Wednesday, March 25, 2015

If this is Wednesday, it must be Nostrum


It turns out that I can’t offer Nostrum for free as a Kindle edition.

Sigh.

Then again, it is already free online, so stop your bellyaching, you spalpeen! I have to charge all of $.99 for it. That’s less than a dollar, for those of you who are mathematically challenged. It won’t kill you. And after all, this edition is not only filled with brand new annotations that make some of it marginally more understandable, but it can be carried with you anywhere on your device of choice: to the beach, to class, to work, to the Finland station, to the barricades, to hell and back, to kill a mockingbird, to a Grecian urn, to a fault, to Esme with love and squalor, to infinity and beyond, to lose one parent, toujours l’amour, toot toot tootsie goodbye, and all manner of things beginning with M. Et cetera.

Anyhow, it’s up and available, and I’ve begun working on the Epistles. I also realize that I have a boatload of work to do web-wise as a result of this publication, but I’ll be on it shortly. Meanwhile, we continue with our dramatis personae.

***

The central team in Nostrum, but the budget is tight, and they may be dropping forensics at whatever point this year that the money runs out. The Snow Ball is Nighten Day's own annual tournament, run every January, usually in the middle of a snowstorm.
Speechies: Mark & Noah (extemp); David (Twas) Brillig and William Hand (Duo); Kumar Juvaswami (HI); Ashley Ambrose (OO); Cartier Diamond (DI); Mordred Prentice (forensic activity unknown)
Staff: Raoul Walsh, principal; Margery Mooney, freshman English teacher; Harry Klein, teacher of Cinema Appreciation; Lav Bunbury, guidance counselor
Family and Such: The Buglaronis ; Braun Saxon (Cartier's married ex-boyfriend); Myra Moon (the mystery of Tarnish Jutmoll's past)


The Editor of Metro New York magazine, this solid, frizzy-haired, recently divorced woman is now coaching a new team for her son's new suburban high school, Bisonette Technical.


A Master of the Debate Universe, formerly of Manhattan Lodestone, now with Bisonette Technical. In his freshman year at Lodestone he won his first two Combat of Conquerors limbs, and from that point on there was no looking back. As a sophomore he took King Ivy. As a junior he made it all the way to the finals of the COC Tournament, and made it to semis in both the Catholic Forensic League Nationals and the Non-Catholic Forensic League Nationals.


A man of many appetitites. Six and a half feet tall, this African-American first appears in Nostrum as the coach of Veil of Ignorance, a history teacher, district NFL chairman, and a dyed-in-the-wool Policy-first maven.


He begins as Bill, a slightly overweight policy debater, successful partner of Tara Petskin at Veil of Ignorance. Thanks to francogrammatification, and some other changes, he becomes Invoice O'Connor, among other things.


Worm is a Bisonette sophomore recruited by Chesney Nutmilk. Dark, unshaven, disshevelled, he has a voice like a depressed turtle.


The wheelchair-bound coach of Manhattan Lodestone. A debate god from the get-go, he has been around since the invention of around. His disability is the result of an accident.


A pair of glasses, which seem to cover every part of her face that isn't hidden by her long auburn hair. Tara, a senior, is a serious Polician from Veil of Ignorance, the partner of Bill O'Connor. In her earlier debate career she partnered with Haircut Puente.


Mordred, a Nighten Day sophomore, is the familiar of Cartier Diamond. He is not known to participate actively in forensics, but he always seems to be at forensics events. Chubby, short, unattractive, usually red-faced.


Haircut, at five-foot-eleven, with a closely shaved head and a shadow of whiskers and an intense look in his eye, is the classic image of the anarchist. You could imagine him organizing Wobblies in the middle west of America or riding the train to Finland with Lenin or sipping Pernod with the students in 1968 Paris or generally causing serious mischief against The System from whatever platform he chose to preach from. One time partner of Tara Petskin at Veil of Ignorance. Creator of the enormously successful www.haircutpuente.com web site.


Quilty Prep is a public high school allied with no university. Its founders considered the name Quilty High to be too banal for such a tony hamlet as Quilty, New York. Quilty Prep, on the other hand, wreaked of wealth and ivy and untold numbers of strings of polo ponies, if not exactly of common sense. So Quilty Prep it was. Quilty Prep has one of the largest forensics teams in the state, spread over LD and Speech but excluding Policy.


The coach of Toulouse is a fiery Irishman of the Policy persuasion. Usually found in the tab room.


Bark is the original boyfriend of Gloria Fudless. He has long, stringy dark hair tied around at the back of his neck, where the head of a dragon tattoo can be seen riding up above his collar. Three gold earrings dangle from his right ear, and one from his left. He is a senior at Nighten Day, all of eighteen years old with a regular driver's license and his own ancient Buick.


A young married couple. Brett is working toward her master's degree in archaeology, and is forced to travel often. Nostrum begins with Braun, offstage, having recently broken up with Cartier Diamond.


Bowling fanatic and coach of the Algren-On-The-Beach, Massachusetts, team.


Rail thin and older than justice, Ms. Screeds is the coach of Andrew Johnson.


Consiglieri of the Vitelli family. The lawyer, Starbuck, is a large, tall man, nearly completely bald, wearing oversized aviator-frame eyeglasses. His size and fitness and bronze skin exude health and vitality, while his small eyes behind the glasses add a definition of intelligence to his profile.


The coach of Farnsworth Catholic.

No comments: