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Captain’s Log, Stardate 75242.6, 10.11.21 Mudditors Meeting

Per LT Editor Fairy with swoopy internet

Susan brought the meeting to order briskly, reiterating the success of our ongoing fundraising campaign. Zoomers included:

Susan Brearley, guest Nanci Arvizu, me/editor fairy, Amy Sea, Baskerville Old Face, and Sarah Paris

Next, we discussed a story in the queue and someone recommended the Medium publication Blow Your Stack as an option for publishing rants outside MuddyUm’s wheelhouse.

Then I was listening or laughing & didn’t take coherent notes:

• Can’t tell ppl to ____________. To what? Who said this? no clue
• Good humble = gumble

Amy joined us a bit late. She makes me laugh, which affects note-taking.

AMY: I see dead people. Amy’s older twin sisters fly in on their brooms. Amy isn’t having a fun time right now.

Tim Denning was mentioned, with dueling opinions on his work. Two Mudditors recommended reading his stories on:

• antifragility
• silence

Internet Connection Is Unstable

I kept getting that message after turning the video off. BOF got the same message once. I lost my Zoom connection 4x.

Playful Mudditors 🐛 🍅

Amy & Sarah P experienced a few Zoomy moments envisioning themselves as caterpillars. Amy was being flung off the roof along with a tomato, I think.¹ Existential angst is Sarah P’s middle name. If Susan had consumed a fraction of an edible this week, would she have joined them? You’ll never know unless you read the footnote.

You can’t make this stuff up if you’re me.

Susan Retook Control of the Zoom

Stay tuned for more reliable & complete info on upcoming prompts, but in the meantime here’s a scoop from the poop deck.

B-I-N-G-O Prompt 🐕 🐶 🐩

Susan & Nanci (S&N) had brainstormed a complicated new bingo-based humor prompt. I haven’t played bingo in this millennium and noted only the following details:

• It’ll feature 25 made-up words, which S&N wished they had written down; the only one they could remember was schmangie
• Writers will pick 5 to 7 words to use in their stories
• Story length: 5 min or less
• There will be a prize from the Bootyque

Not sure who makes up the words & their definitions, Mudditors or writers or both, but those Outlaws are to send suggestions to Susan via Slack.

Coffee Prompt ☕

Lucia Siochi is working on a newsletter and humor prompt related to coffee. They tried to involve me but I’m that rare native Seattleite who abhors coffee. My Starbucks order is a grande soy chai latte at 110°F.

Random Groceries Prompt 🧂? 🥒? 💡? 💅? 🥚?

What do unrelated items bought at a grocery store say about you? What are you doing with or making out of them? For instance, Susan swears by Lysol® Toilet Bowl Cleaner with Lime & Rust Remover, which is hard to find.² She scored 3 bottles @ $1.99 each recently, then was struck by the oddness of their juxtaposition with several wildly variant items in her cart.

The Cap’n’s ad hoc concoction idea sadly was not recorded for posterity.

Let’s pause for an infomercial

Listen up! Per the Captain,

Lysol® Toilet Bowl Cleaner with Lime & Rust Remover cleans the shit out of anything. Literally, anything.³

It kills weeds better than Roundup. Will it cure COVID? It’s poison with a side dish of COVID removal.

Then, "don’t leak this out," said Susan.

Best not to say much about COVID cures even in fun. We don't want Lysol to be the new bleach.

Helpful Men Prompt ♂️ 💪 👀

Another prompt arising from Susan’s recent experience. She was moving something heavy. A man who could’ve helped noticed, but disappeared before she could speak. He reappeared long after the item had been relocated and asked if she needed help moving something.

I’m more likely to be the one playing the man’s role in Susan’s vignette. Either my hubby is perfect or he’s got me brainwashed.

The Next MuddyUm All-Hands Zoom 📣 🕮 🧚 🎷 👗

Will be our telethon — in which Mudditors make good on their promises, including:

• Amy will read to you from a very cool, just published comedy book
• Sarah P will rap OG Tribe Called Quest, but being on Uranus may affect the audio
• Editor Fairy will read aloud a Hogan Torah story
• Susan will recite Amy’s story, The Vagina Doctor Doesn’t Remember My Face, in a rap style
• As the grand finale unless we take curtain calls, BOF will serenade you with his baritone horn while wearing his favorite dress

your network bandwidth is low
At this point my internet connection really went wonky. It's hard to type in Chat while paying attention to a meeting. Did they assign someone else to write today's minutes?

Angriness, Top-Down Processing, & Bots

Quote from Nanci — “Angry ppl make the funniest ppl”

• Amy commented that it takes a lot of drafts to get from angry to funny
• Medium is made up of UNprofessionals. Because:

Give back when you’ve done well and scored The Big One

We needed a break from angry. Discussion returned to our successful fundraising campaign. Amy came up with our new message.

Bots vs. rants

BOF’s still grieving the loss of his popular yet unacceptable/rule-breaking anti-vaxxer rant and I suggested he rewrite it, substituting a rhyming word for the problematic “die.” That inspired Cap’n Susan to explain top-down processing.

• Bots don’t have cognitive recognition & do not use top-down object recognition processing
• People hear what they expect to hear = priming.⁴ Susan’s example, “suck my clit” — a phrase unspoken in any other meeting I’ve attended — represents feminist ownership of that other well-known sucky phrase. “Flipping the script” by rewording avoids the bots’ judgment
• Amy’s son recently asked when school lunch ladies will be replaced by bots
• Susan mentioned Amy’s “Dear Amy Sea” stories, which I intend to read
• BOF says someone confesses to being a serial killer — what?

Susan’s Parting Shocks Involved the Ubiquitous Hogan Torah

• Hogan uses Scott Dikkers’ shock filter. People like shock; it’s compelling. Hogan has successfully created a character
• People making $$$ are mastering the shock filter

I have no shock value. You’re probably not shocked to learn that my interest in the shock filter is shockingly slight.

S&N signed out to pursue their current quest. I don’t remember what they’re questing for.

Our postgame show featured the usual maunderings of Amy, BOF, and me. I don’t know when to stop so requested extra time with my peeps. Carol Lennox belatedly joined in, surprised to learn that she docks in a different time zone than MuddyUm’s home port.

• Carol has mastered stopping and will work on timely starting
• She recommended we follow & read Joe Duncan. BOF to the rescue with the link! How could I forget their dueling opinions? Will BOF be annoyed that I’m not funnier?

Especially since night has fallen on this enterprise’s weekly episode

Good evening, and have a pleasant morrow, Outlaws. L8r.

¹ BOF informs me that Susan was the flinger-off-roofs of caterpillars and tomatoes. Obviously, her creative flights aren’t edible-powered like mine.🌿

² Sorry, Cap’n. My Magic 8-Ball says that Lysol® Toilet Bowl Cleaner with Lime & Rust Remover has been discontinued.

³ Can you believe those unnecessary words, Literally anything, snuck by BOF? Amy made me do it.

⁴ The Cap’n’s clarification of people hear what they expect to hear: