Nostrumite's Adventures in Encyclopedialand

As I was doing my best to separate faith from reason in Caveman yesterday (I'm getting into the Dark Ages, or the Middle Ages, or whatever you want to call the period when everyone in Europe was sitting around trying to figure out how best to draw the map of themselves), I received a message from the Nostrumite that put everything into perspective (which, by the way, was invented around the time of the Renaissance; before that the world may have not been flat but the paintings certainly were). The lad is in a state of permanent depression over his war with his computer which is now being raged with dueling copies of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

He's the only person I know who can spend all day installing one program.

"I've got my crummy laptop," he writes, "plus I've got Jules's old desktop that he left behind when he went to Moldova." Julie is presently doing his best to bring peace, joy and prosperity to Central Europe, and keeping his head down, just in case. "Both computers have a copy of the 1999 DVD of Encyclopedia Brittanica, the features of which only worked for a while. Eventually you could browse major topics, like agriculture, but if you wanted to look up agriculture in, well, Moldova, the search function wouldn't work. You had to pore over the entire agriculture article, or the entire Moldova article, to find what you were looking for. Which, if you were wondering, is grapes and a long history of supplying plonk to the Russkies."

I'll take his word for that. It could explain why we don't hear all that often from Jules.

"This is a documented problem with the software," he told me. "I like that. The stuff doesn't work, but at least they're aware of it. So stop your whining, I guess, is the message they're trying to deliver. We know you've got a problem, and we don't want to hear about it."

I have to agree with him there. I love documented problems. They're sort of the flip side of irreproducible results. And they are somehow more comforting, although I don't know why.

"So meanwhile I'm on Brittanica's mailing list, having dutifully registered the program when I originally bought it, and keeping it to myself that I was loading it on every computer within a fifty mile radius. Every now and then they would tell me about a cheap upgrade, which I would ignore because how much has happened to agriculture in Moldova since 1999? I could always get the core story from the disk I had, and Google any updates. But, ultimately, I got tired of the search function not working, so a couple of weeks ago I ordered the latest upgrade for fourteen bucks."

Any choruses of, You get what you pay for?

At that point, the Mite loaded the new software on his crummy laptop, and removed the old software. "I now had about 6 bytes of memory left over, even after I deleted all the podcasts I didn't even know were on the hard drive. Since there was hardly any available memory, the new software, which is Encyclopaedia, thank you very much, where the a and the e are attached like Siamese twins, is slower than taking the T to the library and looking it up in the damned books. Plus there were these great error messages telling me that I had to be out of my literal mind, although the term they used was virtual memory."

If he'd just buy a new computer with a bigger hard drive, none of this would happen.

"So after crashing a few times, or suffering through crashing boredom, I went over to Julie's desktop. This thing is running Windows 98, has a ten gigabyte hard drive, three gigs of which are filled, and the damned Encyclopaedia runs like a charm. So I took Encyclopaedia off my crummy laptop and reinstalled the 99 DVD Encyclopedia."

None of which sounds particularly exciting, but this is how Nostrumites spend their free time.

"When all was said and done I had recoved about 3 gigs of space on the laptop, mostly by cleaning out iPod files. I mean, once they're on the iPod, you don't need them on the hard drive anymore. Did you know that if you delete the files from the iTunes library it does not necessarily delete the files from your hard drive? Does Steve Jobs think I'm made of memory?"

My Sunday was, I think, more profitably spent Googling St. Augustine. Once you get past Florida and into City of God, you're home free.

For those who wonder

Noah seems to think that Caveman is a prelude to a treatise on self-help. For those who wonder, est, or Erhard Seminar Training, was the brainchild of a man named Werner Erhard. I don't know what happened at est sessions, that not being exactly my cup of Diet Coke, but they were a phenomenon of the 70s, legendary for lasting forever and not letting anyone go to the bathroom.

I, for one, am against self-help.

I am not rallying in Caveman Pt 1 that you are the creature of your own making, and therefore capable of change by remaking yourself. I am simply observing that, according to some schools of thought, you are the result of your own Narrative. These schools seem never to have heard of DNA, or any of the latest advances in behavioral science. It's nice to live in a vacuum of theory.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a critical theorist. Read the review of Camille in today's NYTBR -- she and I are on the same wavelength. (Shoot me now!) I believe that art is the expression of humankind's highest achievements, an ennobling of souls, an enrichment of the beholder and the creator, a transcendent act. I do not believe that art is how we hide who we really are so that second-rate critics can tear us apart for the art we didn't create.

Pfft!

As for self-help, well, I'm not particularly against people trying to better themselves. I wish more people would. But I am against the concept of self-esteem valued above accomplishment. Accomplish something, then feel good about it. Now, granted, if you're in some truly objective dump and all you have left is intrinsic human worth, we'll start with self-esteem and work our way up. But if you can afford a three-day est seminar, and have enough self-control not to go to the bathroom during the sessions, you are not exactly in an objective dump. If you have the blues, however, I recommend doing something as a cure. Creating something. Doing something constructive.

I guess I'm an existentialist, if you want to label things. We are how we act. And I'm a friend of the arts. We are how we create. All acts of art share in the ennobling of the human spirit. Or, plant a potato. It's useful, it's time-consuming, and eventually you'll reap potatoes.

I spent all day today working on part 2, which is a very selective history of art. I managed to make it to the middle ages; I give myself a bogey as far as accuracy as concerned. I also spent a little time looking at educational theory. Talk about one wide open nut ready for the cracking! Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, Peirce (who knew?), Montessori, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum. I'll even admit in print that grasshopper wasn't terribly wrong intuiting that moral training may have something to do with it (except, of course, that horrible word training is the antithesis of teaching).

I also worked out all the money Hen Hud owes me, ready to send in for reimbursement. I even ran all kinds of diagnostics on the old PC, loaded the new EB on the other PC (this one is too tight memorywise), surfed around for some new podcasts to try, and made one hell of a good dinner.

A day of accomplishment. No self-esteem for me. I even consulted VBD to find out what the well-dressed nerd is wearing. Of course, I think they'd better lighten up on the push of the summer camp. "Money money money money money money money money money money money money money."

I am so ready for the next revival of Cabaret.

Caveman Pt 1, Draft of text version

[I did promise to publish this here first. It's raw, but not that raw.]

This is the story of Narrative. Understanding narrative is as good a way as any of understanding many of the chief concepts of postmodernism. It’s also a pretty good way to understand a lot of other things. Narrative is, of course, another word for story. And everyone loves a good story. They always have; they always will. We are going to explore why.
This is a story told in multiple parts; only the final part actually discusses contemporary critical theory, or more simply put, postmodernism. To understand postmodernism, you need first to understand modernism. And to understand modernism, you need to understand the past.
So, we begin with the past. Or more specifically, we begin with the dawn of narrative.

Part One Narrative

If this is the story of Narrative, we should start with a definition of Narrative. I’m using a very specific definition here (and I’m not alone in this; there are plenty of Narrative theorists out there, so rest assured, I’m not just making this up). The concept, as I’m referring to it, will come up again and again.
Narrative, simply put, is connecting the dots.
The dots are the disparate pieces of perceived reality.
So, Narrative is the connecting of the dots that are the disparate pieces of perceived reality.
Which may sound like a load of jargon, but it isn’t.

I could simplify this, and say that Narrative is connecting the dots of reality, but that would assume the existence of reality. We don’t want to do that, not when we’re going to end up talking about postmodernism. Most philosophers, and for that matter most of your average schmegeggies on the street, will tell you that there is such a thing as objective reality. There is a rock over there, there is a tree over there, we are on the earth, we are breathing air. That person standing over there is my brother Kermit. But it doesn’t hurt anybody to say I perceive a rock over there, I perceive a tree over there, I perceive that we are on the earth, I perceive that we are breathing air. I perceive that that person standing over there is my brother Kermit. If in fact there is such a thing as objective reality, I am perceiving it. No objective reality has been damaged by our adding the concept of perception.
So Narrative connects the dots of perceived reality. There’s all kinds of stuff out there, all kinds of dots, and Narrative connects them. Why? Narrative at this level is the attempt to find order in what is apparently a random universe, to connect the dots of perceived objective reality into a subjective understanding. Narrative is attempt to understand the world around us.
Or at least that’s one kind of narrative. There’s others, but they’re all connections of dots.
Narrative, simply put, is connecting the dots.


I personally maintain that the instinct to Narrative, the instinct to make stories out of things, is what makes us human. Things happen to all species. Cats and dogs live in a world of trees and rocks and air just like humans do, but only humans try to make sense of everything, and the way we make sense of everything is the thing called Narrative. Unlike cats and dogs, humans connect the dots.

And here’s an important concept: I’m not just talking story here—that is, Narrative as story—although the end result may be a story. I’m talking the process of connecting the elements, which is also the creation of a Narration. The instinct to Narrative is both the instinct to make sense of things and the instinct to make sense of things in a certain way. The human mind understands stories. Understanding stories and creating stories are two examples of how the mind works.
Humans love to tell stories, and they love to hear stories.

The is actually a history of story, a story of story, if you will. We’ll start at the beginning, at the dawn of history.
Let’s set the stage: This is the period when early humans are living in sod huts and caves, wondering where the next woolly mammoth is coming from. They’ve got a couple of chiseled pieces of flint they use as tools, and with any luck, someone in the group has a way with fire (woolly mammoth sushi is ok, but woolly mammoth on the grill—umm-umm!).
This period is the Dawn of Narrative. This is the beginning of attempting to make sense of the world in which we we live. How does woolly mammoth guy do this? He connects the dots of his (perceived) reality. He creates a Narrative to explain his world. By so doing, he invents Science and Religion in one fell swoop. (Science and Religion are one and the same thing as far as woolly mammoth guy is concerned.)
The first human Narratives are stories of Animism. Animism is the application life to inanimate objects. This same root word is in animation, where somebody makes squiggles on film come alive; that person is called an animator.

an·i·mism n
1. the belief that things in nature, for example, trees, mountains, and the sky, have souls or consciousness
2. the belief that a supernatural force animates and organizes the universe
3. the belief that people have spirits that do or can exist separately from their bodies
(Thus spake the Encarta dictionary)
The first two definitions are the ones we’re interested in.

