Sdrawkcab

.
All right. I got the resolution backwards in my mind. I really like that I was wrong. If the neg has to uphold democratic values, the neg can't critique democratic values. I think of it as a (probably unpremeditated) preemptive strike on the part of the wording committee. They should make it the law going forward. In all resolutions, if the affirmative must uphold a literally negative statement, then negatives must actually run a case (to wit, an affirmation) and "all I have to do is prove the resolution is not true" goes down the proverbials. Of course, affs must also run a case, because they can't respond to what hasn't been said yet.

It might end up being a lot like debate.

Last night I added a (rather punk) graphic to the MHL site, and linked the HH site to the MHL site through the graphic. This took a bit of time for some reason. Maybe because I work on both the PC and Little Elvis simultaneously these days. The PC mostly chugs along upgrading podcast subscriptions through iTunes. Anyone running the old original PC iPod understands the complexities of that. How slow can your computer go? Try it and find out. Meanwhile Little E and I groove along doing everything else.

Kurt has the MHL invoices going out. Everybody owes money; it's just a question of how much. I am so happy that I have nothing to do with that side of things.

I sent a bunch of research leads out yesterday on the listserver. One debater who will remain nameless complained that they didn't write the case for him. Jeesh. And I thought we would have been able to eliminate all the thinking on our end by visiting just the right websites. I was so wrong. (And no doubt he'll complain about this comment.)

And HoraceMan, the superhero with no superpowers, is apparently the only one going to Wake. I'm not surprised. It's a lot of energy and investment early in the year, especially with the energy and investment of Yale following so quickly on its heels. So I signed him up, anyhow. And I put signup deadlines for Monti and BB into the group calendar. I'm assuming that we will send oodle-loads to both, even if O'C is doing all the cooking himself (at both of them—he's pretending to be a parent at Monti just to practice his chops). Speaking of which, I wonder if it's safe to go back to the MI5 website. Last time I looked there were so many mocassins I was tempted to throw Little Elvis out the window, but I'd only do that it O'C were walking by at the opportune moment. Baudrillard was SOOOOOOO right about commerce and reality!

LDEP, and Wines of the World Unite!

.
The Lincoln-Douglas Education Project Their goal seems to be making LD safe for the ages. Barnes, an old Hen Hudder, has grabbed the problem and is actually trying to organize folks to do something about it. The problem, of course, is the tendency to argue anything but the resolution, to argue in such a way that the debate is inaccessible to any but a specialized audience, to use materials that are inappropriate to high school, etc. I've been looking at their proposed ballot. I have some reservations about their speaker-point system. It's not a bad idea, necessarily, but a hard one to get across because of embedded practices. That'll be interesting. The ballot also stated: The affirmative must persuade the judge that the resolution is true, and the negative must persuade the judge that the resolution is false. This I don't buy as a paradigm. Not that it's necessarily untrue sometimes, but it's a license for weasely negs that have no offensive thrust. As I've said about a bazillion times, the neg is not just the absence of the aff. So, we'll see how that pans out.

I do like the idea of a general speaking point system adapted by one and all. It's really ridiculous that at a given tournament every judge has a unique idea of what points are for and how they should be rewarded, especially when we're attempting to give speaker awards based on these unique ideas. Throw in those non-English-speaking judges, and Whoa, Nellie. That's why I've posted judging materials on the MHL site, and why I'll distribute those materials at tournaments.

Meanwhile, O'C is up in arms over our team calendar—why is he on our team calendar—which pointed out that the food at Big Bronx, when they had any (there was a year or two when the best you could hope for was Hobo Stew over an open fire at the subway yards), wasn't exactly up to Iron Chef standards. Iron Stomach standards, maybe. If you've read his invitation, you'll notice that this year they're doing a Wines of the World tasting or something like that. Beers of the World? Diet Cokes of the World? God only knows, because aside from promising it, there's no explanation of what it is. Not that we need a menu down to the last peanut and coriander leaf, but this Buffets of the Bronx thing isn't exactly clear. Sips of Science? Feasts of Forensics? Lucullian LD? Pastry Puffs of Policy? (That one's got a ring to it.) Whiffs of Pffft? Whatever. Well, I'm reserving judgment until the event. (Oh, yeah. I've been communicating with BA Gregg who's doing Pffft tab, and he sounds open to torturing O'C as much as I am. We might have to install a take-a-number system, the way things are going.)

MHL is live

.
I sent out a bazoogle of messages today pointing people to the MHL site. I'm surprised how few of the messages bounced, and how few people wrote back and told me I should fold it seven times and stuff it.

