In which I didn't screw up, we find competitive cucumbering, the web gets wacky, ModNov approaches, and the Legion and Scarsdale rear their ugly heads

I managed last night not to clearly announce the fact of a postponed meeting to the Sailors, which led to rather predictable confusion and, alas, no meeting. Others might blame themselves for this, a la President Obama, but I will fall back on my usual suspects, and blame either O’C or CP. That usually works wonders, and leaves me all fresh and gingery.

Speaking of ginger, (to wit, the Ginger Man), I’m finishing up a listen to the audiobook of Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear. As I am occasionally wont to point out dramatically strong entertainment, I will point out this one, which is the second in a series concentrating on Jack Spratt, a DCI in the NSD (Nursery Crimes Division). It has some of the worst puns in the history of popular fiction, which is in its favor; how many times does one drive along, listening to a novel, laughing merrily on the way to a DJ? I’ve read Fforde books on paper as well. Very entertaining fellow all around. You can do worse.

I dug up my brief on vigilantes. I was going to start working through it last night, but obviously that didn’t happen, so I’ll do it next Tuesday. If Rippin’ doesn’t post it by then, I’ll post it here. As I was working on it I had an interesting riff with Fred R over the use of Wikipedia, which I offered as a source. Three years ago I had banned use of Widipedia as a source among the Sailors. Now, while I still consider it secondary (as is any encyclopedia) and therefore less valuable that a primary source, I have come to consider it acceptable. This is seconded in The Long Tail, where the exact same evolution from “you gotta be kidding” to “see such-and-such an article” is discussed at length. Amazing how time flies on the old interwebs.

CP has finished knocking together the ModNov site, and I’ve started to attack it. With luck, we can go public and begin carving away at the wording of the topic starting next week. No doubt we’ll incorporate ModNov into the MHLI.

The more I think about it, by the way, the more I blame everything that is wrong with LD, The Life and Times on the concept of judge paradigms. I’ll definitely be focusing on this more in the future, and with luck, offering some practical suggestions for change, some of which, by the way, seem to hearken back to the old Legion of Doom. Plus ca change, as the Frenchies say.

And tomorrow is the onset of Scarsdale, which is worth attending if for no other reason than that it is the annual weekend where JV is his most JVish (as all of us are at our own tournaments, I mean, our most quintessential selves, not our most like JV). Plus the warmish weather is icumen in . What more could you ask for?