Animism imbues inanimate objects with “spirit,” or as the definition would have it, with souls or consciousness. The rocks and trees are somehow alive. Additionally, the phenomena we observe can’t just happen—the sun doesn’t just rise in the morning by itself. The sun is not an inanimate object. The sun is not a ball of gas 93,000,000 miles away. To woolly mammoth guy, the sun is a living thing, an animated thing. Woolly mammoth guy has no tools to measure the distance to the sun, or the chemicals that comprise the sun. The only tools this guy has are a few flint knives and his own eyes to see with. But he perceives a certain reality. He sees the sun in one position in the sky in the morning, and another position at dusk, and nowhere at all at night. His instinct to Narrative forces him to make up a story to explain it. He connects the dots of his perceived reality. As a result, he comes up with the story of the sun god.
Let’s look at the Greeks, which is a few thousand years down the line from woolly mammoth guy, but a good indication of how the story developed over time. In Greek mythology the sun was a chariot on fire, pulled by two winged horses, used by the god of the sun to drive along the sky during the day. Though Apollo was seen as a god of the sun, bringing life-giving heat and light to Earth, he was never expected to carry out this charioteering duty. This work was still done by Helios, apparently another sun god (I’m no expert on myths) who kept his own identity totally independent from Apollo.
The Greeks (or woolly mammoth guy) looked at phenomena they didn’t understand, and turned it into something they could understand. They got it right as far as bringing life-giving heat and light to earth. They created stories, which we refer to as myths, to explain these phenomena. They connected the dots the best way they could.
Look at the stars. Woolly mammoth guy did. Cultural history is full of stories to explain the lights in the sky, stories that have nothing to do with faraway suns. Woolly mammoth guy, with his instinct to narrative, couldn’t just look up and see dots: He had to connect them. Woolly mammoth guy connected the dots and made constellations out of them. This was a pretty common practice, apparently, among all cultures (imagining constellations, that is). There’s nothing a human hates more than random unconnected dots.
There is an area of study on this, religion in cross-cultural perspective, that you can pursue further on your own if you’re interested. Curiously enough, there often great similarities in Narratives from one culture to another. There’s not only a need to explain the same things, e.g., creation, but a similarity in the way they’re explained. There’s a common thread of Father/Child the pops up often. In some Native American creation stories, the Father sends down Coyote to earth, and Coyote somehow ends up siring the race of humans. Prometheus steals fire from Zeus and gives it to humans. In historical times Krishna and Christ are fairly contemporary, bearing comparable messages. It’s no great surprise that humans feel compelled to concentrate on the same subjects, like Creation, the First Cause, but it is surprising how often disparate peoples come up with comparable Narrations. Why are they comparable? Another very arguable area of study altogether.

So, we feel compelled to create a story of things. Why? The making of stories is a part of human nature. But not only are people instinctively narrators, they like to hear stories. Hearing stories is the other side of the Narrative coin. Not only do we like to organize random data, we like random data when it’s organized by others.

This instinctive drive to Narrative as discussed so far, the attempt to explain perceived reality, to connect the dots, to process the random information around us, gives us a number of things. Woolly mammoth guy’s attempt to connect the dots provides us with the beginnings of both science and religion. They start out as one and the same, Animism, but soon become quite different, at least as far as Narrative is concerned. But there’s another take on what narrative can be, and WMG practiced this too. Narrative can also be the pure recording of facts–“Let me tell you what happened.” So the other big thing WMG invented was history.

“Let me tell you what happened.” WMG is going to relate a sequence of events to you. He’s going to tell you about the hunt today. How he and his brother Kermit subdued a woolly mammoth as big as his mother-in-law’s cave. Killed it with one blow. Cut off all the meat in half an hour. Brought it home to great acclamation from the crowd back in the cave.
That is history.
That is the narration of a series of real events.
Except, of course, the narration is selective. The narrator picks and chooses what he wishes to include in the story. That picking and choosing, that selectivity, is part of the process of narration. I don’t tell you everything; I tell you what I think is important to tell you. I can’t tell everything, I’ve got to pick and choose.
ALL NARRATION INCLUDES SELECTIVE CHOICES.

In science, there are seemingly infinite phenomena. I have to pick the ones to study, I have to pick the way to study them, I have to pick among the parts of my observation to select the relevant and irrelevant (rightly or wrongly).

In history, there are seemingly infinite phenomena. “Let me tell you what happened yesterday.” There are 6,500,000,000 people on the earth. I can’t tell you what happened to each and every one of them yesterday. And why yesterday? Yesterday where? The historian is a great selector. There are schools of history that prescribe how the selection should be made (history as the story of great people or great events, history as the story of everyday life, history as determined by geography).

WMG was unquestionably an historian. Selectively, of course, but an historian nonetheless. As a matter of fact, WMG left behind some of his narratives for us to study: the hunt paintings on the walls of the caves in France (which just goes to show you how French this whole subject is). These are probably the oldest narratives in existence, texts independent of the narrators, still surviving to this day. When we look at these paintings, we should ask, why this, why not something else? Why did the narrators select this part of their lives to record?
Why? The selection indicates, if nothing else, its importance. They could have painted anything; there could also be paintings of gathering apples or making pancakes. Were these activities not considered as important as the hunt? Should we interpret that the hunt was the most important activity of WMG’s life since it was the only one he permanently recorded? Or should we guess that the painters in the tribe were the same folks as the hunters, so they just happened to draw what they knew?
For that matter, are we sure it’s history?

At some point in the history of Narrative, embellishment comes along.
“Let me selectively tell you what happened.” And in the telling, we not only pick and choose, we embellish a little. We make up a few details. We make the killing of the woolly mammoth a fight to the death, blood spurting out of every tusk. We make it a better story. The audience eats it up. And we embellish some more.
And at some point we just make things up whole cloth, and the creation of fiction takes place.
“Let me tell you what happened.” Except it didn’t happen. It’s a narrative connecting not the dots of perceived reality but the dots of subjective fantasy. But it’s still a narrative, and it still connects the dots.

We’re almost ready to summarize now.
Narrative is the connecting of the dots that are the disparate pieces of perceived reality. Narrative is the processing of random information. Narrative is the selecting of which dots to connect. Narrative is the connecting of dots that don’t even exist.
Narrative is a lot of things.
1. The collection of random narratives of how things happen = Science, religion, cosmology, First Causes
2. The collection of random narratives of what happened = History
3. The collection of random narratives of things that didn’t happen, Narrative for Narrative’s sake, to fulfill that innate desire for narration = Fiction

But we’ve left out perhaps the most important form of Narrative, at least as far as modern theory is concerned. There is one other major aspect of creating narrative, and that is the creation of the self – what we know, what we remember, what we choose to define ourselves with as individuals.
The individual — the concept of the individual — is the narrative that we create for ourselves. Narrative is the connecting of the dots that are disparate pieces of perceived reality. Every individual human constantly performs this act of narration as a part of conscious existence. Our brains are filled with random data. How we connect these pieces of random data is how we define ourselves. What we remember and what we forget is the process of selection that is essential to Narrative. We select among phenomena to create our personal beliefs, we select among events of our lives (which are 24 by 7) to create our personal histories, we embellish, we even make things up whole cloth. We create ourselves.
Each of us, each individual, is a narrative. A narrative of our own choosing, as each individual is his or her own narrator.

Narrative is the connecting of the dots that are the disparate pieces of perceived reality.

Each individual comprises a connection of the dots that are the disparate pieces of his or her perceived reality.

The individual is a story of his or her own making.

Semiotics

My head hurts from reading about three paragraphs of this stuff. Is there any area with so much demurral as modern theory? They'll start with something like, "Saussure said this, but Peirce said that, while modern semioticians, influenced by the Marxian model, concentrate on some other thing, except for Eco, who says yet something else altogether." If you simply are looking for the core concept, it's almost impossible to find. Which boils down, as always, to being forced to read the actual people themselves. In this case, my recommendation is Peirce, who may be old-fashioned, but at least is literate (as in readable).

Whatever happened to readable, anyhow? Why is modern theory, which has some perfectly good and fun aspects, so bogged down in bad writing? Is it simply a factor of most of your modern theorists being raised in the educational world where self-esteem trumped spelling and grammar? That may have something to do with it. And, of course, there is a need for academicians to cloak their prose in mumbo jumbo in order to make their thoughts look profound. This is a basic need of all shamans, be they adademicians or accountants or choreographers or, well, shamans. If you just say something simple that everyone can understand, you probably don't deserve your position of high authority. But if you say something complicated, then the mumbo jumbo effect is so much stronger, and your audience is wowed and cowed, and you've cemented your authority that much further. Profound thoughts in themselves are, of necessity, simple. But so few people really have any profound thoughts, or at least any profound thoughts of their own, that something must be done to make this not appear so obvious.

Jeesh.

This, of course, does not take into account the incomprehensibility of the French. Then again, what could?

We're going to start with the concept of narrative, because that does underpin everything I want to say about mo and pomo (funnily enough, the deeper I delve, the more fun I find mo and the less fun I find po). I'm reorganizing the caveman notes to make one complete unit on narrative alone, beginning with the concept at the dawn of time and taking it straight through to semiology. I will publish it all here, and in the Hillary Duff, and try to make notes of it at the same time. My estimate now is that the next version of the lecture will take place in 2007. Save the date!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the tournament

Dear Mr. Menick:

I hope you get this photo. I took it myself at the Perelandra District tournament. This is the winning DUO team. Their piece was from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Something to do with Sunny Jim home from college...

Your friend,

Herman Melville
Cub Reporter

Peppy's Diary

Well, he seems pretty peppy to me. I'm not sure why he sent this to me, but here it is. Make of it what you will.

Dear Mr. Menick:

I thought you my be interested in my diary. This is just for one day, mind you. They keep us awfully busy here.