I did cancel the first chez. The thing is, the meeting is specifically to give early prep to Ewok and HoraceMan, and neither could attend. Poor Ewok has to go on vacation with his parents. That'll bum you out... I mean, if he doesn't want to go, they can always take me. I could use a few days off. And HoraceMan (with God knows what strange superpower) is still out there making mocassins from birch bark.

Anyhow, all the mailing lists for MHL are up and running, and the next big job, after some calendar management (don't ask, cause I ain't a' gonna tell), is the Bump invite.

Little Elvis update: My portable mouse (a two-click jobbie) works like the proverbial charm. It Apple-mouses for the Apple, and PC-mouses for Virtual PC. Go, Little Elvis. Go!

Good news, bad news

.
But I'm not sure which is which.

According to Erin, I am banned in China. I am used to being banned in small venues. It's nice to know I've reached the big time.

According to O'C, there was a joke pic of me on DMZ. Of course I missed it, because the site is mostly pix of people on the premises making mocassins out of birch bark. Parochial, shall we say? Of course, you know I love the site. With great abandon. (Which means I've sort of abandoned the site at least until the mocassin-making is over.) Will I rot in hell for not consulting it every two seconds? I wonder if it's banned in China...

According to Burgers, there is a blog devoted entirely to burgers. (Okay, there were only two categories and this is a third thing, but can't you be a little flexible?) Figures. And it figures he would know about it.

I wonder if people in China are eating hamburgers, wondering where I am while they read about mocassin-making at DMZ?

Who are these people?

.
I'm putting together a mailing list for the MHL. My starting point was my mailing list for Bump. Good gravy! There's a couple of hundred names, and I can identify maybe 3, and 2 of those are Lynne C's. I asked Kurt to add his names, and we'll send it out, I hope, the beginning of next week. After the delivery failures and the don't-darken-my-electronic-door-ever-again responses, we should whittle it down to a reasonable number.

The season slowly creeps toward us. I'm looking forward to a small chez next week, although no one has really confirmed. Ewok will just be getting off the gunboat from his camp, and Horace is still at his camp sewing moccasins, so who knows? Worst case scenario, I'll do some research. Although this new topic makes it pretty obvious what we can expect. Certain gonifs will drag out their democracy Ks, other gonifs will miss the whole point, and nine people on the entire east coast will actually debate the topic. Claire, who has strong feelings that all immigrants should be run into the ocean, was worried that her personal opinions might cloud her judgment. As if she'd actually get to hear people debating the topic! I'm seeing her next week, probably, so we can sort that out in person.

My next big chore is the Bump invite update, followed by organizing the meeting plan for the year, followed by meditating over the team appointments. Aside from putting NoShow in charge of Attendance, I really haven't figured any of it out yet. Speaking of which: Has NoShow moved out of the District? Would we know if he had?

"I survived the Bump tournament"

.
Kate, who is literally on her way to Thailand at the moment, i.e., somewhere over the Pacific Ocean reading Harry Potter VI, made a remarkable discovery in the attic before she left. Somehow she managed to uncover about half a dozen old "I survived the Bump tournament" tee shirts. These amazing pieces of couture are black with white writing, and there is the suggestion of a bump at the word Bump. I've already got one, of course. I wear it often, but always under another shirt so no one can see it. The reason I still have mine is that I haven't thrown away a wearable item of clothing since the Carter Administration. But that's just me.

I wonder what I should do with these things. They are beyond crappy prizes. They apotheosize the concept of crappy prizes. Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

Speaking of Bump, some schmegeggie just e-mailed me that he wants to judge. His credentials look fine, aside from my suspicion that he's part of the O'C posse. I like people who plan ahead, but I'm not quite ready to open the Bump books just yet. I thought I'd get the invitation written first.

And last night I finished the MHL website. It is to websites as Wonder Bread is to the Napoleon. That is, it is of the vanilla persuasion. I'm hoping that eventually I can pass management and design of the site to someone with the time and skills to make it sing. Or even hum. I've managed, at most, to put it on life support and feed it through a tube. But, it should get the job done. http://www.geocities.com/mhldebate/index.html if you want to take a look.

The return of the chez

.
I've just scheduled the first chez. With Ewok and Horace emigrating to various early events, we'll need to get cracking. Assuming at least one of them can show up—they are of the "I will camp till I get married or maybe even later" persuasion—we'll have it. Yale folk can wait, maybe, but then again, school starts so late this year, and then there's novices to contend with (with any luck), so an early start may be beneficial to one and all. Yeah. As long as there's a marginal quorum of anyone, we'll have it.

Maybe NoShow will show up. What are the odds?

