Judy, Judy, Judy… That’s Cary Grant.

You have to be smooth like Cary Grant to get the ladies.

Cary Grant had a way. Have you ever seen…

There is a thought in the room about being serious. It seems we are being philosophically serious.

Perhaps we are being serious about being serious.

We have a pencil and paper to make notes. I thought that was the coolest thing you said. We are going old school! Pencils and paper. Excellent.

I have a question. I have a ginormous page which was written in ink not pencil. And it concerns the arrival of Judy.

Yes. We have a couple of guests who will be staying with us. And they are very busy people.

They just like to go and do things all the time.

Does anyone want to make a comment about the concept of doing things all the time?

I would love to say something about the difference between holiday days and working days. I guess I could even say something about the working day that follows a holiday day. That would be talking about today. Does anyone else want to talk about today?

That’s the point. Are we talking about oh what does the weather look like today? Or are we talking about what do I have to do today? Do I have to do something today? Maybe I should go and do something today.

Would you like to expand that point? Everybody always has at least something to do everyday. Okay, I could suppose that you did not have to relieve yourself even once but for more than a day or so, that’s as close to being dead as life is about. There has to be some movement you cannot just be inert.

Just a minute. Just a minute. There is definitely the question of the relationship between body and mind in the equation for this week. Our guests have really interesting bodies. We all have interesting bodies. Everybody has a body. But the difference between a holiday day and a working day, as I understand this, is the obligatory physical actions necessary to contribute to whatever the job is that you’re working for. I believe there is a minor disconnect here for mental labor. For example, exactly how much energy was necessary for me to write this paragraph? Or for that matter, what was the genuine necessity of writing this paragraph? I say that I am working. Technically, I am at work and here is my Monday morning meeting. It’s a planning session because we’ve just had a holiday that graciously took up our normal think about it talk about it day. Everybody is nervous because time is compressed. But we have a couple of issues to discuss and so we will physically discuss it and no one will die from this physical discussion. And after this discussion, maybe we won’t be so spastic and nervous about having to go back to work after a holiday. Let’s just take it easy. That’s it. I’m done. Let’s go back to the meeting.

Good one. Well, can we just do 48 pages? Show of hands? Good. Thank you. 48 pages is cool for me too. We can do that. Do we want a cover?

Excuse me. I don’t mean to muddy things up and I understand we’re rolling in this direction here. But it seems that we’re starting with the non-artistic stuff again. We’re worrying about what it looks like and not what’s inside of it. I kind of thought whatever we did last week was fine. And I think even at some moments when the thing just traveled on and on, there was even like two pages of blank paper at the end. That seemed kind of symbolic but it was also a place for notes. As a physical entity, it went on and on and on like it was important to attain some number of pages written. But, that kind of freedom was not so bad. And I like the concept of the title and the table of contents. I also think we should remember to put the copy right on that front page so we understand each other. We could also end with a blank final page. We get that anyway sometimes but we could even tattoo the top and say just pages for notes. Like, whatever size the magazine is…

Can we please contain ourselves with a little bit of…

I know. I hate when that happens when you want the words and it just isn’t there. You’re talking about discipline. You want that we should have some discipline.

Right. The difference between holiday time and work time is simply some discipline. But hey, let’s be honest with each other. We are all really lazy people. Let us never forget the basic concept of humanity is that we are lazy people. But there is beauty in our laziness. When we are clean, when we are good animals, we are the most beautiful thing in the world. Remove the sickness and let us be healthy and no artist can capture how beautiful we are.

Amen. Someone is still on vacation.

Hey. Why not? One of the first things I noticed after keeping Shabbos was that it seemed that I had a little bit of Shabbos to take with me all week long whenever I needed it. Maybe it’s the feeling inside or maybe it’s just the knowledge that there is a reprieve from the noise just a few days away.

I agree with you. That’s what I feel too. I feel like we say thank you and good night and Elvis has left the building and I’m just not available to you anymore and good luck and you’re on your own.

Yeah, there’s a way to say that in two words. But I wanted to make a comment about cursing.

We have freedom of speech. We understand how people sometimes react to the written word when there is cursing but we believe in freedom of expression.

No. I completely understand that. I just had a thought over the holidays that there was some humor not being exploited. For example, we now have in our style choices to refer to genitalia as finkle warmers or other such imaginary words that come trippingly from the tongue. I was thinking that in a movie, there was a mad scientist who used to scream, “Great Scott!” To express excitement. What glorious instrument this is to replace what might be considered foul language with some glorious language. I did not bother to look up the history of this phrase but I was thinking of something like this. You have a character and he approaches, fuck, wait. Okay this is what I’m talking about. We could go with oh gosh oh darn it. But I’m thinking something really ornate. Let me back up and do this all again and take a look at it…

What a glorious instrument this is to replace what might be considered foul language… Oh figgity floggle, I can’t edit for green compost.