3/19/05

5:00 Reveille.
5:25 Fell out for inspection.
5:35 Breakfast
5:45 Entered first post into website announcing names of remaining 27 LDers in the Guam District.
5:50 Checked AP, Reuters, UPI, Yahoo, Fark and Debatehotties.com for late-breaking news
6:03 Signed out offficial cub reporter's jeep from VBD motor pool and drove to first venue of the day, the Shazam District tournament at Billy Batson Middle School
6:29 Arrived at BBMS. All doors locked, building deserted.
6:31 Broke into tab room
6:38 Worked out predictions of next set of downs and outs
6:39 Entered second post into website announcing names of Billy Batson Down and Outs, including photographs of empty coffee cups strewn around judges' lounge.
6:41 Back into VBD jeep.
7:55 Arrived at Fulsom Prison five minutes ahead of schedule
8:00 Interviewed Prisoner #48302398 (former LD champ of Simoleon District)
8:02 [Laughed.]
8:45 Entered third post into website, transcript of interview with former LD champ of Simoleon District
9:03 Entered fourth post into website, "Did You Know" teasers about former LD champ of Simoleon District
9:14 Received TRO regarding interview with former LD champ of Simoleon District. Logged on and deleted same.
9:22 Left Fulsom Prison with a stern warning from the warden never to darken his door again or he'd send me into cellblock eight where nice boys like Herman Melville are never heard from again.
10:02 Arrived at Bartholomew Cubbins HS. Changed hat. Responded to 13 comments on deletion of former LD champ of Simoleon District interview
10:11 Knocked down surly ballot table OI freshman girl to gain access to Bartholomew Cubbins HS psychotropic laboratory, where they were tabbing the Oobleck District. Contretemps resulted in much sturm and drang. Stole 3 DUO cards, photographed them.
11:15 After a short visit to the Oobleck County Hospital and Plumbing Supplies emergency room, found Starbucks and logged on. Entered fifth post, Photos Live from Oobleck of 3 DUO cards.
11:17 Entered sixth post advertisting summer camp.
11:18 Checked debatehotties.com for latebreaking news.
11:22 Ordered mocha latte lite half caf with biscotti.
11:45 Back in jeep, heading for Beth Israel CFL Debate Grands.
12:33 Arrived at Beth Israel. Donned yarmulke and attempted to enter tab room. Three Dominican nuns, a Swiss guard and a yenta blocked passage.
12:35 Posted seventh entry of the day, reporting no news from Beth Israel Archdiocese.
12:36 Checked debatehotties.com for latebreaking news. Learned that former LD champ of Simoleon District had escaped from Fulsom Prison. Feared for life.
12:48 Found deli across the street from Beth Israel. Ate lunch.
1:01 Posted eighth entry, describing lunch, complete with photos of fat trimmed from corned beef. Computer crashed.
1:05 Headed back to HQ for further orders.

I can send you the afternoon if you wish, including the SWAT team standoff with former LD champ of Simoleon District. Just let me know.

Your friend,
Herman Melville
Cub Reporter

Trade secrets

So when you finish Districts, if you're one of a handful of randomly select people, then you go on to sorting at-large bids.

Oy.

I feel a need to maintain some secrecy about this, although I wouldn't be surprised to find my selections, in order, on DOA. They probably knew my choices before JW. But, you might find the process interesting.

Every committee member seems to have knocked out an individual system for ranking the candidates. We are presented with a list of tournaments and results, plus some cumulative numbers expressing win/loss ratios in prelims and elims. This year, as an extra added attraction, there were comments on the reverse of some of the ballots.

My process is this. First, after assuring myself that there are no good bribe possibilities, I go through the pack, eyeballing them and separating into four piles. The first pile and the fourth pile are the smallest; they are the WOW pile and the YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING pile. The second and third piles are the look good and don't look so good piles.

Next, I carefully go through each pile, making sure each candidate belongs in that pile. I'm still at a gut-level assessment. There are usually lots of adjustments, and no guarantee that any ballot will stay in any pile. Now I have four piles that are pretty carefully determined.

Next, I REALLY evaluate, putting each pile in order. There is still a good chance to move from pile to pile. I literally look at every tournament attended, how well they did, comparing to others in the piles who went to the same tournaments. I make value judgments about the tournaments ("Pip could have broken at that one," for instance, or "I'm impressed, not even Pip could have broken at that one"), I assess how far people got, I look at the numbers. The result is four piles, in order, from best to worst.

Finally, there's the challenge round. Every ballot in order challenges the ballot ahead of it. If it wins the challenge, it challenges the next ballot. Very time consuming, and this is where I read the info on the back. There was an interesting variety in the comments people made, but not one person assured me that a deposit had been made into a Cayman Islands bank account in my name, so I was forced to take them at face value. I won't say what impressed me or didn't, because what impressed me might have made another committee member fall off the chair in gales of mocking laughter; feel free to write what you want, fellow.

Then, I fax back the results.

Curiously enough, recently JW has been revealing to us the results individually, that is, he shows us how we all voted. While inevitably we all have one kid way up who everyone else panned, and one kid way down who everyone else lauded, it is absolutely remarkable that we almost completely agree not only on the top picks, but very closely on the order. Which shows that either the committee mostly looks at the same things, either because those things are important or because the committee is a bunch of like-minded poops who think the exact same unimportant things are important. I prefer to think the former.

Anyhow, it's all done now. I can sit back and relax, knowing that debate is over, except for CFLS, NFLS, States, and (I hope) TOCs. Which I guess means, it really ain't over till it's over. I do see an open week in July, though. Thank God I have nothing to do with institutes. I mean, does debate really have to stretch over 64 weeks of the year?

What really happens at Districts

You can run just about any tournament the way you feel like running it. It will succeed or fail on its own merits. But a Districts tournament must run according to the rules established by the NFL in 1807 (updated for the new technology -- the invention of the Cyrus reaper -- in 1834).

Every piece of information you receive from the participating schools must be copied over to a card. This is not the worst problem, because given the numbers of attendees, cards make sense probably for just about any district. Even the rules governing how the rounds are set make decent enough sense. But, everything submitted to the district chairman must have more names and information and signatures than an Iraqi election ballot. And it has to be exactly just so, and it has to be delivered by camel (email or fax, since they came after the Cyrus reaper, are not acceptable), although I tend to ignore that rule and allow delivery by horse or mule, provided the horse or mule is not plugged in. The amount of paperwork that ensues during the tournament is the real boggler. I have just spent two days copying information over and over and over. My favorite example of what Ripon supplies is a spreadsheet of the cumulative points the schools get during the tournament. This spreedsheet looks exactly like the piece of paper I have to submit. And it has the exact same amount of functionality. Don't these people know that spreadsheets can do arithmetic? Don't they know that if we enter it once into the computer we won't have to enter it a hundred times again because there's such a thing as copy and paste? Do they really want to read my handwriting?

Oh, well. The tournament was okay, I guess. Who knows, because I spent two days writing up stuff. There were some noticeable great moments in forensics, however. To wit: the sight of all that candy table money sitting unattended while Craig when around getting people to sign petitions allowing schmoozing to be recognized as an official NFL event; the sight of O'Cruz walking around my house with only a single thought in his head, "All this crib and no camera"; the sight of a good half dozen parent judges coming into the tab room and saying, "I don't know nothin' about birthin' no PF"; the sight of the APs with their rifles aimed out on route 9, waiting to ambush any bus arriving before 2:30; the sight of In School Suspension kid reading Buffy novels; the sight of all those policy teams when they read the names of their judges; the sight of everyone leaving on Saturday... Of course, I did spend a couple of more hours today on paperwork, but now, it's over.

And what's next in my exciting life? Evaluating at-large bids. Whoopee!

As the bullets whiz by

I just received the following from Herman Melville, Cub Reporter.

Dear Mr. Menick:

I thought you would be interested to hear that I have been stationed in Baghdad by VBD HQ. My new assignment is to report back on forensic war stories.

Yesterday was a good example of what it's like out here. The sun rose hot and dry, and by seven o'clock our affirmative platoon was baking in its boots. Private Parts, our leading social contract man, was at his post overlooking the Cheney Memorial Oil Refinery when he spotted guerillas riding in on mules from the northwest. Parts immediately sounded the alarm, and within minutes Corporal Punishment, our utilitarian, and Private Keepout, our deontologist, were by his side, bazookas at the ready. I don't know if you've ever seen a brigade of Derridean guerillas in full armament, mounted on their magnificent steeds, heading in your direction with only one thought in mind: Critique! Critique! Critique! (All right, maybe that's three thoughts, but they're three of the same thoughts.) But it's one stirring sight, I'll tell you.

The first shot was fired, perhaps unintentionally, as Private Parts, quoting Jean-Jacques Rousseau, vowed to take no prisoners and requested that in the future his morning omelet be served cooked perhaps thirty seconds less to keep its insides the consistency of a baby's dribble. Punishment and Keepout, brandishing their swords, their plowshares and their copies of the shooting script of Howard the Duck, returned the guerillas' fire with a lob of pleasure calculus to their left flank and a categorical imperative to their right.

But the guerillas were only beginning. Their leader, a rogue law student dressed head to toe in a jellaba over his doe-colored Armani suit (an ill-fitting irregular purchased at the local outlet souk), ripped out a copy of The Geneology of Morals and had the temerity to light its fuse and toss it over the barricade. This started a charge of existentialist propaganda, liberally laced with synecdoche and metonyms, that took Private Parts completely by surprise. He was wounded in the exchange, and quickly retreated to the 4077th R*A*W*L*S field hospital for treatment, leaving Corporal Punishment and Private Keepout to defend the camp.

The ensuing battle was ruthless on both sides. Venom was spewed, spread and rebutted like peanut butter in a nursery school. Back and forth, forth and back, thrust, parry, en garde, avant garde, flaneurs falling like greased boas from a banana tree. [Note to self -- polish metaphor skills]. In the end, no one was left standing. When Private Parts rushed out of the 4077th, where he had been protected by a veil of ignorance, there was nothing left but carnage. "No one wins," he crystallized, removing his helmet and filling it with sand from the great desert.

And that was just one day, just one forensic war story.

See you soon.

Your friend,

Herman Melville, Cub Reporter, VBD

Caveman challenges Fidel Castro for longest speech world record!

Some thoughts on Caveman.

There's really two things going on there. First, there's a history of major philosophical concepts, and second, an attempt to explain the major aspects of postmodern critical analysis. The second may or may not naturally flow from the first, but if you don't know the first, the second is pretty hard to follow. It's pretty hard to follow if you DO know the first.

Added to that, throughout, is an attempt to relate contemporary thought (at varying moments) to what is happening in the world (primarily the arts). Everything is connected, in other words, or maybe it's better to say, seeing things that are connected is helpful in understanding those things: philosophy in a vacuum is pretty dull. The breakdown of the art world in the 19th century is a good example of what I'm talking about. Mainstream French art was thought to be this one main thing, and a bunch of impressionists artists came along trying to do something else. The mainstream refused to allow the upstarts into their galleries. The upstarts started their own galleries. While this was going on, communism was invented, Tschaikovsky wrote the Pathetique, Italy unified, Freud was working on Interpretation of Dreams, etc., etc., etc. Individualism was on a roll and about to mutate into relativism. Impressionism, a last big gasp before abstraction, was just one piece of the cultural puzzle.

