By Joe Janes

The Minutes of The Minutes of Our Last Meeting

Staff Meeting

Joe’s Bed

9:50am, Wednesday, March 6, 2019

In Attendance: Joe, Bongo, Freya

Joe – Well, we have been writing Minutes for over a year and we have never missed a deadline. We’ve written it while traveling, we’ve written it while sick, we’ve written it on holidays. We “refurbished” one or two. Revisited a few. But not many. All in all, that’s something like just over 70 articles. Not bad. Even on mornings when I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about, I still wrote something and many of those were darn good. 

(Bongo is cleaning himself. Working on his right shoulder.)

Joe – I usually follow something that I think is just silly or really pisses me off. Today, there’s a lot that’s pissing me off and I just don’t find it funny. Kids being sexually abused at the border, GOP lawmakers in New Hampshire wearing pearls to mock people testifying about gun violence they experienced, cops are still getting away with shooting unarmed black people, pick any madness-of-the-day coming out of Washington, I just feel more doomed than tickled. 

(Freya is snoring a little.)

Joe – Sometimes when I don’t find anything in the news I want to pursue, I look at my own life. Juggling three jobs, managing my health in a prosperous country with crap healthcare, being single as the years fly by, my phone isn’t working right — it does everything but the phone part, dealing with a cold and waking up with a brutal sore throat. Everything just makes me surly. Even the word “Wednesday.” Why don’t we pronounce it the way it looks? Why don’t we say Wed-nes-day? We look at it and throw a drunken slur into the middle of it. Maybe that’s as it should be for the middle of the work week. I’m glad we at least follow-up the r-challenged “February” with a simple, straightforward “March.”

(Bongo is staring at the ceiling. Jaxie is in the living room making throw up sounds.)

Joe – Mercury is in retrograde. Does that affect brains? One’s will? What are we going to write today? We can talk about the future. We can talk about the past. We can also just stay in bed sipping tea and watching Game of Thrones. You know where I’ll be. Don’t bother calling. My phone doesn’t work.