guess whos an idiot? i am

You have to click close to the meepo you want to poof to.  For it to work best, you should have your clones standing away from the blinking meepo.

You want to click close to where the Meepo is currently located.  The way the mechanics work:

When you click your target with Poof, it selects whichever Meepo is closest to the targeted area at the time of the click as the Meepo that you will Poof to.  The Meepo who is Poofing will have to Channel for 1.5 seconds.  After 1.5 seconds, the Meepo will Poof next to the previously targetted Meepo (no matter where it is).

This is how you abuse the Dagger on Meepo.  You QUICKLY have all your Clones start Channeling Poof to the Main Meepo, who then Blinks in while the other Meepos are channeling.  You'll get an AoE burst of damage very soon after the Blink.  As soon as the main Meepo blinks in, he should throw a Net and begin Poofing to one of the clones (who are now all hitting/chasing/netting your target) to get the rest of the Poof damage done.

Dagger + Ethereal Blade Meepos?

I can see the benefit of ninja-poofing into a battle but it seems pretty high skill. Messing up could have some serious consequences. Don't know if it'd be worth it. D:

you don't need dagger to get poofs in.  

if you can land nets from far (kinda hard if opponents are semi-decent) then you can tab spam poof and get the job done.

whole point of dagger is to blink right next to an enemy and land a net.  

That's only part of the point.  The other parts are giving yourself a way to initiate (since Meepo needs a setup otherwise), and it's also an effective ganking tool.

The other HUGE part of playing Meepo is getting your level advantage ASAP.  You need to hit level 11 as fast as you can possibly get there.  A buddy of mine is a very good Meepo player (Shangralol); his win rate with Meepo is something like 80%.  Here's some of his games with Meepo:

http://www.dotacash.com/index.php?p=tier1gameinfo&gid=3047025
http://www.dotacash.com/index.php?p=tier1gameinfo&gid=2142217
http://www.dotacash.com/index.php?p=tier1gameinfo&gid=2038877
http://www.dotacash.com/index.php?p=tier1gameinfo&gid=2032769
http://www.dotacash.com/index.php?p=tier1gameinfo&gid=2032227
http://www.dotacash.com/index.php?p=tier1gameinfo&gid=2019582
http://www.dotacash.com/index.php?p=tier1gameinfo&gid=2868388

The faster you hit level 11, the better for Meepo.  Shang used to hit level 11 around the 15 minute mark pretty reliably, now he hits level 11 around minute 10-12 reliably.  He's batshit insane with this hero in pub games.  And lets not even discuss playing Meepo in EM.  Level 11 in 6 fucking minutes isn't fair.

Shang's core items on Meepo are Treads, Mek, Dagger and MoC.

Poof all meepos to your main meepo really quickly and then blink in with the main meepo. It isn't that hard, you just need really fast fingers. (f shift f shift f shift f shift f, BLINK) Don't forget to poof with the main meepo after you blink.