Getting all this across takes a lot of energy on the part of the presenter and of the listener. Caveman, in its initial presentation, was too long because it tried to do everything at once. Yet at the same time, it avoided some areas completely, especially an exploration of existentialism. I also think more art examples would be useful, and better ones can be found. The explanation of critical theory has a ways to go. And some of the earliest caveman stuff can be trimmed down.

I see the next version as a three-parter. 1 -- Broad history of philosophy and ethics from Plato to Existentialism, 2 -- History of narrative from Caveman to Semiotician, and 3 -- Modernism/Postmodernism. What I'll do first is post my notes on Pomo in the next day or two (they're home and I'm not and there is Districts going on) just so people can read the toughest part. We'll have at least one seminar at a chez. Then I'll start writing for the Hillary Duff, which should help focus things in my brain.

My guess is that by 2014, I'll have this thing knocked. Probably around April of that year, if the weather holds.

Putting it together

You know, we all could go to the Sondheim event in NYC this weekend, and blow off Districts altogether. Oh, the temptation.

Putting together Districts, with all of about 10 schools, is about a billion times harder than putting together a normal tournament with 50 schools. In a normal tournament, people send you names, which you copy from their email and paste into your tournament software, and then on the day of the tournament, you compare the names you have with the names of the people they actually brought, and true the two up. Sure, there are always issues, like the English Language Exam I'll be giving to judges next year at Bump, and there's housing and feeding and whatnot, but you do it every year and get better at it every year, and there you are. But with Districts, everything is out of your hands. Your roster of attending schools is proscribed, comprising those institutions that want to go to Finals in whatever godforsaken wilderness has taken the bit this particular year. There's degree points and fees to be sorted out, and every couple of days Ripon sends an update, much like the grupenfuhrers bidding down to the poor functionarities at the front with order after order, any one of which obeyed incorrectly could result in disaster that could bring the world of forensics to a crashing halt. Forms fly faster than even Plato could have imagined; they must all be signed correctly, filled in correctly, typed (although no one does), never photocopied or faxed (dream on, Wisconsin). All this paperwork arrives on my desk, and I sort it out onto little index cards covered with my basement mold until the numbers add up correctly. (This does, at least, remove some mold from the basement, which is one positive benefit.) Every year Ripon sends me enough supplies for a three-year mission to Mars, and I've been doing this for 4 or 5 years, so you can do the math. Double entries, which are rife, must be marked and asterisked. No one ever tells you who's judging, so you put down what little information they do supply, and then in the bustle of registration you try to get the rest, and then about 11:00 on Saturday they come and complain that some judge you didn't know existed hasn't adjudicated any rounds yet.

Of course, since we have no rooms to hold the event, I shouldn't worry. We'll do speech at Stephen's and debate at Ewok's.

My biggest worry, of course, is putting a lid on the media. O'Cruz will be there, a neutral judge with camera and pith helmet, reporting back every flip of the cards in the tab room. The eyes of the world will be upon us!

Spud, I am your father!

Darth Potatohead is as good an indication as any that the steam has run out of Star Wars. I mean, that assumes that the content of the new movies wasn't good enough evidence.

I remember back to 1976, when the first movie came out. Bogle and I popped over to see it, literally on opening day, not because it was an event, but we wanted to go to a movie and that was what was playing. I don't know why Liz didn't go. Anyhow, they gave us buttons that said "May the Force be with you," which was pretty cool, and then there was the movie itself... Bogle's complaint was, really, "Of course they had to make Darth Vader Black." I ended up seeing it in the movie theaters two or three more times immediately thereafter, and then about a dozen times since. Like most people I still maintain that Empire Strikes Back was the best of the 3, but the first time I saw them in sequence, one immediately after the other, I was really suprised how much they held together as one film. Anyhow, Lucas is one of the folks responsible for the demise of film as we know it, as much from the success of the trilogy as anything else. It's a shame that the new films have all the bad parts of event films (you've got to see them three days after opening or they're gone from the mall, and they are disappointing on a truly core level, and you can't keep yourself from going nonetheless). There must be a true sickness unto death of the poor folks assembling the final one. Still, they all make a bazillion bucks, so I guess when all is said and done they deserve Darth Potatohead.

I see O'Cruz is back from Florida; there were 325 new posts on BVD today. This guy needs to take up a new hobby. I would suggest shortening the names of the Bronx kids so that it doesn't take half an hour to type every individual into TRPC at every tournament, but when I suggested that last weekend to some kid who had more letters in her name than BVD has cribs, it was taken askance. Where is Ellis Island when you need it? (Municiello, if you must know, getting off the boat. Menick/Menicke getting off the island. I think I prefer Municiello.)

Ewok (keeping with the Star Wars theme, and a Tater Tot if there ever was one) tells me that the hardware engineering of Districts is totally under control. Yeah. It's amazing that the present team of Hardware Engineers that was capable of engineering a bus monitor to Newark can't get 3 crummy rooms Friday for Congress. Oh, the glory that was engineering in the good old days, when we had firehouses and could find all the trophies after Bump.

CFL Grands tomorrow looks as if it will not be hurt by the weather. Tabbing Grands is always a pain. TRPC doesn't like small tournaments to begin with, then you add three judges double-flighted and you're looking at index cards pretty much from round one. But the computer will be good for things like printing ballots and results.

And, think of that, Districts is next week (at Ewok's house). I have done absolutely nothing to get ready. Which means Sunday will be the day from hell sorting everything out.

Is Robbie's brother prolix?

I just read his post on my favorite website. Took a few hours, but it gave me a distraction at the office. If you would prefer a nutshell:

1. For those of you who can't remember back to the first week of team meetings, I'll re-twitter the haunting refrain, "If you don't read the Times every day, you're an idiot." You'll recall my gently sending you favorite articles of the day until I felt that you had been spoonfed enough. At that point you carried on for yourself, or went back to Spongebob reruns. If you thought we couldn't tell the difference, then have another crabcake.

2. Argue the topic, you schmegeggie!

As I said, Robbie's brother was able to say this in many more words, but that's probably from lack of English, as he himself would probably be the first to admit. Not that I'm saying that great minds think alike or anything -- I would find it frightening to agree TOO much with Robbie's brother -- but as far as debate goes, knowing what you're talking about, and then talking about it, seem to be pretty basic concepts of the old Hen Hud "Home of the Antichrist" Team.

Magic Kingdoms of the world, unite!

I've been reading Disney Wars; anyone who knows me knows that I've been reading Disney Wars, so is it sheer coincidence that the following bulletin was in my mailbox this morning?

For Immediate Release, March 9, 2005 -- VBD-Disney Merger Announced

Representatives of VBD and The Walt Disney Company announced today their intention to merge their two corporations, pending government approval.

“It’s a perfect fit,” said soon-to-be-panhandling-on-Times-Square Disney CEO Michael Eisner. “Disney has the content, and VBD has the global reach.”

“We feel that the theme parks are especially important to the VBD vision,” said an unnamed representative presently holed up in Orlando, Florida, home of the Walt Disney World resort. “Having had my boat break down, stranding me for three and a half hours on the It’s a Small World attraction with no break from the delightful tune that accompanies the ride, has opened my eyes to numerous new possibilities, many of them short of homicidal rampage.”

The deal with the VBD team was conducted in the strictest secrecy by representatives not only of the Disney management but of the vocal Dump-Eisner team led by Roy E. Disney. Final agreement was reached on Pleasure Island. “We had to get the VBD guy pretty inebriated,” Marty Sklar, Chief Imagineer reported, “but it wasn’t hard. Two cranberry martinis and he was doing the hula on stage with Minnie and promising to promote our cribs the first chance he got.”

Media pundits are cautiously optimistic about this surprise joining of two mega-corporations. “It’s a chance for VBD to reach the preschool market,” commented Objectivist Philosopher Alan Greenspan, “while for Disney it’s an opportunity to acquire an entire collection of schematics readymade. Both sides could benefit, but there is a chance that the sheer size of the operation could be its downfall.”

Disney (DIS) and VBD (TOC) both trade on the NYSE.

For further information, contact Herman Melville, Cub Reporter, at VBD.

You say tomatoes, I say two mottoes

I'm disappointed that the weather will postpone the caveman to Frenchman lecture, unlike the team, which will have to hold their disappointment until after they hear it. I also need to throttle Ewok for not engineering the room hardware for Districts, which we'll probably be holding on the football field. Oy.

Meanwhile, my tireless correspondent from you-know-where has sent me the following press bulletin:

March 8, 2005 -- For Immediate Release

The challenge format used at Vassar (“Where the men are men and the women are still pissed off about it” is their motto) has proven such a hit that VBD will be introducing “The Iron Debater” this summer at its legendary Golden State institute (“20 Graduates and Still Going Strong” is their motto).

The Iron Debater is a challenge format originally developed by the Japanese as a part of their Meiji-Perry Debate format. (Meiji-Perry is Nippon’s answer to Lincoln-Douglas; “President Fillmore now named Pierce” is their motto.) Every tournament begins with a flashy moderator (tentative choice for emcee at this moment is Jon Cruz; “I’m the only one reading this blog so it had better be about me” is his motto) entering the stadium and announcing this week’s single ingredient, which the opposing sides have one half hour to craft into positions. In the past debaters have been forced to create entire cases out of Rawls’s Theory of Justice, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Putnam’s Bowling Alone and George W. Bush’s French in 10 Easy Lessons. A mixed panel of judges, including a parent judge, a Texas coach and Paris Hilton, are the final arbiters of each debater’s skill. Points are awarded for presentation, understanding of the premise, refutation and best tie. Female debaters are additionally graded on choice of cowboy hat.

“Iron Debate is a whole new dimension in forensics,” says VBD founder Dick Cheney (“Constitution? What Constitution” is his motto). “Most debaters are handed their positions by their coaches, which they run blindly with no understanding; we force them to come up with their own ideas, but on a very limited slant. No longer will you hear high school students expounding ideas that only a college freshman could understand. Now you’ll hear high school students expounding positions that no college freshman could understand in a million years. It promises to be debate at its finest.”