I'm going to move this year's chezzes to the basement. There's chairs there now, and there's a certain debatey feel to the place. Fewer comfy chairs, to make things clear right off the bat, but that will keep down the fist fights. There's also enough computers to run NASA, but then again, I think they run NASA on a wing, a prayer and an Apple IIe, so that might not be saying much.

If there were any question that debate season has started, the offers have started pouring in to sell me things like topic briefs. These are, of course, written by experts. Curiously enough, these experts tend to be college freshman and sophomores who struck me as pretty idiotic not all that long ago. Apparently they mature quickly. To tell you the truth, I think they're missing a bet. They're willing to research for you, and write your cases for you, but why aren't they willing to debate for you too? If I ever go into the briefs business, I'm going to go all the way. Why should you have to do any work at all? Want to sleep in on Saturdays? Want to skip that hellish bus ride? Buy "Jim's Debaters." We do it all for you!

Bleeccchhh!

Debate season officially begins

.
Resolved: In matters of U.S. immigration policy, restrictions on the rights of non-citizens are consistent with democratic ideals.

Thus reads the Sept-Oct resolution. Which, as it turns out, we did not vote for. We hardly ever vote for the winning resolutions. So far we've gotten two out of four, and one of them was the Nationals topic, which we didn't debate, and which everybody probably voted for, which is why it was the Nat's topic in the first place. I guess you can say that we Hen Hudders are blue state debaters in a red state debate world.

Not that it strikes me as a particularly bad resolution, at least insofar as the subject is new and interesting (immigration, that is, not democracy). The reason it's not a stunner is that it's so narrow (if argued well). Narrow topics can be good in some respects, as they force you to argue well because there's not much case variation from round to round after a topic gets established. But the rub is, there's not much variation from round to round. Oh, sure, the CT brigade will tell us that we're exluding aliens from our democracy or some other obvious point, let's say along colonialism lines, but that's obviously the point. So this boils down to relatively straightforward policy issues, but in aid of achieving those wonderful "democratic ideals." Of course, that parenthetical "argued well" means that I can envision without too much difficulty all sorts of bizarre interpretations of "the rights of non-citizens" that will ask judges to do everything but consider the real world issue that this topic is asking about.

That said, I suggest that the idea of "real world issue" inform anyone who wants to start researching. There's plenty of real and good stuff on this. It's a big issue today (and not just because of terrorism).

Little Elvis update: I've loaded Windows versions of Word and Excel. I own those fair and square, and now if I need 'em , I've got 'em. I also loaded my good old AOLPress program for HTML editing. Pretty bare-bones WYSIWYG, which I've been using for years. My websites aren't cute, but they do the job.

The Little Elvis that Could

.
I guess it's no surprise. Or at least it's no surprise to Claire. Buy yourself a serial to USB connector, plug one end into your HP 4P and the other into Little Elvis, try out a driver or two (there was none specifically for the 4P, so I ended up with a generic 4), and voila! The word "Test" comes out on a nice little piece of paper. And here's the thing. I love my HP. It's a war horse. No silly photo printing, no changing the cartridge more than once a decade. Put paper in, printed pages come out. It's older than Pip, I think. And will outlast Pip VIII.

And from the OMG division, I report the following. I went to Dia in Beacon yesterday. Great Googly-Moogly! They actually did have the pile of dirt on the floor from Caveman! They have negative sculpture! They have a lot of formalistic stuff, where some schmegeggie arranges things in a lot of ways and the reason it's art is not because of the material (string or flourescent light bulbs or boxes) but because of the arrangement. Lots of Warhol. A collection of white paintings on different media. (Makes those decisions at the art store so easy. "What'll it be today, bub?" "Oh, why don't you give me some white this time.") A lot of people from the City had moseyed up to the joint, looking like they had moseyed up from the City, if you know what I mean. That is, a lot of people were there who don't occur in nature, or at least nature as it is practiced in the Hudson Valley. It's a short walk from the train station. I can imagine their joy, taking a two hour ride up on the hottest day of the year, walking a couple of blocks in Death Valley sun and paying $10 each to see a series of paintings where the guy paints the date of the painting according to the style/language of the country. That's all the paintings are. Years of them, marked with the date. Little rectangles, all done by hand (I'll give him that). There was even that remarkable day in February when he painted two of them. Oh frabjous day!

If anyone wants to see the future, take the field trip to the Dia. Send me a postcard. I did like that wall of automobile sculpture pieces, and they had a nice picture of that. Send it to me care of the Musee D'Orsay. I'll be there looking at the Monets.