Figgity floggle? That is austerity to you?

No. I’m sorry, I’m a little confused today. All of these are good ideas. But what I was really thinking of saying was that you find that you’ve made a mistake or you discover someone’s mistake or you see something astonishing and you say something like, “by the grace of the soul of man”.

Wow. That is one austere direction. You know, I wanted to put inflection on that phrase but now you’ve got me thinking about it. This is a real item from the heavens above.

There you go. You’re doing it already. You are in glorious company.

You were going to say something else right there but you changed it.

I did and you even know what I meant.

I do.

Okay. Let’s calm down. Let’s remember that clothing is coming soon and I guess that’s kind of what we’re talking about. We just had a really ripping version of greening the Torah. And it’s true that as you read the Great book, simply editing for veganism creates hope where there is nothing really but insanity and bleakness everywhere you look. I don’t want to go off into too much of a spiral but it is the desert and the people are generally miserable. They are slaves in a cheap place where they used to be slaves in a rich place. Maybe it’s a good place to learn some life lessons about survival. Or, if you are like us, you mostly think about stopping the book and just greening out the desert and making a garden for ourselves to live in. I don’t mean to be too ornate or too much of a preacher here because I know that everyone pulls their little turtle heads into their shells the moment anyone says religion. I am not telling anyone to join any religion. I’m not telling anyone to join me. Make your own damn religion for all I care. Damn. I cussed. Great Scott! But I do think that the concept of religion is one worth thinking about because it works very well with work and I believe that was the original intention. I believe the original concept of the ten commandments is that we all know our jobs, let’s be kind to each other while we do them. Now, in order to absolutely max out how much work you get from yourself, you start eliminating all of the distractions and leaving yourself with nothing but your work to do. They had a Christian group called the Puritans who believe that by eliminating everything bad, you left everything good and these people were awesome furniture makers. They took every last bit of pleasure out of their lives and focused all of their miserable energy on precision cutting wood. And they got good at it. Anything you practice with great intensity, you get better at. What I’m saying is that I believe it is the very best of intentions to take your work seriously and to produce work that you yourself can be proud of. I myself am very proud of last week’s work. I’m just saying that this week is a work week and whatever we decide, we should be really good Workmen about it.

Right. We are definitely all in agreement that we are not going to give ourselves the amazing Jewish loophole of taking an entire week off right exactly and beautifully at the end of summer harvest?

Let the record show that a few people grunted or waved their hands but most people were more interested in eating breakfast.

Does anybody want to talk about eating or not eating during the day?

Yeah. This is New Year’s. I mean that’s it, we are in a new year now. That’s part of the face. Great winter crystalline beauty. Not face, faith.

That was a good one.

Please don’t talk with your mouth full. Maybe we should organize who talks so the rest of us could eat.

Can’t we just organically do this?

Several people called out that it was really disgusting to look at this person making commentary with food in their mouth. The words were gross, oh come on and if you comments that would be replaced with really ornate thinking if I felt like doing it here.

Okay. It’s me. Nobody talks in this autistic algebraic meeting but me. This is my meeting. I’m in charge.

Excuse me. I would like to point out that I neither have food in my mouth nor am I particularly inebriated. I have been doing the way just like everyone else and I feel pretty much like everyone else does. I just want to say thank you for letting me stand up and talk right now. I do not claim to be leading this discussion. But in this moment where we seem to be gathering things together, you all have stopped and allowed me to speak. I normally don’t speak. I don’t know why I should be afraid to speak or whether I worry that my words will be heard or not. Actually, I physically know like knowledge that nobody is going to listen to my words no matter what I say even when I know I’m right. But I just want to say thank you to all of you at this meeting that a guy like me can stand up and say absolutely nothing but nevertheless received the respect. I think that’s a beautiful thing that you allow this to be.

Thank you to our teacher. Worthy of at least a paragraph. But yeah, we have a democracy. There is no one person running this magazine even if it absolutely seems like there is. Even if no One believes In a true democracy where people work together towards a common goal, we can still try. And I am not a leader who sits and does nothing while everyone else works. I’m a writer too. I work here.

Right so what we’re saying is the table of contents on the cover is better because we like the lack of ornamentation. We’re going to allow a couple of pictures. I would prefer all black and white but if it needs color we get color. I genuinely recommend we incorporate advertising, even if it’s in-house advertising along the way just for the distraction. People are lazy and when they open up a page and there’s absolutely no where to rest, I don’t think this is very gracious. I’m also a fan of 48 pages and that makes 21 to 29 the children’s pages. I don’t think we need to waste space with covers but if we are going with a table of contents, I think we can go with a serious Backpage or blank Backpage.