The Iron Debater is expected to begin webcasting Friday nights in August on VBD, in between schematics postings from the Central European Forensic League district tournaments (“We’ll debate until Russia gobbles us up again” is their motto). For further information, contact Herman Melville, Cub Reporter, at VBD International Headquarters (“Today debate, tomorrow declamation” is their motto).

More of the world according to Hermie

Dear Mr. Menick:

I thought you would be interested in the following unsolicited endorsements for our website. These are just a representative few from today's mailbag.

“Thanks to VBD I didn’t miss one moment of forensicana during my entire incarceration.” – M Stewart

“VBD provides all the heart, all the soul, all the excitement of being there in person. I mean, when I read that Dario had handed in his ballot, it brought a tear to my eye. Thank you, VBD!” – R Blake

“VBD marks the difference between going to high school and going high to school.” – P Spector

“At Neverland, VBD is what separates the men from the boys.” – M Jackson

“The only thing that keeps my search for the real killers going is the tireless team at VBD.” – O Simpson

“I just can’t get enough of those cribs. Go, VBD!” - S Peterson

“VBD is one phat website. Knowing that it will be there no matter what happens to Social Security is what our boys are fighting for in Iran.” – D Cheney

Mr. Menick, you are probably the only person on the planet who isn't on board with us. Shame on you!

Your VBD correspondent,

Herman Melville
Cub Reporter

More news from Herman Melville, Cub Reporter

This guy, bless his little heart, will not stop. Why me? I ask. Why me?

Dear Mr. Menick:

We trainees began our first live reporting sessions this weekend. The new interns at HQ were flown around the country for their first taste of forensic action. “You represent the lifeblood of schematics to a concerned and panicked international consituency,” we were told by Ms. Morgana, our mentor. Since we’re just starting out, management didn’t feel that we were ready to cover “real” events, so my assignment was the last CFL meet of the year at Scarsdale High in New York, a small but important tournament not on many (if any) team schedules. I know that I had never heard of it until I arrived at Scarsdale International Airport and was met by school limo. Who knew there was this much money behind one public school team?

I think you’ll agree that the reportage that I filed with HQ brings the tournament to life!

Dispatch #1, 8:52 a.m.

The first bus has arrived for the Scarsdale High School CFL! This is cub reporter Herm Melville reporting live for NC-17, and I’m standing on the sidewalk watching as, yes, our first bus has arrived, pulling up right in front of the high school. And, let’s see--it’s from Kate Hudson HS!

Welcome Kate Hud!

Dispatch #2, 9:03 a.m.

Tournament Director Mighty Joe Vaughan has just entered the building. He is wearing a gray scarf today and looks like a war-tossed orphan. (Mighty Joe Vaughan is scheduled for one of PCP’s “Debate Makeovers” in the near future, so stay tuned.)

Dispatch #3A, 9:04 a.m.

Tournament Director Mighty Joe Vaughan has exited the building and returned to his car. It’s anybody’s bet if he’ll return for the day.

Dispatch #3B, 9:05 a.m.

Tournament Director Mighty Joe Vaughan has returned to the building with a full complement of ballots, flow pads and lab animals.

Dispatch #4, 9:22 a.m.

The first doughnuts of the morning have been spotted in the judges’ lounge. Check out photo number one. The smell of coffee stretches all the way to the custodian’s closet. [Note: The photos did not print successfully to my blog. Sorry. JM]

Dispatch #5, 9:38 a.m.

The LD tab room, under the direction of Jim (“Antichrist”) Menick from Kate Hudson HS, has issued its first warning: Do not drink the water in the 3rd floor ladies room!

Dispatch #6, 10:13 a.m.

The schematics for Round One have been released. Check out photo two to see the pairings for yourself.

Dispatch #7, 11:02 a.m.

The schematics for Round Two have been released. Check out photo three to see the pairings for yourself. It’s getting pretty exciting around here. Rumor has it that round two was paired completely at random, but no one will officially comment one way or the other.

Dispatch #8, 12:18 p.m.

Pizza trucks have been spotted along the Post Road, and the buzz in the cafeteria is that they’re delivering to the tournament. In an exclusive interview, Tournament Director Mighty Joe Vaughan pointed out that the pizza will be sold at $1.50 a slice, which is $.70 less than NYC prices. Think of it: excellent debate, plus good food at reasonable prices. Yummy!

Dispatch #9, 12:28 p.m.

The first debater to purchase a slice of pizza for $1.50 was BRONX RS (Rick Soddy).

Dispatch #10, 1:48 p.m.

Things are pretty quiet as we wait for the Round 3 pairings. Check out photo four to see a cafeteria seat where Doug Lieb, Dave Lebowitz and Matt Shields are all rumored to have sat at some time in the last 4 years (but not at the same time).

Dispatch #11, 2:12 p.m.

The schematics for Round Three have been released. Check out photo five to see the pairings for yourself.

Dispatch #12, 2:33 p.m.

Things are quiet around here. Too quiet.

Dispatch #13, 2:52 p.m.

There is a mall not very far from the school, where your DOD correspondent is pleased to report that there’s a great sale on cotton V-necks at the Gap.

Dispatch #14, 3:51 p.m.

They’re offering free samples of corned beef and cabbage cookies at William Sonoma.
Check out photo number six. This is one really great mall. Thank God I had the limo.

Dispatch #15, 4:45 p.m.

Everyone is gone from the high school. The tournament must have ended. This is Herm Melville, Cub Reporter, signing off for STP!

I have apparently struck a nerve

People could just comment on posts. But, oh not, not this guy.

I reprint his email in its entirety.

Dear Mr. Menick:

You do not know me. My name is Herman Melville (no relation), and I’m writing you unofficially from VBD headquarters, where I’ve just been hired as a cub reporter. My first assignment here has been to go through the morgue (that’s a journalism term that means old crap) and look up you and your blog and your relationship with our operation.

It is not a pretty picture.

I think you do a serious disservice to our operation. When I was hired and flown into headquarters, I have to admit that even I was surprised by the scope of the VBD empire. The campus here is a marvel to behold. After you get past the guards you drive up a long winding road to a fabulous building that I understand was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in between the Guggenheim and the Johnson Wax headquarters. It’s called Passing Winds, and it’s simply phenomenal, aside from the leaks. It’s pure prairie, long and flat and built into the mountainside. The photographs do not do it justice.

I was met at the receptionist’s desk by a woman named Morgana, who is the head of the VBD intern program, which handles all the cub reporters, among other new hires. She told me that I would join this year’s contingent of ten new journalism interns, for what she knew was another great career at VBD. She then proceeded to outline the outstanding benefits package. The pension plan has become the model that many forward-thinking media corporations have recently begun emulating, including Google and Fox News. “Stay with us for forty years,” Ms. Morgana said, “and you’ll retire a rich man.”

When I finally joined up with the other interns, each of us with our “New Employee Guide” binder and our freshly minted ID cards in lanyards around our necks, we were taken on a tour of the premises. We were driven in one of the corporation’s new environmentally beneficial electric jitneys to each of the main divisions of the place. Some of them were within the main building, while some were spread over the grounds. (R&D, for instance, has a completely separate facility due to its hazmat needs.) Mr. Menick, even you would have been impressed! From the stables to the main factory to the administration building to the new VeebeeDome Stadium, it is one of the most spectacular capitalist enterprises you can imagine. And when construction is complete on VeeBee One, and the tallest building in the world is back on US soil, I have to believe that you will agree that you have been maligning us.

But as I say, I am merely a cub reporter here. And this letter bears no official weight. But if you were to come out to Euphoria yourself, if you could see what I see, if you could watch as thousands of our dedicated employees put their collective pedals to their collective forensic metal, I think you would change your tune. I would be happy to act as your guide and escort. Just say the word.

Sincerely,

Herman Melville
Cub Reporter
VBD
Euphoria, ND

P.S. If you can arrange a trip for the weekend of 4/16, you would be on hand for the launching of VBStat, our latest news satellite. I am told that the satellite launches are big party events not only for the corporation but for all the surrounding countryside. You wouldn’t want to miss that!

My adventures in instant messaging

I post this correspondence thread as it occurred.

“Yo, that’s a little cold, Menick. I mean, why would you attack poor Vassar? They’re just trying to throw a tournament. You should support them. Have you no sense of noblesse oblige or eminence grise?”
N

“I have nothing against Vassar, which you know perfectly well. I love Vassar. My daughter almost thought of applying there! My point is not that Vassar is having a tournament, but that VMI is covering it moment-by-moment. While they’re also covering tournaments in Texas, Guam and Nova Zembla.”
M

“So what’s wrong with that? The world wants to know, eh? They’re providing a service. They’re like a gas station open all night, and debaters are like cars that are about to run out of gas on lonely roads in the middle of nowhere.”
N

“The legendary Nostumite way with a metaphor… Anyhow, who died and made me eminence grise, anyhow?”
M

“You’re putting me into a state of permanent depression. You have POWER, for God’s sake. The power of experience. People look up to you. Well, maybe they don’t look up to you, but they look at you as being old and wise. Well, maybe not wise, but old, anyhow. You’re probably the oldest person associated with debate on the East Coast now that Sodikow’s retired. You should act the part.”
N

“The part of Sodikow?”
M

“The part of wise and productive old age, you randy fart.”
N

“When you start referring to me as a randy fart I think we have crossed the line!”
M

“All I’m saying is that you should be kinder and gentler. It won’t kill you.”
N

“You’v done your own share of taking pot shots at GTA.”
M

“But I’m like Claire’s b.f. I speak from a position of anonymity commingled with lofty intentions.”
N

“This has nothing to do with either Phaeton or lofty intentions. I’m simply making a satirical comment that perhaps DNC is taking itself a little too seriously, and that maybe 24 by 7 is, perhaps, 20 by 5 too much.”
M

“Let's cut to the chase. Are you going to let up on the poor yabbos?”
N

“Does the pope wave out of windows?”
M

At which point my cable service went down.

The production crews are rolling in

(According to a certain website, there will be live coverage from Po'keepsie this weekend for those forced to stay home.)

Let me tell you, you can't move out there. The traffic is completely out of hand. The production trucks started moving up the Taconic before dawn this morning, and the eyes of virtually the entire Hudson Valley have turned northward. Not since Woody and Soon-Yi shot their wedding video in Nyack has so much show-biz been seen south of Schenectady (or, for that matter, north of synecdoche).