Rebuttals

.
Last night I started organizing the response stuff for what I will simply call unorthodox cases. You might call them krappy kritiks, but not me. I am genteel. I don't look at critical theory and say, oh look, a blight on the intellectual landscape, or, gosharooni, big new words to hide little old ideas. Oh no, not me. I am civilized. And for anyone in or going to college, facing professors who dish out that (I won't call it nonsense, so how about this:) material, I feel your pain. Needless to say, we can't preempt everything, but if we have a sense of what may come from people whose goal is not to engage in rational dialogue but to win rounds through obfuscation, we'll be better off than if we don't.

Of course, the crux of the strike against modern theory was in Caveman. Also in P: A Very Short Introduction. And that crux is its sterility. But you don't need me to tell you that—

Okay, I'll stop whining.

Heard from the Nostrumite, by the way, and found out why we haven't heard from him in a while. He and Odelie are on a missionary trip. All right, Odelie's on a missionary trip, and the Mite is on the expense account. Whatever. Thank God she's not a preacher of one of your poorer religions. Anyhow, they're working their way through heathen Canada, apparently. To be honest, I was not aware that this was one of your heathen hotbeds, but I'm just going by what the Mite told me. Those Canadians can be pretty hostile to proselytizers, he says, and more than one Episcopalian has found himself being boiled in one of those big pots with the carrots and onions floating around him while the local frostbacks twirl the bones in their noses. "The worst of them are in the Baby Seal Clubbing Clubs," he reports. "Most of them are either Lutherans or Baptists, with maybe the odd Zoroastrian riling up the fringe element." Beware of fringe element Canadians, I always say. The lad reports that he has been unable to even think about TWHS while he's up there, but he expects to be reporting from the front around when school starts up again. "Besides," he says, "who cares about debate in the middle of August, aside from the O'C?"

Personally, I fear that the Mite's removal of self from the front does not bode well for next year's debate season at TW. Hell, even I'm up to my eyeballs (all right, I'm up to my liver at best, but I'm up to something) in debate in the middle of August. If nothing else, I have to keep up with Burgers' blog. I can't wait till he gets back to school. It's time for him to stop surfing the internet. Maybe he can start going to banjo festivals with his father; jump into the old Deliverance wagon and head out to where the grass is blue and the necks are red... Hee-haw!

Dell to Little Elvis: Drop dead!

.
Of course, if you weren't born when Gerald Ford was President, that headline won't be quite the piece of humor it's intended to be. But as McGrath always says, if you were smarter, I'd be funnier.

So Little Elvis will not power the Dell printer. When I looked at the Dell documentation, it quite clearly said that this baby would only run under Windows. Now it's not inconceivable that I could make it work through Virtual PC, but it doesn't seem worth the energy to try. And, oh, the HP 4P connects through those things called serial ports, which I don't seem to have on Little E. Now maybe I could find a connector of some sort, but I can probably buy a new printer for less money. And the Epson, as I reported earlier, works fine. So the printer experiment comes to a crashing halt. The fact that I can print TRPC stuff on the Epson with Little Elvis is all the comfort I really need.

I still haven't tried to sit Little E down at the Yamaha. Once I get over Caveman postpartum depression, I'll probably give it a try. My Garageband manual is almost bigger that Little Elvis and the box he rode in on! Not to mention the Yamaha software. An adventure waiting to happen...

I'm done

.
http://www.geocities.com/jim_menick/caveman.pdf

(And added to the LD corner on the website.)

I've deleted the entry here; who needs it? The pdf is the whole kit and caboodle, nicely formatted, ready for printing. Make sure you have LOTS of paper, sports fans.

On to better things...

Awfully buggy

Caveman, which I just finished editing on paper, has an awful lot of typos. Be warned. I'll have it clean on the HHHS website within a few days (the whole thing), so clean you can eat off it...

Batten down the hatches, sports fans

.
Caveman Part 5, first draft, is finished. I will run it through the spell checker (I was sorely tired of it last night when I wrapped it up, so there is that last step still) and post it here to prove that it does indeed exist, probably tomorrow. After that, a final polish of all 5 parts and I'll post it to the HH website, most likely as an addition to the Hillary Duff. (Pt 5 will make no sense if you don't have 1-4 under the old belt, so if for some bizarre reason you're reading this but haven't read those, well, you've been warned.)

As for the refutations and whatnot, I'll post them to one of our team databases. Good, bad or indifferent, they are nonetheless potential positions that we might want to keep to ourselves for a while. I'll get to them next week.

Oh. I did just officially sign up again as coach for next year. This keeps the school's state trooper from shooting me on sight when I show up unannounced in the building. All right, actually, it doesn't keep him from shooting me on sight when I show up unannounced in the building, but it's the best I can hope for. I had lunch with Olivieri yesterday and I was telling that I'm sort of climbing the walls with boredom waiting for the season to start. The old Olive's doing well, if you're wondering.

