Monday, May 22, 2006

Tan, ready and rested

Three days off. What a joy. Not a debate thought coursing through my brain, aside from my grapplings with Fearless Freddie. I wish he'd come out and say something. Yeah, the courageous philosopher moving beyond received (linguistic) wisdom is a great hero, I guess because he's one himself, and the misguidance of youth is a problem, I guess because he was misguided in his. Okay, there is some positive material hinted at, concepts of morality and the will to power and all that Zen Ethics stuff we've all come to know and love, but FF is so bloody circumspect. It's a good thing he's fun to read. I like a writer who gets to the point and stays there.

Stop snickering, you spalpeen!

My return to the debate world began with a phone call from Ripon today. These people do get up awfully early in the morning. Their office day starts at 7:00. That must be hell during blizzard season, not that it ever snows in balmy Wisconsin. In any case, it was details about cancelling our poor Pffft team, and Ewok too for that matter, who as far as he and I have been concerned has been cancelled practically since we announced that he qual'd. I think that next year, all things taken into consideration, we'll pull a team at Districts at the moment it looks like they're going to qual unless we're damned sure they've got their own parent signed, sealed and delivered for Nationals. It's sort of a shame that a national tournament, and one that we strongly participate in, is regularly so inaccessible. I'll never go until I retire from Reader's Digest, because I'll never have that much time available to take off at once. I barely have enough time to take off what I do take off as it is, and still get my own vacation. No offense intended to the Vast Coachean Army, but I really don't consider debate tournaments a vacation. A break in the norm (or maybe RD is the break from the norm) but not a vacation. To me, it's not a vacation unless there's a guidebook, a really good dinner, and an endless walk through the byways photographing domes and flying buttresses. Unless you're talking Disney, in which case it's not a vacation unless you leave the Old Baudleroo out in the parking lot where he's happiest, you leave Uncle Wiggly where he's happiest on line to get Mary Poppins's autograph (and don't break it to him that it's not the real Mary Poppins), and you follow the Unofficial Guide much the same way Eisenhower invaded Normandy (you make a plan and you stick to it, regardless of the casualties). Debate is fun, but it's work. No doubt you feel the same way. If you don't, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

I managed to get way too many emails during my short hiatus. The good news is, the Muppet Christmas album was just shipped by Amazon. Piggy pudding all around! The bad news is, I've got to get cracking on my Legion of Doom poster boy chores. For those in the VCA who care, the pronunciation of the name of this blog is cault-whack-Ian, where it's cault as in Foucault, Ian as in Fleming, and the emphasis on the whack. Jim Menick, obviously, is pronounced with any appropriate shock and awe. And turn off Uncle Wiggly's email connection for just two minutes, and his whole bloody dam practically bursts from the internal pressure. Jeesh! Ever thought of taking up checkers or something, fella? Go to the movies, will ya. Or study the architecture around Washington Square. Maybe go to Tiffany's and explain the Frank Gehry jewelry to me. Or even do the Saturday crossword puzzle. Just move away from the computer, please, before someone gets hurt!

A propos of nothing, I've begun to lust after 5th gens and DS Lites. Three days off and the mind wanders.

And I've got an important question, aimed primarily at recent college graduates, or those still in college. What, exactly, is a college widow? And did/do you have one at your school? Do all schools have one, except mine? All four of the Marx boys seem to marry the college widow at the end of Horse Feathers, and the whole concept is simply taken for granted by everyone in the movie. There's a dean. There's a football team. And there's a college widow. Of course, the movie would never play nowadays because of the football rivalry between Huxley and Darwin. Ah, those were simpler (and I think smarter) times. For what it's worth, I have done my best to immortalize those times here at the Day Job: the password on all the Excel sheets that I don't want my colleagues mucking up is, of course-- Wait a minute! You don't know? You haven't seen the movie? Quick: is the source of the following quote from Quincy Adams Wagstaff, or Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche?

"Whatever it is, I'm against it!"

(Not easy, is it?)

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