I just want to say that if we say 48 internal pages, we have an automatic for more throwaway pages and this would give us a cover. If we start page 3 with a letter from the editor, we’ve got the ball rolling and if you want to get crazy, we all have ideas and we can just write the table of contents first and then let the players take the bat.

So nobody really likes the idea of the table of contents being the cover? Do we really need a splashy cover?

We could just make the words fit the page. Maybe we could use some word art or paint the word green. Does there need to be a photo?

Judy? What do you think?

I think this is all amazing. I can’t believe my son has done all of this. True, I wish there was a little bit more coming for him. Maybe I think he is special and I wish more good things would come. Maybe he’s stupid devoting his life to such a thought. Maybe we are supposed to be more industrious and we are supposed to get things. Maybe we are supposed to be selfish. Maybe the way to do things is to be selfish.

It’s an interesting point. Can I ask you a question?

Yes.

Are you happy?

No.

Maybe the thing that is missing is from childhood education about who we are as natural things. We can’t raise children on emotions that are constantly being played with up and down up and down. Children can get hurt. I think we need to just keep things nice and slow. I think that’s the main thing. We haven’t really missed yet. We are a pretty trustworthy organization. I agree that we are creative organization and that we allow ourselves to believe that our intentions are good. And maybe we are good people. Just a little pat on the back. Call me smarmy. I just think we have a good organic process just as it is and doing any additional pushing or pulling is not going to help things. We all know our job. There isn’t any of us who does any kind of serious escaping during the work week and we all hate ourselves when we do something stupid. I think we just take it easy and do our job and we will be fine.

I would like to thank the esteemed delegate for taking up enough space in this meeting to allow me to chew and swallow two bites of food. Thank you my friend. Thank you deeply.

Right. So here’s my call. Let’s go with the table of contents as the cover. Try not to bring the journal with you to the kitchen or use it while you’re eating. Or hey, it’s an ebook. Knock yourself out.

Don’t play with the readership.

Okay. Sorry. I was okay with the table of contents and we definitely need to have pictures on every page. I’m good with 48 pages. Does anybody have a problem with page 48 being the sports page?

Just the last page or the last three pages?

Three pages?

Well, we used to have the sports being a part of the layout that showed up really early in the 16 pages and then would travel through to the back side. We always had integrated sports. I don’t know why we would need to segregate it.

Can I say something?

Judy, Judy, Judy.

You guys did really good work by pushing and pulling against the pages. In the weeks prior to the holiday you guys were spot on landing at the bottom of the page. Maybe you should continue writing disciplined pages or two page or three page articles but have them be free standing. I think this means putting the advertisement or the picture on the page before the work is written. You can have freedom of writing but one of the demonstrations of discipline that you guys do is the ability to write within the geometry given.

So you are voting that we should write for the layout rather than making the layout fit the writing.

Well, I am making the choice for style because you’re writing for readers. Other people have to see you. Even if they don’t like you, they have to see you and they have to hear your voice. If your voice is in an orderly manner, they will at least listen to you. If you have no idea how long something is going to be, maybe you’re not interested in being roped into some giant project. I know you guys are proud of last week and I’m proud of having seen it. I thought last week was outrageous. But that was a holiday week. Maybe you should at least try to look professional.

You see, that’s the thing about Judy. You don’t really want to listen to her at all but she’s pretty damn smart. And the job gets done if she pays attention to it.

You see? I knew you would figure out a way to say something nice about me. I knew you would.

Right, mom. We can all get together and work on an essay of whether Jews are masochists or not and whether or not further masochistic practices are necessary in the raising of our children.

I understand you’re busy. I’m not going to be in the way.

You guys throw a hell of a meeting. Are there any more peanuts and mustard? I can’t stop eating peanuts and mustard.

Whoever brought this pumpkin is my friend.

The bread was first right. We’re kind of out of bread but the bread was first rate.

Great galloping Hornswoggle! This meeting is over. 48 pages starting with a table of contents. We put the copyright on the front page. We write the table of contents except for the page numbers before…

Listen, go ahead and put whatever you want in the magazine in the magazine but leave some blank spaces for creativity along the way. We’re going to have some new thoughts that need to get in there. Let’s do the stuff we planned but let’s keep the planning to a minimum so that everyone has enough space to breathe.

This is the problem with democracy. We are never getting out of here. What is we let the artists write whatever the hell they want and leave it to the editors to make them fit the spaces?

Wait. Everyone has got their own ideas, right? I’ve got layout by the end of the week. Let’s try to hit the bottom of the page or at least know how many pages you’re going. We are going to be riding live just like we always do and because of that, let’s make sure we have the architecture straight before we inhabit the pages. 21 to 28 strict for the children and we are playing first come first serve so top of the order is top of the order and then we will play it as it lies just like always.

You like to fly seat of your pants just like we did.

I know, Mom. I know.