Classes at the college were shut down by ten a.m. to make room for the technicians. All the buildings on the campus are being rewired, and a KritiKam is being installed in every room where the rounds will be taking place. You'll be able to watch every turn, every refutation, every drop, every point on every flow, right from the comfort of your own home! Why brave the crowds when the KritiKam is as good as being there? Maybe better? Interestingly, some rounds will be judged remotely, if the participants so choose. This is a response to Critical Debate Theory; the goal is to remove the judge's possible tainting of the round by his or her race, age, sexual orientation or garlic breath. Pundits claim that the resulting results will be the least tainted since, well, Woody and Soon-Yi's wedding video.

The tearing down of the administration building for the erection of the temporary Challenge Courtyard Tent is the most controversial aspect of the proceedings. The tournament directors were able to assuage the fears of the college by promising that the tent would be a lot more "with it" than that old-fashioned ivy-covered gothic stone monstrosity it's replacing (one of which is seen, let's face it, at practically every college campus). Additionally, the tournament directors promised that if any of the deans and their families were interested, they would be welcome at lunch on Saturday, provided they were willing to judge a couple of rounds of Public Forum and didn't mind ziti.

Hackers, meanwhile, are said to be drooling over the prospect this weekend of practically every computer in the country online to one event. The FBI reports that they have already intercepted two viruses, one of which (FooKooKoo) drives either you or your computer insane; the other (codenamed Chipsallin) takes every last bit of your money while masquerading to coaches as a nice quiet game of Hearts. One of the great fears of this much concentration of the country on one spot is the possibility that, in between rounds, the entire country will flush the toilet at the same time and cause the greatest water shortage since Woody and Soon-Yi's wedding video. Water Works authorities are reported to be standing by. Meanwhile, airports, train stations and cargo container ships have already notice a marked increase in people leaving the country to avoid the likely confusion. Homeland Security is raising the alert to the very highest, and both George Bush and Dick Cheney have been safely transported to separate, secure, underground bunkers in undisclosed locations.

Perhaps the most telling comment describing the weekend that will change America forever came from Woody and Soon-Yi. "This is what happens when you let men on the campus," the happy couple agreed.

This is not a good house...

,,, they don't have any Wodehouse.

I can't remember where I picked up that piece of doggerel, but it's true, of course. Apparently MC has been brought over to the positive side of the force through exposure coming back from Harvard. I thought I was the only one listening, since no one commented. But Mac is apparently now joining the legion of people who recognize the name Gussie Fink-Nottle, which is much to his credit. The thing about Plum is that you can listen, and it's like being washed over with hilarious poetry in a language you marginally recognize, or you can do the work and read it yourself, and either way you're in for a treat. I figure every convert I collect is one more cow creamer on my path to heaven.

Keeping up with my personal rush to eclecticism, the new Zatoichi film is a pip. I watched it yesterday while I was dying of this cold my daughter brought back from Japan, which I guess was some sort of sympathetic magic approach. Anyhow, can you not love a blind samurai movie that ends with a big dance number? I was always a fan of the original Ichi, and didn't even know till recently that there was a whole series. I miss samurai films. We used to go to theatres that were showing them by the bucketful back in the 70s; I don't know if there's anything analogous today. We'd sit in the smoking section up in the balcony for what seemed like days on end. Ah, wasted youth. (Did I really smoke a pack and a half a day? Ah, wasted lungs.)

Does anyone watch movies by the bucketful anymore? Do people care about films much anymore aside from their value as something to do when hanging out requires some content?

Final recommendation: Get Bruce. You probably have to be a little show-bizzy to enjoy this one (you know you're a little show-bizzy when a credit at the opening of the film says "Music by Michael Feinstein" and perk up a little) but it's fun, and if you're interested in behind-the-scenes at the Oscars, for example, it's a film to see. Behind the scenes has to be more interesting that in front of them, if this year was any indication. I just don't care anymore. So why do I always watch anyhow?

Vrot Splinky, International Declamation Champ: The exclusive MVP interview!

MVP: [Smiles] So, champ, tell us about yourself.
VS: There’s not much to say.
MVP: [Snorts] How did you get into declamation?
VS: Well, it was easier than the other IEs because you didn’t have to cut a piece. I just stole mine from my coach’s cousin.
MVP: [Gasps] What pieces did you do?
VS: Just the one. “I’ll Murder Your Children if You Don’t Rank Me a One.”
MVP: [Chortles] You were pretty much a picket-fence performer from the get-go.
VS: Sure. If they wanted their children to live past the weekend.
MVP: [Trips on mop] Did you do anything other than declamation?
VS: Dec was my life, dude.
MVP: [Inadvertently logs off server, crashes, reboots and trims fingernails] You never wanted to expand into, say, JV interp?
VS: Are you calling me a wimp? Nobody calls me a wimp.
MVP: [Lifts eyebrows in classic fear reaction and ducks under table] You’re only able to do declamation for two years in the CFL. What happened after that?
VS: I dropped out of school. I mean, life was pretty much over. I got a job at IBM designing medical software.
MVP: [Scratching like baseball pitcher] That sounds awfully difficult.
VS: Not for a declaimer. Besides, the only other people applying for the job were women, and you know what that Harvard guy says about them.
MVP: [Mentally sorting Critical Feminist responses] Are you still at IBM?
VS: I’m on sabbatical until the lawsuit comes to court.
MVP: [Chewing cud] Can we see your crib?

(And no, I had nothing to do with this. Address your comments to the Nostrumite. Spend two hours with the guy and he wants to co-opt your blog! Then again, it's a slow debate week.)

Sixes and sevens

I'm sort of at loose ends this week, for one thing or another, none of them worth describing. I do have a couple of tight ends worth mentioning, though.

First, Matt J's judging paradigm on BVD is the cat's sleeping attire. I will be trying to figure out a good use for it. It's over the head of newbie adults, of course, but it might be a good handout to starting varsity kids when they begin to judge. And maybe also to parents after they've been on the bus for a while. Whatever. It's a document of great sense. Of course, I'd enjoy it more if it also showed his crib, his pimped ride and a couple of schematics from round three.

Jon O'C is going to interview himself? My mouse is at the starting gate... (What would I do without DVM to razz? I wouldn't bother if it didn't have enough good stuff—and the audience—to demonstrate the potential for so much more.)

"From Caveman to Frenchman" is now finally complete. I realize I've been dragging this out since October! But I think I needed it to come together in my mind before I could pretend to know what I was talking about. (Now that it HAS come together in my mind, pretending to know what I'm talking about will be a breeze.) The problem with critical theory and pomo and all that stuff is that there is no bright line. Everyone disagrees internally with his or her own writings, much less trying to find someone to put a coherent overview on it. And pomo has more spikes and offshoots than a Rasta on a bad-hair day. Not to mention the inherently bad writing. One of my problems was going back too far, I think; maybe I could have skipped the cavemen? We'll see. If it actually goes over well I'll write it up for the Hillary Duff.

Imaginary friends

Harvard was a big weekend for magic and mystery. Oh yeah, and shopping. I bought an Edith Wharton book illustrated by Maxwell Parrish for the spouse, a lifetime supply of red ink for my Dr. Grips, Fluxx, a Martin Greenberg anthology, chocolate pudding ice cream, and untold numbers of Brazilian CDs (Caetano forever!). I'll also admit to a Rosie (a Concord album I've never even seen before). In terms of torturing people with canned entertainment, in the car we listened to Jean Shepherd, Bertie Wooster, Elmore Leonard, Warren Zevon and The Rocky Horror Show. We'll sleep when we're dead!

The biggest mystery was the imaginary friend. Now, Lord knows, I go back with this woman for years now. I've known her longer than I've owned many of my socks. I've never known her to get "creative" in all that time (give or take the odd adolescent overenthusiasm). But I have fully come to believe that the new b.f. simply does not exist. How come he could only meet with us Sunday night? Did he know that the weather would be bad and we'd missing breaking by the breath of a speaker point and hence hit the road? Not to mention all those other times I've never seen him. At this point, I've come to accept that Clayton doesn't exist. Maybe it's Claeton, spelled to rhyme with the Rolls Royce. Or Claethon, as in Phaethon, and he's the son Helios never liked to talk about. Whichever. Clayton: if you're reading this, I know you don't exist, so you can stop right now.

As for magic, I did get to hang with the Nostrumite Saturday night during the 4th round while everyone else was debating or judging. We sat in some burger joint and waxed nosty on old times and alternately watched the BC/Syracuse game on ESPN and the crawl on CNN. The lad was sent into a state of permanent depression when we read that doctors had removed some baby's extra second head. Fortunately, the crawl said, this condition was "rare." We hadn't known this. We thought that two-headed babies were as common as Frenchpeople at a Dump Bush convention. Of course, this is the sort of thing that starts the Mite yapping for hours on end, decrying the poor usage of the English language and spewing forth on the over-reliance on synecdoche in critical animal rights theory and ultimately telling me in deepest confidence that he's heard that the PETA people are trying to ban the playing of "Fur Elise" on the local classical radio station. Don't even ask about his reaction to the women who refused to go wild for Koko the gorilla. There are nights like this one when I wish Jules weren't still in Dahomey or wherever he went. (Now I know it wasn't Dahomey, which really does sound like someone from Dahood, but that's just too easy.) Maldives? Whatever. The Mite says Julie should be back toward the end of spring or the beginning of summer. Good. The Nostrumite always needs someone to keep the lid on. Maybe he should get married again. He's about due. Come to think of it, there is no Claethon, so maybe there's a possibility there...

DLI

I’ll be getting together with the Nostrumite up at Cambridge this weekend, needless to say. In fact, checking in with the lad is one of the reasons I’m going to Harvard in the first place. Maybe the only reason, except perhaps for some residual insanity in the Menick DNA. The Mite, who is now coaching policy for Tennessee Williams HS, a small venue right outside of Boston, somehow expects that the two of us will spend the weekend pub crawling. The idea that we are both the responsible adults on this expedition seems so far to have eluded him. It will be sad to see the effect of the news when it dawns on him that our greatest kick might be an extra shot of espresso at Starbucks.

