A few complaints are made about the Usual Spot, but the group is ultimately unable to come to agreement on the reason so few meetings have been happening.
Woodsy and Aggie take a time out.
The question of the Emergency meetings gets abandoned and there is a creative burst of energy and blog ideas:
1) ESI Anniversary Celebrations which includes a banner change
2) Best of ESIs series
3) Research assignments
4) Viable plans for the economic disaster
5) Never released “backchannel emails”
6) ESI gala at the Usual Spot.
7) a garden party
8) a garden gnome party
9) stealing good ideas from other blogs
10) more “breaking news”
Finally, there is a motion to hang 4th Dwarf out to dry. Woodsy seconds. Then, a motion to bring Conch Shell and the Chair together at the Usual Spot for a private shaming session. Coyote seconds that emotion.
Saturday
Recessionomony 101
According the latest stats, it's not only a recession we are facing, it's a he-cession. More men are losing jobs in this downturn than women. To clarify public policy for headline writers, I'll throw the following taxonomy into the fold:
We-cession: your work section gets the boot but the rest of your company keeps going; or, what your 4 year-old calls the recession
Me-cession: you get laid off but everyone else at your office gets promoted
Pre-cession: period before the recession; some called it the economic boom but now we know the glass was half-empty
Free-cession: the economy is so bad you can't even afford stuff they give away for nothing
Pee-cession: people don't even have a pot to piss in
G-session: men can't find jobs nor can they find their partners g-spot --- bad, very bad
e-session: the downturn has reduced bloggers' output to the point where they employ cheap tactics to solicit comments on otherwise pointless blog entries
Friday
Getting a handle on economic disaster
This week, StatsCan jobless figures and the parliamentary budget officer's new economic report suggest that we're even more totally screwed, despite the prime minister's consistently cheery "don't worry be happy" mantra. Imagine that. So, previous stellar efforts of our own Audrey and Fourth Dwarf notwithstanding, obviously it is time again for the ESIs to step into the economy. Yuck! It's all over my paws now, and it smells, like, ummm, bad! I digress.
At the ESI Institute for Tax-Deductible Thinktankage, we are all over putting a face on the true extent of this economic mess, with our specialty, the all-important nomenclature. For now, we'll leave the actual fixing-up stuff to trained economists like the PM. Who unfortunately has never actually worked as an economist. Oops.
Now where was I? Oh, right: Economy. Doom. Disaster. Etymology.* Terminology. Coinage.
"Ecopalypse" had the nicest ring, but a quick paw-over of Google shows those freakin' pesky environmentalists have already tagged it. Bastards. And why is it that their cosmic antimatter, all those smart develop-at-any-cost business types, still haven't noticed that economy and ecology look, even to a casual observer, to be so closely related? Not a coincidence, surely. I digress again.
"Econalypse" made our fallback list, but it turns out some lousy blogger beat us to it by months. Bastard. Besides, it sounds too much like "Econo-Lips". Which in turn sounds too much like the kind of big, red wax lips that Stephen Harper would buy at a dollar store, and wear to lighten up those hinterland news conferences where he keeps insisting that the country's economic fundamentals are great. That kidder.
Then, in homage to the epic Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme that finally overbalanced the global economy's already-sideways tilt, we thought "Eponzilypse". We were really graspin' at straws on that one...
Crap! We need ideas. What to do, what to do? I know! How 'bout a contest...?
* Memo to Traci, perky but inexperienced new summer intern in the ESI graphics department: Kid, etymology is about words. Entomology is about bugs. Take a note for next time, please...
Thursday
A tiger in your tank
OK, so everyone's tired of stuffed suits and even stuffier royals. Exalted kudos will rain upon the one who pens the best caption for this photo.
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