When does school start, anyhow?

Latest news from Hermie

.
Dear Mr. Menick:

Hello. How are you? I am fine.

Thinks are pretty quiet here at HQ, as you can imagine. The first herd has been shooed out of the stables, we've mucked everything out after them, put in new hay, and are ready for our next session. Now we're just waiting.

I thought you might be interested in my job during all of this. As you know, when little kids go away to summer camp, the administrations often do elaborate web pages for mommy and daddy back home to keep abreast of what junior and juniette are up to. We understand that some parents consult these pages with maddening frequency, although we have also heard tell that other families, after shipping off their spawn, ship themselves off to obscure love nests with heart-shaped jacuzzis and can't even remember their children's names during the ensuing festivities. Be that as it may, we have taken a leaf from the pages of these sites, to coin a phrase, and here at JLA we too publish a website full of photos and diaries of the activities of the day. Unfortunately, when those activities are actually taking place, we are too busy to publish any photos and diaries. So my job, in the interlude between sessions, is to make up photos and diaries. I have been busily visiting summer school sessions at La Jolla High (pronounced La Hoy-a Joll), where there are actual classes taking place—mostly remedial work for LD students where the LD does not stand for Lincoln-Douglas—and photographing these students as they learn their numbers and ABCs. Also, I have been creating diary blog entries for each day of the session (all of the names are taken from the many high school debate soap operas that infest the internet; we figure no one will recognize them as fictitious). When the session starts, we will post these pictures and diary entries one right after the other, bang bang bang. Every time a parent logs on, they'll see us in action. Sort of. They'll never see any real JLA kids, of course, and more to the point, they'll never see their own kids, but our guess is that they'll just assume that their kids will show up on the next posting. Or the next. Or the next... Eventually they'll give up and go off to one of those obscure love nests, or assume that their LDer (where the LD does stand for Lincoln-Douglas) is just out of the picture, on the right, next to Ham Buglaroni. ("Look, Ma! Isn't that Timmy Mae's left elbow?")

I hope you will follow our adventures when they begin next week, even though I may have spoiled your enjoyment by pointing out that they are entirely a fantasy. Meanwhile, I hope you have been enjoying your summer. I look forward to seeing you on the circuit next year.

Your friend,

Herman Melville
Cub Reporter

A subtle shift into first gear

.
Well, up till now we've been idling, except for the couple of folks who went to Camp Gahskif-Tadabayt. But I sent out a notice yesterday about Yale, and people are beginning to confirm, and I was entering data into the signup db, and all of a sudden it feels real again. And Craig is trying to drum up business for Wake, which I think is a bit of a stretch if one does a CBA, if the C includes corraling parents as well as spending money. I'm a firm believer in the need to corral parents, obviously, but judicious corraling is necessary. Debate lasts three or four years, there's a tournament practically every week, and when Mother Teresa's kids were doing LD even she told them that every once in a while she wanted a weekend without hearing about the social contract, feminism, or the metanarrative.

I would be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel with Caveman—I actually am up to metanarrative and Lyotard—if I could only kill the Hydra in God of War. Which, if you know God of War, means that I've gotten exactly nowhere. I wonder if I was cut out for this videogame business. If anyone HAS killed the Hydra, would you please tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Caviar and champagne would have made it a doubles bid!

.
I just faxed some ballots to Kurt, as a template for the MHL. I stripped everything out of them except the times of the LD speeches. I figured, if they need to know how to judge, they can pick up our handy dandy judge instructions. This of course excludes the ever confusing "22 points = Excellent" issue.

I'll get to the Yale registration shortly. We will have to confirm, because room lists will be due at the hotel. The Speech monster is, coincidentally, rearing its forensic head, with Dave telling people to itemize their pieces. The only result I saw was a senior begging to be dropped from the list. It is ever thus.

O'C is promising a wonderful Big Bronx this year. Well, actually, he's promising good food, since he knows the two are synonymous as far as I'm concerned. I've always maintained that BB would be an octos bid in both policy and LD if only they had served more free shrimp cocktails during the wilderness years.

The new profile pic, if you don't know, is a still from HERO. This is one of the most gorgeous movies I have ever seen. You could watch it with the sound off and love it. It's also pretty good with the sound on...

Don't ask me

I have no idea what's happened to the Nostrumite. One minute he was there, the next minute his blog says he's on hiatus. He hasn't replied to my emails. I guess he's just snowed under putting together part two of TWHS. Who knows what evil lurks in the mind of Mites?

