Tuesday, January 02, 2007

We must go down to the sea again

Back to business, I guess. Tonight the Sailors meet for the first time in a couple of weeks, although they did do some alleged research over the break, or allegedly did some research over the break, your wording here depending on the cast of your allegations. Research and cutting cards can be a machine-like process, when it’s done correctly. Assignments are made, judicious findings are brought forth, and collections are assembled and distributed. The Sailors seem to use research primarily as an opportunity to disorganize the planning of the trip and to confuse each other as to the distributions of their labors’ fruit, if any. Such an approach has become a tradition over the last few years. I am brought back to the days of the group I must refer to nowadays as the Postgraduates, who could research the hell out of Lucifer himself. I mean, Wedro had a card for everything, from the sun setting in the West to every single line of Kant being: A) right, and B) wrong. I could, presumably, organize the present naval corps into something similar, but I always think of myself as a coach, not a co-conspirator. I don’t do research for the same reason I don’t write positions: I already went to high school, and I feel no need to go again. I envision the role of coach as, well, coaching, not playing. That’s why the coaches of football teams don’t wear any padding, or the coaches of basketball teams don’t have to be particularly tall, etc. Coaching is coaching and doing is doing. Or maybe coaching is doing coaching and debating is doing debating. I perceive a big difference. Maybe I’m alone in that.

I do have to admit a sense of relief on having salvaged the O’C interview yesterday (check it out on the podcast page if you haven’t already). Not that I don’t have a fondness for the Faux’C version, now semi-retired, but it just doesn’t have the legitimacy of the real thing. Obviously. Still, the concept of Faux’C keeps developing in my mind, and I’m nursing the existence of Faux-Jon Malarkey, the present coach of V of I HS, which is not far from Hen Hud as the crow flies, as they say. I guess if I had a different version of coaching in my mind I wouldn’t have time for all this nonsense. Feh!

I went out yesterday and picked up a new printer for the MHL. Kurt and O’C and I had agreed to this at Byram Pt Deux. It will feed multiple copies, which means we can print our own ballots, and then copy them when they’re filled out, and also we can scan results and make pdfs rather than distributing scads of paper packages. I’ll grab some extra cartridges and paper on Thursday (I bought the printer at BestBuy, which isn’t what its name suggests for such peripheral things). Remember when I go off the cliff that the new printer belongs to the MHL, and not to me, except for the cable, which they don’t throw into the package anymore, the pikers. No wonder HP is making all that money. Anyhow, I’ve already got enough printers to feed an army, provided you’ve got an army that lives on printers, so I really don’t need another one for home use. For the traveling tab room that is my weekend life, on the other hand, we’re now in particular business. I’ll set it up with my computers and toss it into the bag for Saturday, and away we go. Again.

Otherwise, I’m back at work starting today, and presumably so are you, so, as I said, back to business.

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