Au revoir, Rippin'; bon jour, Bump; felons, Feeding and what is with those rabbit ears?

I thumbed through the September Rostrum today. Not much reading, but lots of pictures of NatNats (not one but two pictures of CP, for example), plus SB’s overview article on the policy topic, which is also quite useful for alternative energy Pffffters. Something tells me this will be the beginning of the end of my Rostrum subscription: being the world’s worst district chair has its down side.

At Regis the district committee met and cried in its Diet Coke over our recurring Red Light District status. I won’t burden you with the details again, but the bottom line is, in our small district, students have less chance of going to NatNats than if they were members of some other district. Since many of us (including me) only do this to support our friends in the community, it turns out that by running a Red Light District we are, counterintuitively, harming those friends and limiting their qualifying potential. We are saddened by the whole thing, but don’t have much choice. I’ll be writing to the Wunn and only this week explaining that, well, put a fork in us because we’re done. We appreciate what he’s tried to do for us in the past, but ultimately there are kids going to be blocked by circumstances beyond their control from their entitlement to NatNats, and that’s just not what we’re here for. In other words, unless Ripon grants us some permanent relief, another one bites the dust. (And this, from Widipedia, for you Queen fans out there who are contemplating having a heart attack: During the administration of chest compressions during CPR, it can be difficult to achieve and maintain the recommended rate of 100 compressions per minute. The bass line of this song [AOBTD] is at such a rate; thus it is frequently recommended to think or hum this song during CPR, to maintain the correct rate.)

Bump planning is kicking into high gear. Last night I managed to get a food maven, a lounge lizard and a housing czar, which are the bare minimum of parental support necessary to make this thing happen. It’s been suggested that next year I do a total parent meeting, and I think I will. Introduce the activity to the newbies and remind the oldbies that without them, pffft, all at the same time: why not? Following my short discussion with the Bump Magnates, it was on to the assigning of the jobs for the Sailors. It is interesting that people who have shown up for, oh, one round per year somehow think that they’re qualified to judge based entirely on their membership in the junior class. My response to that is, of course, have you ever heard of the candy table? Then again, people like running the candy table, so it’s hardly a punishment for slackers. We’ll be setting up a competition between the two buildings this year: whoever sells the most wins a [something or other, to be determined]. This is good money that pays for some of Yale and some of Columbia, so I’m all in favor of them conducting competitive highway robbery to obtain it.

After that we kicked around a few felons. And no, there is no difference between theft and robbery aside from the definitional (theft of versus robbery from), and we should not claim that the difference between felons and lighthearted miscreants is arbitrary and therefore felons don’t deserve any bad treatment whatsoever (we can never know the difference between grand and petite larceny?—get real), and all assassinations are murder while all murders are arguably (definitionally) not assassinations, which reminds one that meaningless distinctions are always the first to arise—and hopefully the first to go away—in the argumentative adolescent mind. On the other hand I was taken with the intuitive appreciation of “bad voters,” familiar to all who follow the Feed. More on this at next week’s meeting, as we dig a little deeper.

Speaking of the Feed, I pled out of physical newspapers last night and mandated (ha!) the online Times plus the Feed. In a show of hands, the number of Sailors who understand RSS is the same as the number of Palins who can see Russia from their kitchen window, once again proving that youth is not a positive indicator for technical savvy. I will pursue this line of instruction with some specific how-to (and I’ll post it openly so the rest of the young tech sluggards out there can join the Twenty-First Century before the Twenty-Second comes along).

And I finally got the results of Regis out to Catholic Charlie, even though the color printer is looking sort of poopy these days. I’ll put the new cartridge in the MHL printer tonight prefatory to getting the Roll going. Matt T has promised not to change any more of the data on Joy, and taken off his rabbit ears long enough to send me the room list, so tonight I’ll get things started in that direction. Fortunately, unlike last night, I won’t have the debate to distract me. Damned thing put me to sleep eleven times in twenty minutes while I was running off the Regis material. [Snooorrrrreee……]