I really am trying to get my own self in gear. I'll polish up the MHL stuff next week and make all that official. There's a dinner some time in August among the northeast coaches to compare notes and generally socialize before the heat of battle begins. That'll be fun. We did it one time before when I was around, up in Newburgh. A swell time was had by all, and some important ideas were kicked around. Also I want to get more time on Caveman. I'm up to Paul Auster! After that there's meta narratives, critical theory, boilerplate K responses and then it's off to the printer (almost).

Fortunately alumni have been keeping me entertained. Michelle Carter is doing her residency before getting her license in January. I may not be ready to die yet, but when I do, it's nice to know I'll be toasted by an ex-debater (and I don't mean with a glass of wine). Burgers' blog is most entertaining. My own offspring is about to go around the world; we're planning her sendoff on Aug 14 at Zephs. Even Pip T. W. seems more sprightly these days. We're up to 8 ccs of insulin, and he's actually walking up and down the stairs like the old Pip. He's not exactly jumping 6 feet in the air anymore, but then again, who is?

Am I decisive? Yes and no.

.
I could have sworn I had a bunch of demurrals and questions about this Voices scholarship thing, but I guess not. At least none worthy of response. Apparently they'll be shipping me some scholars, and that's that. My demurrals and questions regarded the idea that I would accept unchaperoned debaters at roughly the point hell froze over, and what's all that great about a scholarship to Bump anyhow, because if it was my money, I'd probably spend it some other way. Oh well, it's *not* my money, so my two cents has been delivered and whether they feed the birds or invest in plantations of ripening tea or buy paper and string is not my problem. I'll give a couple of slots to the bazoots, provided they have their own adult and not some slap-on college kid without a driver's license, and with any luck I'll be regarded as some kindly debate saint.

Gee, I'd like to be a kindly debate saint. I think that's what's missing from my life.

Little Elvis and the Frabjous Day

.

So I was able to install Virtual PC easily enough, but the installation of the Windows software required an awful lot of gnashing of teeth. There's this great moment where the instructions tell you that something is going to happen, and if you don't hit any key real fast, you have to start all over again. More to the point, some of the instructions tell you this; there are different instructions in the box, online, and in the application help. You picks your horse, you takes your chances. Anyhow, I eventually successfully installed the XP software from my Dell disk and entered the 2034-character product code eleventy times and kept getting told by the computer voice at Microsoft that I was up the creek without a paddle and who did I think I was, installing this bogus software, and it would give me an i.d. code when hell freezes over. I did this a number of times, including the good old start over. And last night, believe it or not, with the clock ticking away before every Microsoft program I own explodes into oblivion, the officials at Evil Central finally admitted that I was entitled to run the software I had paid them for.

Thanks, folks. Any wonder why I really don't intend to bother with Word?

The thing is, now I can run TRPC on the Mac. Either version. The Mac TRM software is so old (you need to run it in Classic mode) and undernourished (it likes to crash, it allows you to enter 300 speaker points instead of 30, things like that) that it's just not an option. But running Classic TRPC on Little Elvis seems like heaven. I'll run a test at the Bronx MHL (i.e., run it on two machines at once—very NASA). If that's a go, it'll be hog heaven for Menick and Little Elvis from that point on.

A modest proposal

.
It's obviously a job that nobody wants. Since I started with debate back in the mid-90s, I have gone through more principals than I have debaters. This is unusual for a debate coach. Hen Hud is the only school I know of where the yearbook comes with those little white pieces of paper like a Playbill telling you that tonight the part of The Principal is Being Played by —. In the case at hand, Mr. Mackin, according to the local paper, will be Acting Principal.

My suggestion is that we just admit the obvious and use day laborers. There's plenty of them in Peekskill, near the post office, and we could pick one up every day and pay a good minimum wage and then we wouldn't be so suprised every day when there's a new person in there. During the busy season, we could pick up a couple. The school district would still save money on the deal, and there'd be extra hands to deal with the issues that arise.

Seriously, I just don't get it. Almost without exception the principals have been extremely supportive of forensics, and those exceptions were far from negative, just less gung-ho, so I have nothing to complain about personally. It's just ennervating. You sort of get one where you want him and, bingo, there's another one. At least Mr. Mackin knows the drill, having been through both Bump and Districts.

The coming year gets more interesting by the minute.

Mr. Roberts

.
I've spent a lot of time trying to get a fix on our next Supreme Court Justice. I have no doubt that he will be confirmed, and little doubt that he will be confirmed bloodlessly. Maybe I'm just being a polyanna, but I sort of feel that, given who's in the White House these days, Roberts may be the best we could have hoped for. Thank God Bush is anti stem cell research! Those pesky scientists probably would have cloned Thomas by now (Bush's favorite justice) and we'd have Clarence II on the bench.

