Attendance: Leora Jasper, Dash Owens, and The Resident Idiot Deity
Note-Taker: Leora Jasper
Location: Dash’s personal zoom room after the blundering Deity attempted several times to update and reboot Zoom on their computer, which led them to send pleading texts to the other two creators in attendance. Still unable to resolve the presumably minor problem, Dash volunteered to host the meeting on The Deity’s behalf; an act, in the eyes of a certain note-taker, that serves as a sublime metaphor for the entire TGS endeavor.
TD: Hello? Hellooooooo?
LJ: Yes
TD: I’m walking, sorry.
[TD is out of breath due to being a pre-diabetic, out of shape loser.]
TD: I’ll mute and unmute myself. There’s [audible huffing and puffing] a lot of noise. So, uh…Dash, kick us off?
DO: Of course! I actually have some news to share. I would like to start publishing a serial next week. I’ve been working on something for the last couple years. It’s mostly finished, but I think the deadlines of editing and posting by certain dates will help me see it through to the end.
LJ: Is this the novel?
[DO has spoken in tentative phrases about this novel before, but LJ always assumed it was one of those ephemeral ambitions that modern people lack the ambition to see through. LJ is impressed and delighted.]
DO: Indeed, it is the novel.
[DO raised flat hands to indicate caution.]
DO: I am not done, yet. But I’m hopeful, which is not always typical in my work.
LJ: Is it a hopeful story, then?
DO: No, I wouldn’t say that. It’s more a…
[A sudden cacophony of sirens and cars in a start and stop grind drowns out DO’s voice.]
TD: Sorry! Agh, I just…
[TD clumsily mutes and unmutes some more.]
DO: You okay?
TD: Yeah, one sec. Let me run down this block so it’s, uh…
[LJ notes TD is gasping for breath.]
TD: quiet…er…quieter up there.
[At this point LJ thinks to herself: “I just can’t with this.”]
TD: Okay, okay, one sec, just let…
[TD coughs in a way WebMD would describe as “wet.”]
TD: Okie dokie, woooof. Sorry ’bout that. Dash, congratulations. Excellent next step. Can’t wait to read it, frankly. Now, there is some business I think we need to discuss, say, codify really.
[LJ is certain codify was not the right word in that instance.]
TD: We seem to have settled into a routine of commenting on other websites with my WordPress account, which…I don’t want to dig up any corpses here, but I don’t know if you’d all be amenable, that is to say open to the possibility of creating your own free accounts and then posting with your own personal, individual, unique usernames. It could be confusing to a reader to see the same username over and over and then see comments with, uh, very different attitudes…you know, they would be of varying acidity on the pH scale…and that is to say we should keep our opinions our own to avoid any unfortunate misunderstandings.
[LJ, for the sake of brevity, refrained from including every use of “that is to say.” But imagine listening and trying to note down additional examples of such an obnoxious transitional phrase during the most plodding of soliloquies? LJ regrets to report that it goes on some more.]
TD: And, you know, it isn’t like I don’t like sharing. We’re sharing this site, we’re sharing our ideas…that is to say, we are sharing in a very important partnership right now. We’re making something greater than its parts, if you get what I’m saying. But it’d be better for our brand long term to carve out distinct voices on separate accounts. That is to say…
[LJ does not regret to report that she will not take down another word of this mess. Thank goodness Dash jumps in next.]
DO: You know, maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I’m into the aesthetic of all of us using the same account and signing our initials. It’s a little unconventional, but I dig it.
TD: I mean, wow. Really? I didn’t, uh, think we really liked the same account thing, since we’re all different people with different ideas and different sensibilities. But I guess if the majority really is in agreement, then I sup….
LJ: I agree with Dash. Majority rules.
TD: Okie dokie then. Well, I guess we’ll all keep using paideia399 and that’s that.
LJ: That’s that.
[The meeting comes to a close with LJ and DO triumphant and The Deity, ever the fool, out of breath from a short walk to the corner deli.]
The Gadfly Symposium 