Possums Are The Original Zombie Animals

Live Transcribed Notes for MuddyUm Mudditors Meeting, 10/25/21

An Experiment in Hilarity at our Weekly Editors’ Meeting

What is Amy Sea going to do with all the photos of us with our drug paraphernalia? People still owe her their photos. She apparently is going to put them in an article. They are ripe for humor. Maybe write a humor writing prompt?

Nanci Arvizu and I come directly to Mudditors meetings from civilized meetings. Where we pass the talking stick. Holly J See says she’s endured civilized meetings for 40 years. She no longer needs that kind of meeting. She prefers the MuddyUm free-for-all style.

Roz Warren, Scott Dikkers, Samantha Jones, are all confirmed as staff for MuddyUm Comedy Camp. We still need headliners. We also need a web site for people to sign up, with the deets, and ability to make deposits to confirm attendee spots.

Sarah Paris knows a guy. Derek Sheen. I will go check him out. Sarah P listened to him pre-Uranus days, 5 or 6 years ago. He was funny then. She hasn’t checked him out lately. Apparently Jane Lynch really likes him. So he may be accessible and or available.

Sara Zadrima says she knows a guy who knows a guy in Brooklyn who does stand up.

She also knows someone who writes for John Oliver. She also knows a lot of people. I’ll have your people call my people. We’ll set it up.

What’s the date for Comedy Camp? It’s like planning a wedding. Or a bar mitzvah. When can we get the venue? When is the Rabbi available?

Maybe time to turn off the video for Sarah Paris. She sounded like her audio was routed back to us on its return trip from Uranus.

We lost Sarah Paris’ video. Then we lost Sarah’s connection.

Amy tried to get into the meeting, but needed a password. Apparently, if you don’t join the MuddyUm meeting from Slack, you need a password. Weird ass Slack.

There are a lot of storms right now. Amy speculates it's all about the storms. She adds comments in the chat space on Zoom. Holly can’t see the chats.

Holly is chat challenged.

Holly is multiple things challenged. She also didn’t know Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog last week. She admits to having exclusively watched cop shows in the past. She has also never heard of John Oliver.

She watched SUV. Or SVU. Something like that. The unfunny shows. The action movies. No pop culture for Holly.

Sarah Paris came back but is apparently sounding like “Bubbles” and Holly is fond of squeezing her farting purple pig.

Amy is upset. Zoom rejects her every time. It makes no sense.

Regarding civilized meetings, Amy suggests we might want to be more organized. It might be worth a try. Like with agendas and stuff.

Amy admits she can’t do another 2 1/2 hour meeting each week. Like we did last week. And maybe that’s what the drug pictures will be about. What happens when we don’t have structure. Everything goes to pot. We need a designated driver.

Sarah Paris says she is the designated driver. She doesn’t partake in gummies or CBD or THC.

Do we need a tutorial in using chat?

Sarah Paris came back into the zoom.

Talking and typing at the same time is challenging. People can actually watch this typing of the notes live if they are in the MuddyUm queue.

Holly says Life is chaotic and it’s the structure that makes it artificial. We don’t actually need to stop being chaotic. Sarah Paris says chaos is normal. Chaos produces greatness. Great minds think alike.

Dogs barking.

Amy’s dog’s name has a pen name of Ewok. But her birth name was Venetian. They renamed her Hot Dawg.

We discussed making Video Clips for our Zoomathan. We need to get them done by this week.

Can we practice our zoomathon? We should have Sarah P demonstrate her famous Uranus audio in the zoomathon.

Someone asked someone if they could see dead people. Amy said “Did anyone read the NYTimes Wedding section this week? No one had. A psychic dude and Ms. Something USA got married. On their first date, because he was a psychic, she asked “Can you see any dead people behind me?” He said “Yes.” Though that could have been a deal breaker, the guy who sees dead people and the beauty queen marched down the NYTimes wedding aisle.

November 14th at noon is our zoomathon. Amy suggested it was the end of daylight savings that day so we need to pay attention to the time. Susan said “Noon is noon no matter what daylight savings is doing.” Amy and Carol mentioned their noon is actually at 11.

I will invite others who want to participate who are non editors.

We lost Sarah Paris again. We miss her.

Nanci says there is a white and gray cat on the porch. Is that normal? It’s unusually large. Susan explains about feeding cats outside and how it leads to more cats and possums.

Meanwhile, Anu who is not attending, stopped by the live notes to add her 2 cents. In the live transcript notes. While they were being constructed. Because editors in the queue can all create a post at the same time.

WE LOVE YOU Anu Anniah, and miss you from our meeting today.

Possums are the original zombie animals. They never age past 3 or 4. They are the only marsupial in North America. They start disintegrating before they die. Literally falling apart. Just like a zombie. Look it up on Google.

Holly would like a practice sesh for the zoomathon.

We encourage dress-up and costumes.

Thirty minutes into the meeting, Susan noticed that Paul isn’t here. So instead of getting a shot of Paul’s overhead light, we got a shot of Amy Sea’s blue pillow and orange blankie.

And then, Carol Lennox appeared!!! All made up. But missing some blush, she applied the remaining of her makeup in the zoom. Well done, Carol, well done. And all was right with the world.