Anyhow, I was amused to learn that the Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over what he refers to as Defeat Longjohns Intermittently. He firmly believes that he can pin the magic date to within three hours when the chickens will come home to roost. “Don’t these people know that at three a.m. on the Wednesday of the third week of October during their junior year in college they will suddenly remember what they posted in their Cribs piece, and realize that they are scarred forever and that their lives will suddenly become a living hell of self-recrimination? That you never overcome the photo of the George Foreman grill where you cook all your tuna melts, or the image of the Freddie the Ferret doll you’ve been sleeping with since kindergarten, or your painting of Bietz Contemplating the Bust of Jon Cruz, or the picture of the room where your Uncle Ralph was sleeping when the local constabulary nabbed him for—well, we won’t talk about that one.” Why is it the Cribs that always brings out the worst in people? “If you ask me,” the lad continues, “DLI is missing some good opportunities.” And, of course, he proceeds to list them:

Pimp My Bus Ride: Pictures of the school buses the debaters arrive at tournaments in
Debate Makeover: Take some nerdy guy in a suit and tie and patent leather pumps and subject him to the real world. Throw away his jacket, pull out his shirt tail, get him into some $200 sneakers and put a backwards baseball cap on his head—Voila! The transformation is complete: an LDer turned into a Policy person.
Emory Poker Championships: That one is self-explanatory, perfect for both the Travel and Weather Channels.
Iron Chef Forensician: A look into the cafeterias at your favorite debate venues! Today’s ingredient? Ziti!
The Biggest Loser: Enough with all these good debaters. How about profiling a few real stinkers for a change, those people who show up week after week and go 0-6? The salt of the debate earth, so to speak.

The Nostrumite goes on and on with this, but I won’t bore you with the rest of them. If you see us in Cambridge, join up with us as we pretend to pub crawl. I’m sure he’ll be happy to regale you with another hundred or so.

Inside the trenches

Herewith, a self-explanatory note from a parent judge. This is what keeps this activity valuable beyond its own little borders. If you intrinsically can't pick up her ballot, you're not that good a debater, bub, and this activity has been worthless to you in the grand scheme of things.

***

On Being a Mommy Judge

When my son became a debater, I was told that I would have to get involved as a judge, especially if my son wanted to go to many tournaments. I decided that I would support my son in this activity. As an English-speaking mommy, I was only required to invest 1 hour in judge training. From then on, I received on-the-job training, starting as a novice and advancing to varsity.

When I agree to serve as a judge at a tournament, I accept full responsibility. I don’t leave unless I am “dismissed.” I check the schematics to make sure I get to where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be there (I admit that one time the “judge squad” had to find me to tell me that I was supposed to be judging when I was sitting around gabbing with other mommies; I was embarrassed and I hope that never happens again). I make sure my ballots get to the tab room, even if I have to bring them there myself. I read my son’s cases so I have some knowledge and understanding of the resolution (sometimes he asks me to read his cases to make sure it can be understood by a mommy/daddy judge). I flow the debate and try to follow the contentions, subpoints, blocks, rebuttals, harms, values and warrants. I try to write something meaningful on the ballots. After a tournament, I read my son’s ballots to try to gain insight into other judges’ insights. I have been operating with two basic assumptions: 1) this is the way adults behave and 2) I need to be a role model for my children and other people’s children, not the other way around. Apparently, some mommy and daddy judges should be taking grown-up lessons from their children.

Last week I judged 5 varsity rounds and I found myself pushed to the limit of my debate judging skills. These debaters were moving so fast, that it was difficult for me to follow their arguments. Flowing became almost impossible. After they read their cases, I found it easier to spend more energy on listening instead of flowing. I tried to see the big picture instead of all the little pieces. I found it difficult to write something on the ballot that would support my decision. I gave it my best shot, and that’s good enough for me. When I found myself as one of three judges in the first break round, I had to disclose, and this was after the God-coach of debate gave his treatise on how and why he made his decision. That was a hard act to follow, and although I accept the basic premise that debate is an activity that can and should be judged by mommies and daddies, I was a bit intimidated. I had been exposed as a mommy judge.

So what’s the payback? Why do I make the effort and “volunteer” to serve as a judge? I get to sit around high school cafeterias eating not hot pizza, cross the Bear Mountain Bridge in a school bus, and watch the steam rise in a stifling hot classroom when it’s below freezing outside. I also get to see my son put on a suit and tie and engage in an activity that I know will serve him well today and in the future. I leave these debate tournaments with a renewed faith in American youth. The writing, thinking and speaking skills that are on display really blows me away.

I know that there are some mommies and daddies that are better judges than me (my husband for starters). Apparently, there are far too many that are worse, simply because they don’t make the effort. I have decided that I need to be the best judge that I am capable of being. My son is entitled to no less than that from any mommy or daddy judge.

Rochelle Mozlin Insler
February 15, 2005

Inside the bunker

This weekend's tab room at Lakeland was, perhaps, emblematic. It was also hotter than Baghdad. You should know what goes on in there.

First of all, the judges were, again, one step ahead of us. I thought that the fact that they often don't speak English and that they know every hiding place in every school was trouble enough, but they pulled a new one on us this time. They went home. One of them left a note at the ballot table Friday night informing us that he would not return on the morrow. Another simply didn't return, with no notice whatsoever. That both these judges left in the middle of the tournament, in one case abandoning a team completely, is beyond my understanding. I wanted to toss the teams out on their butts, but I was only running the computer, not the tournament. It gets harder and harder to like lay judges, but the real issue is the kids, not the judges. There is no question that the teams involved knew full well that their judges were blowing off their obligations, just like kids know full well that they haven't bothered to train their judges, but don't give a damn, because their bad judges will be out judging someone else. The notoriety of a handful of teams, and a handful of judges, because greater and greater. I guess the offenders simply hope that we'll stop scheduling their lousy judges and let them off the hook. Now THAT is sleazy. And deliberate. I'm tempted to start posting the names of the schools and judges to avoid. And I can't wait to write the judge section of next year's Bump invite. Don't even think of signing up if those notables are any of yours. You know who you are.

There were plenty of bright spots, though. While I alone was left to defend Moby Dick as a regular reread (the various coaches assembled were almost unanimously strong supporters of tossing Melville overboard completely), and also seemed to be the only person who liked Dickens AND Austen, we could at least all agree that The DaVinci Code is the only bestseller in recent memory that actually delivered on what a bestseller ought to deliver. In other words, it was only as philistines that the coaches could find unity. Then there was the Menick evidence against kritiks, or something along those lines. Let's put it this way. Some yabo quoted this blog in his case, against a Hen Hud debater, and WON! I don't know which is more embarrassing, that the yabo didn't have a clue to the credibility of his source, or that my guy lost to it. Heads should seriously be hanging in shame today. And then there was the usual schmoozing and gossiping about various and sundry. Mr X with his ego being the only thing bigger than his mouth was roundly savaged, and everyone hopes he will be going away at the end of the season. Ms Y, it turns out, was given the boot; I didn't even know her but I was glad to hear it. And the disconnect between what everyone says the TOC is doing and what the TOC is doing was remarked upon yet again; as a member of the LD advisory committee, I am ever astounded at the things people say we're up to!

And on the local front, a commitment was made to keep the MHL together in the face of Bill Barthelme's leaving Bergenfield. News of how we'll do things will be reported eventually, but expect at least as many tournaments as in the past, and an active website for signups and information.

And not that you really care at all, but Lakeland was yet another example of why you can't use the "new" TRPC software. Every version after 2002 has faults. The runover of divisions is well-known, but this time we got incompletely filled-in schematics, plus total inability to find extra judges that were clearly available in the data. If you plan to run a tournament and need the old software, let me know. It's on my flashdrive and it's yours for the asking. If you use the new software, you're on your own. The only good thing it does is print ballots, if that's your fancy. The only way to use it is if you have one and only one division of something (and even then you'll run into trouble, e.g., it forgets how to print a schematic). I use these programs week after week after week, and while the old version lacks a few bells and whistles, it's solid as a rock, and Rich Edwards is my god! As for the new version... I prefer index cards.

You know who you are

Yeah, you, You're the sort of debater who believes that all a negative has to do is say that the affirmative is wrong. As much as possible, you avoid a position of your own.

Here's how you'll do this in March-April.

Now, I grant you that this is a mushy topic, which is why no one voted for it (it only came in #2 out of 10—who are these people, for pete's sake). I know my team didn't vote for it (I save our ballot). The thing is, I can't imagine more nebulous constructs than community or national standards. (I won't even talk about where civil liberties comes in!) Even the Supreme Court has gone to great lengths to not define the two, but simply to leave cs in the hands of the sitting jury facing the evidence in hand. You're the community, folks: have at it.

So, in the event, the aff will have no choice but to define and defend community standards above national standards. The negative, even your negative, will have to concede that, if protecting cs "better protects" civil liberties, it has to actually be better than some other thing. The natural (preferable, and ultimately stronger) negative is that, no, ns better protects, and now let us compare the two. I say natural, because it demonstrates an intuitive understanding of the English language, that better implies a comparison of two items. Also, debating thus will provide the neg not only with reasons why cs is not good, but why something else is indeed better, which is a strategically strong position all negs should attempt to achieve in any resolution. Neg's advocacy should always be equal to aff's, if for no other reason than that this strategy forces aff to address strong arguments other than refutations of aff's own (putting aside kritiks, of course). You never listen to that, though.

Anyhow, here's what you're going to do. Rather than explaining why nat stds better serve civil liberties than com stds (which, of course, they seem to do, at least if you don't think about it too hard, which means that neg has an intuitively stronger case if neg grabs the topic by the tail and stares it straight in the eye), you are going to argue that:
1. It is difficult or impossible to differentiate between ns and cs
2. Because of 1, we can't know which is which
3. Because of 2, we can't choose between them
4. Therefore, the aff is not true because we can't tell which is better because we don't know the difference

Keep in mind, when you make this argument, that it is paradigmatic of bad debating. That won't stop you, but at least you'll know what you're doing.

According to my calendar, I probably will not be judging this topic. Lucky you.

Moving right along, Criticism #12.5

12 1/2. Discussion of CX on VB, thumbs up. All right, I admit to asking the team to create a VB in a barred circle graphic for me, but I do like discussions like this one. First of all, it demonstrates that most people take CX very seriously, plus it gives food for thought to debaters on what to do with it. But more to the point, I like a place where people can discuss debate theory, which a site like VB can do nicely. On the other hand, I really don't need to know what brand of toothpaste is used by the guy who made it to doubles at the Pago Pago Prep Chowder Society Invitational. But if you want wheat, I guess you have to sort through some chaff. (Has anyone posted the photos yet of the PPPCSI? I understand a lot of people where seen in classrooms wearing suits. I can't wait!)