I've heard from various people about various things. O'Cruz is in Vegas recovering from VBI, I really like Burgers' blog (and Boing Boing, to which he directed me indirectly), and Mere de Biftek thinks I have too much bile, while Video Noah seems to have completely dropped off the face of the earth. I also heard from the Nostrumite last night, who is in a state of permanent depression over the ending of session one at VBI. "The profundity is gone," he wrote me, and I could just see him shaking his head. I know what he means. You can't imagine how excited I was checking in every day to see how the Instituters were doing. Oh, wait a minute. That wasn't me. Anyhow, he almost didn't make it, what with the air of loss and all, but the Mite claims he was going to post a new TWHS episode this morning. Something about the end of Part One, whatever that means. I dont' know; if you want details, deal with him directly.

Thank God for erasers

.
Our story so far:

We're trying to put together an MHL schedule. Keep in mind that Bergenfield no longer exists as a hosting entity, so that opens up one or two weekends, as they had a regular invitational and the 2-day MHL.

Lakeland has declared for the Manchester/Regis weekend. Now there's a traffic jam for you.

Scarsdale has declared for the old Lakeland weekend (the new old weekend, not the old old weekend).

The weekend after Big Bronx will become an MHL weekend, probably somewhere in Jersey, concurrent with a college fair (which should make it of interest to juniors and seniors who'd be judging).

There's a new weekend opened up in January (the old old Lakeland and the old Scarsdale).

Anyone want to take one of these weekends? We could have an MHL at Craig's new house. Or maybe at Horace Mann! My theory is that any open weekend ought to have an MHL, especially when there's the threat of weather, which always strikes once or twice a year. The more rounds people have starting out the better, and that's the underlying philosophy of MHL, to give rounds to newer folk.

I posted a tentative starting point for the MHL main folk to evaluate and comment, not that there's all that much new or revolutionary about it. After that, I'll post the stuff for the world at large. Can't do anything for a while, at least till O'Cruz gets back from Vegas. He's taken the VBI profits and investing it all on the Klingon slot machines at the Hilton. Every time he rolls he mumbles, "Make it so" under his breath. Of course, Doohan's death has probably stopped him dead in his tracks. Next thing you know, Big Bronx will be at the Luxor. Great.

I took a night off, Jeesh.

I started Monday working on Caveman again. It takes a while to get back into the swing of this stuff, you know? Derrida? Qu'est-ce que c'est un Derrida? But I'll put the nose to the grindstone (mettez avec les travails) and work every night (tous les nuits) until I am finished (voila le kaputski).

But I did take last night off to see Charlie. I really liked it, although I agree that the Wonka backstory was unnecessary. Not painful, just extraneous. But the wonderful O-L material trumped it in spades. Depp was fine, but not crucial; probably plenty of other people could have done it, and while it would have been differently weird, it still would have been weird, which is fine. And sign me up for the Corpse Bride now. Pure Burtonania, from the looks of it in the preview.

I've added the Burgers blog to my recommendeds. I like that you can see the music he's been stealing/playing/whatever with iTunes. As he says, it forces him to up his taste level. No more of that Celine Dion stuff, for starters. Since I've got a PC iPod (back when it was one or the other; I don't know if that's still the case) I'm keeping music pretty much off of Little Elvis for the time being. Although mostly I've been grabbing podcasts (and was before iTunes jumped on the bandwagon—I dread uploading yet another upgrade of iTunes and losing yet another ton of previously uploaded music).

Pffft!

Okay, I really will actually do something on Little Elvis real soon now, rather than just loading software. I didn't even turn it on yesterday (golf, of course) but I must get down to business before the whole summer is over and I'm trying to catch up in September. It's like summer reading. Who actually starts reading the books before the last week of August? (Of course, here I'm only including the people who intend to read the books, as compared to those who will google the plots and hope for the best.)

#6 (my daughter's copy) arrived from Amazon Saturday. Good grief. I am going to save it, myself, for when I need it. Like the next time I get on an airplane. I'm doing too much reading now during the day for work; HP would simply be wasted.