These notes will rival that 18-minute story we weren’t sure about last week. Eighteen minutes for a butt joke. Okay. But yeah, the editors might have written a different close, but okay.

The 18-minute story. Set it and forget it. Like the chicken roaster oven in those crazy 1970s commercials, who is going to read it? Just publish it. Good writing? Funny? Set it and forget it. Medium articles have a life span shorter than the life span of a fruit fly.

Lucia Siochi’s hair is looking very gorgeously blue. Everyone commented on how gorgeous it looks. Holly was a beat behind, as usual, because somehow Lucia’s picture disappeared when Holly was trying to see Chat.

The zoomathon. Encouraging everyone to dress up in women’s clothes, whether they fit or not! They don’t have to actually have to have a back. Since we’ll be on zoom. Then ensued discussion of possible costumes.

Amy’s kitchen has a really sharp-looking microwave.

The zoomathon will be on a Sunday. November 14th. Noon.

I see none of us are churchgoers, says Carol. Nanci says we are all practicing Pastafarians.

Carol admits to dating a Methodist minister.

Please Carol, do write about your religious experiences.

Carol tells us about other people she’s dated. Hogan Torah is not the only person who autofills. Holly’s around the same age and has also been married more than once but has no noteworthy dating stories unless we count that time she was the only white person at a party.

A request was made for Lucia to do hair dancing for the zoomathon.

All the editors started to let their hair down. Hair dancing. It’s a Mudditor thing. Holly wishes she still had bangs.

Now that Sarah’s back from Uranus, how do we help her with her tech audio problem?

We still have money in the editors’ emergency fund. Sara Z volunteered to connect with Sara about her tech stuff.

Sarah P needs a boost. Every kind of boost we can find. Boosters. Let’s write about boosters. Good writing prompt. Booster tech, booster drugs, booster seats.

A Fox’s Tale — the first piece I ever got curated — will be featured in our Halloween newsletter. Except someone said it was in last year’s Halloween newsletter. Oh well. Go search for it yourself then.

Baskerville Old Face showed up 53 minutes into the meeting. He says the hotel he’s in is upscale but sadly, all the sheets are white, so he feels like he’s in hospital.

Which makes you wonder, what kind of hotels does he usually stay in, that don’t have white sheets? And what color are they? Brown? Blue? Black? And what are they hiding with those non-white sheets?

He’s in Santa Fe right now. How does everyone pronounce Santa Fe? Or Oregon? Or Spokane? A discussion ensued about how we pronounce things.

Paul is in the Drury Plaza.

Carol’s spiritual home is Santa Fe. Bring no negative energy to Santa Fe or fear the wrath of Carol.

Paul does not disappoint and shows us the overhead lighting in the hotel. A Mudditors’ meeting would not be complete without Paul showing us his overhead lighting. Then Paul left after 7 minutes.

Everyone please get your short selfie video clips in asap so we can build our zoomathon trailer.

Scheduling the zoomathon practice session for November 7th. Oh no, that’s daylight savings time switcheroo day. How will we cope? Said every editor.

Captain says — look crew — Noon is noon. Do not worry about daylight savings time. Noon is noon. Whatever noon is on that day, it’s still noon.

Back to agenda. Newsletter this week, Lucia is working on it. We’ll have the announcement this week for the new MuddyUm Monthly Writers’ Contest for 2021/2022. Grand prize will be $6.00 each month, and start November 1st. BINGO will be involved. Think about your made-up words now, to be submitted by Oct. 31st.

MWC will be one of the mandatory tags. Great pirate tactics for if Medium runs another $60K single-story contest.

Sam doesn’t look like Amy. But he talks like her. Sam is Amy’s son.

“He looks nothing like me. I’m the vessel or the spaceship that brought him to this planet. The only thing the boy has in common with me is he puts words in the wrong order but still manages to sound brilliant.” — Amy Sea

Cute photo exchange ensued. Farting purple pigs and dogs and kitties.

The meeting then turned into a zoom tutorial session about how to use Zoom background filters, and a demonstration of such. Holly became a fuzzy blur and gave up. She’ll hang up a blanket or a sheet or something to hide the unusual “our pantry isn’t built yet” look her bookshelf sports during Zooms.

Carol told us about her screenwriters’ workshops. I asked if they are men and women? She told us both, and that sometimes issues come up.

How do we deal with systemic racism and misogyny in public meeting spaces?

You just have to call it out, Carol says. “I’m too old to put up with that shit anymore.”

“Yeah, men love that. They wind up testosteroning all over the place.” —said an editor who shall remain nameless.

Meeting adjourned.

The news you need:

1. Submit your Halloween articles by Saturday to be included in the newsletter.
2. The new MWC Writing Contest with prompts, topics, BINGO and prizes gets announced this week.
3. Zoomathon for the Editors’ Emergency Fund and thank you for supporting it is November 14th at Noon eastern. Let me know if you want to perform. Trailer forthcoming soon. Submit your selfie 10 second videos to me by PM or email to [email protected].
4. Donate to the Editors’ Emergency Fund any time you like at https://gofund.me/f37cb71b
5. Comedy Camp plans are going well. Stay tuned, we’ll have a website up soon.