The eleventh criticism (and a half)

I was wrong. I am big enough to admit it.

11. Carvel: thumbs up. Wally the Whale rules (or, as Elmer Fudd would say, Wally the Whale wules).

11 1/2. Claire. 'Nuff said.

Ten criticisms, during an off debate period

The young 'uns are doing midterms this week, which makes me wonder how many will turn up at tonight's meeting. So, if they wish to pass the time not studying and not meeting, they could pursue some of the following.

1. The Last Samurai, thumbs up. Lots of people refuse to see Tom Cruise movies on face, which is a mistake. They should only refuse to see some Tom Cruise movies on face. He's perfectly good in this one, which is a nice sequel to Pacific Overtures in my private little universe. I did not, however, watch the supplemental second disk of extras. Even I draw the line somewhere. My only complaint about the film is that it needed more Billy Connelly.

2. Coffee and Cigarettes, thumbs all over the place. Worth watching, I guess, especially if you're up late nights wondering about RZA and GZA and if your daughter is insane for liking the Ghost Dog soundtrack.

3. Legal Affairs magazine, serious thumbs up to keep the brain juiced. For instance, read this on Intellectual Property: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/November-December-2004/feature_hunter_novdec04.html

4. NPR online, thumbs way up. For instance, sample Johnny Carson: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4464083

5. The next Robert James Waller novel, thumbs down for anyone who doesn't think they're a cowboy. I just put this one down on my desk. This guy is a little undisciplined, a little interesting, a little terrible, a little cute.

6. The next Trevanian "novel" is nicely thumbs up. No one remembers this guy, who wrote Shibumi, one of my favorite silly thrillers. His autobiographical novel of his youth in Albany is a real wallow. Makes you glad you missed the 30s and the Depression, but if W gets his way economically, we may get to see similar times again soon. Oh dollar on the international market, we hardly knew ye.

7. Under the Tuscan Sun, thumbs way down. Of course, you get to look at the Tuscan scenery, but if you are thinking of suffering through a chickflick for the sake of balancing your Blade collection, look elsewhere.

8. Slow-cooked duck, thumbs up. 325 for 3 hours, 400 for 1/2 hour, thank you Nigella.

9. Red Ranger Came Calling by Berkeley Breathed, thumbs up. Nice kids children book that was sitting on my pile that I read over the snowy weekend.

10. "Men are smarter than women" sez Harvard honcho. Thumbs way up. This is getting more ink than Iraq, Social Security and Brad-Jen combined. I, for one, didn't know men's brains were (proportionately) 16% bigger than women's, as reported by the New York Times. No conversation with a Harvard girl (like Claire) is now complete without a nod toward Larry Summers. I don't think I convinced Claire to rethink her computer science career choice, but with that missing 16%... I don't know. Sounds like trouble to me. Fortunately she can always get her old job back scooping ice cream at Carvel.

Great moments in debate

The average weekend is full of them, if you know where to look. Being buried in the tab room often cuts you off from the ebb and the flow of things, but I did manage a couple of magical moments.

For instance, there was the judge who decided to riffle through the teacher's desk. While this is in itself an extraordinary event, in this particular case the teacher happened to be in the room! The judge made an attractive nuisance defense (the drawer was open and looked interesting), followed by a we-always-riffle-through-the-teacher's-desks-in-Texas defense (which is, I guess, a sort of Rehnquistian anti-federalist ploy), followed by the oh-shucks-what's-that-printed-on-the-ceiling defense. Some people are born with a silver foot in their mouth.

Then there was the moment when I went over to see if all the judges had turned up for the novice finals. As I entered the room, Robbie, rather than proceeding with his 1AC, interrupted the proceedings to take a call on his cell phone. Presumably it was his broker, or bookie, or bag man. Hard to tell. Harder too to turn your cell off, when you're expecting a call from your broker, or bookie, or bag man. Then again, maybe it was just Noah calling in with a turn off negative's second contention.

My only hope is that everyone was on the bus when I sent it home Saturday night. I still have a vague sense that someone was left behind. Has anyone seen NoShow lately?

My Keeper's Brother

It was suggested to Robbie last weekend that, in fact, Noah had written his cases.

If they only knew the truth.

I remember back to those so-called days of yore. Noah, as we all knew at the time, was incapable of holding two sequentially coherent thoughts in his head for more than three seconds at a time. He was completely dyslexic (in fact, his mother was very active in DAM, the Mothers Against Dyslexia). And if that wasn't enough, he had a tendency to overpack for short trips, bring every article of clothing he had ever owned even to tournaments where he wasn't staying overnight. I had warned the family that there was no way I could turn this frail wreck into a debater, and suggested that he think about the wrestling team as more suitable to his talents. At that point his mother took me aside and told me about Robbie. "He's only a first grader," she said, "but he really understands Lincoln-Douglas." She surreptitiously handed me some papers. When I read them later, I realized that they were cases, two sides of the current resolution, the best I had ever seen. An affirmative, and a negative, and both of them were true. And they had been written by Robbie, during recess, while the other kids were falling off the jungle gym.

In the following four years, it became progressively harder to hide the fact that Noah's success was based completely on running Robbie's cases. Fortunately no one ever noticed that Noah's knobby fingers were incapable of typing, much less knocking out case after case after case. Robbie used to prep Noah on a daily basis, giving him drills, trying to keep his attention pinned to the topic at hand. It wasn't easy. And there were a couple of times when Noah simply wasn't up to the task, and we substituted Robbie in his place. (This was especially difficult at Glenbrooks, where Robbie, in the third grade at the time, had a lot of difficulty adjusting to the time change, the cold showers at the tournament hotel, and the combination of the names of the coaches running the thing, viz, Whipple and Belch.)

Anyhow, Robbie can now finally come into his own, and no longer has to prop up his degenerate brother. And I for one say, it's about time.

(PS: Noah is now in Israel learning Hebrew so that he can study international law in Jerusalem. How Robbie is managing to both write cases and prop up his degenerate brother in Israel is beyond me, but my guess is, he's doing just that.)

Windows for Nostrumite, V.666

As I've been sorting out the next few weeks of judging and visiting Massachusetts, I touched base with the Nostrumite, who almost didn't make it to return my emails because he is in a state of permanent depression over his recent attempts to upgrade his computer. "I shoulda bought a Mac," he told me glumly. "A couple of weeks ago I got an error that my PC's hard disk was out of space, with marching orders to erase or die, and since then, every day a little death doesn't begin to describe it." You've got to hand it to him: even in the midst of core meltdown, he manages to toss in a Sondheim reference. That's my boy!

He began by eliminating some of the games he never plays anymore, he told me. He has a habit of buying a game, playing it for two hours until he reaches some particular difficulty that will take some clever offense, and then tossing it on the cybernetic ash heap. "I got rid of Age of Mythology, which I never liked, and Age of Empires, which I bought because they said it was just like Age of Mythology, which should have been a warning rather than siren call, but in any case, after that I blew away American McGee's Alice and a few unintellible zip files and a couple of copies of the TRPC software, and I was cooking with gas. Megabyte after megabyte fell like scales before my eyes." Unfortunately, by this point, the machine was slogging away at the speed of a Commodore 64 or Lionel Richie, whichever seems slower to you while sticking roughly to the same metaphor. "My virus definitions were older than a Commodore 64," the Mite said, "or older than Lionel Richie, so I downloaded and installed a new version of Norton. While I was at it, I scraped the bottom for spybots. I really felt as if I was cleaning up dramatically." But he had as yet gotten no increase in speed. Far from it. "So I went for the Big One, and loaded up good old Service Pack 2, which is the Godfather 3 of operating system upgrades." Which solved the problem? "Now it takes me ten minutes to start up, which means I'm afraid to ever turn the machine off." Any plus sides? "Well, once I got into the upgrading mode, I upgraded iTunes so that I could buy the Triplets of Belleville theme song"—that, I will add, was my recommendation to the lad, who fell in love with the tune at first byte—"but then I couldn't offload to the iPod which also needed new software, so I upgraded that, and lost about half my music, that is, anything I had put in with any software other than iTunes. At which point, I would have murdered Commodore Perry, or Sophie Coppola, or anyone else who got in my way."

But the machine was now back to fighting speed? I asked.

"I shoulda bought a Mac," he replied.

It ain't easy, being a Nostrumite.

Ten criticisms, following the Christmas break

1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: Thumbs down. You read 800 pages waiting for the story to get started. The author has a creamy, readable style, but substance here is sadly lacking. If you're looking for Harry Potter for grownups, read Harry Potter.

2. Finding Neverland: Thumbs up, provided you attend with the requisite three hankies. Still waiting for the mythical bad Johnny Depp movie.

3. Triplets of Belleville: Thumbs up for the theme song alone, much less the curious animation style. No Spirited Away, but a winner.

4. Robert Caro: Thumbs up for anything. This man cannot write a bad word. I'm back in Robert Moses land again. What a bastid!

5. The new Pacific Overtures: TU, almost as good as the original (high praise indeed). But not as good, when all is said and done. Nevertheless, clever staging, and with that score...

6. Avenue Q: TU, although you never know whether to look at the puppets or the people.

7. The Terminal: TU. Which is more awesome, Hanks's talent or the built-for-this-movie set?

8. Bubba Ho-Tep: Reluctant thumbs down. Once you know that Elvis and JFK (who has been turned black) are living in a nursing home, you can write the script yourself. Too bad. Should have been a lot funnier.

9. Postmodernism: TD. The "lecture" continues apace, now that I've caught up a little with M. Foucault. My problem? I can't get past relativism. Anyone claiming that there is no objective reality needs to be hit over the head with a golf club.

10. Speaking of which, Golf: TD. I got worse this year. The team tried, getting me a great playing lesson. I played exactly one good round the whole season, the very last one, in October. At which point I grabbed the clubs out of the car and hid them in the basement. Unfortunately, I will no doubt remember where they are when April starts piercing at the old root.

So as you can see, my life is dull. Things seem to be jumping on the debate websites, though. They even had a Round Robin New Year's Eve. Can those forensicians celebrate or what?