Anyhow, I've been seriously considering simply adding Pffft to the HH LD palette. I mean, I worked up the new MHL rules and sent them out to Kurt for a once-over on Saturday, and we are including Pffft at MHLs. And there's plenty of Pffft elsewhere, including TOCs, for pete's sake. So it's not as if it's some poor, sad orphan going nowhere. And the topics are usually pretty interesting, and the nature of the beast means that you do have to actually address those topics in the rounds. Sort of like policy without the tubs, as in, you've got to know some stuff, but you don't have to break your back lifting it onto the bus. Definitely forces you to read the papers and do research. My thought is this: first, Pffft is open only to LDers who have completed a full novice year of LD. Second, we'll have a session a month specifically discussing the topic (open to all), plus chezzes as necessary. And anyone who wants to Pffft at a tournament is welcome to do it, but judging parents will be required, and, at least to begin with, any need to purchase judges will be prioritized for LD. I see Pffft as a potential area for folks who want to vary their approach to the activity. It's "lite" compared to LD, and allows you to keep your hand in while not becoming a debate fanatic. I've only begun cogitating on this seriously, but I will do something, one way or the other.

Claire's ahead so far

The Epson installed without anything other than popping in the USB. I haven't tried the other printers yet, but I will, if only to prove Claire wrong (which is never easy to do, on the best of days).

Virtual PC took all day, and then it told me my version of Windows was unacceptable. Humbuggery!

Ion hard drive fine once I disconnected it from the PC (which connects through the FireWire). It doesn't like to do two things at once. Neither does my modem, so I understand the conflict. I don't condone it, but I understand it.

iPhoto slide shows make me dizzy. I think I prefer Space Mountain. The French one. For getting dizzy that is, not for viewing photos.

Appleworks reads all my Word docs. Although I do have copies of Office, when I get around to it. I'm starting to get interested in actually using the computer rather than setting it up, so I may hold off on that for a while.

Poker runs niftily. I came in second, so I'm ahead about $500. Wouldst that it were real money.

This report brought to you by another happy Apple user.

Microsoft sucks.

So far

So far I've connected to the Internet. You may not think this is a big deal. I think this is bloody amazing. Next, I'll see what works printerwise (my money is fifty fifty on Claire with this; maybe the Epson will work, definitely the HP, probably not the Dell).

This thing is amazingly fast, compared even to my office PowerBook (which has to go through all sorts of Digestian conniptions when it does anything). Forget comparisons to the PC; there aren't any.

Meanwhile, life goes on for other people. I heard from the Nostrumite first thing when I got connected today; his radar is better than Optonline's, for pete's sake. He just posted a new TWHS, but he apparently almost didn't make it this week. He's in a state of permanent depression over the lack of forensics over the summer. He's not teaching at any institutes because he wasn't sure what would be up with Odelie so early in the marriage (she might actually want him around for a while for some reason), so he's mostly moping, taking the Nostrumutt on long walks and wishing it was September. I tell him to log on to OMG, but he refuses. Says he's protecting his sanity. I wish I had his fortitude. Ever since I saw that picture of me I wonder what else they've got there. Pictures of my mother? Liz? Pip? Knowing O'Cruz, I wouldn't put it past them.

It's here

.
The toy has arrived. I am happy as a clam.

It's an iBook, a twelve-incher. I have been lusting after this for quite a while. I use a Mac in the office, and much prefer the speed and efficiency of the Mac OS to the perfidy of XT. If it weren't for TRPC, I probably wouldn't bother with PCs at all. As a matter of fact, I'm hoping to use the PC emulation software to bypass the PC entirely, but this may be pipe dreams on my part. In any case, nothing brings joy like spending a lot of money on something you only marginally need!

Of course, there's all the setting up to do. Getting it to work with my cable modem, getting the various printer drivers installed, plus a couple of other things, like my poker game. Should take a couple of days, just spinning the disks. And then, the road warrier will emerge. Stand back, world. (And yes, it's got 10.4. Where's my hula dancer?)

In a way, it's a miracle this arrived at all. Don't get me started on FedEx. Is it just me, or does the idea of delivering a package to one of the largest publishers in the world strike you as the sort of thing that would be right up their alley? Bah! The spalpeens! I mean, I managed to save a few bucks through the employee discount, but there was enough aggro that I would have been better off just trucking down to the Westchester and doing it all myself. The telephone calls were classic. Somehow their inability to deliver was my fault. Like I was hiding the building, some Sigfried and Roy deal where I made all 500 acres disappear? Jeesh. Anyhow, no point continuing to rake the coals. It's here. We're done. Tonight I'll start outlining MHL 2005.

The Borkster's Chinny Chin Chin

Even I was growing bored looking at the DOA website. I mean, SPS and all that, and let 'em hang themselves with their own rope, yadda yadda yadda. But a few days had gone by, and I hadn't had a single forensic thought, so I'd thought I'd rile myself a bit—

And there's a picture of me in the header. The one with Justin at TOCs. That's the last time I take Justin to TOCs, and that's final!

I was also reading this wonderful interview with the Borkster on some LDS site. I had only come upon it because I was showing someone what the B looked like without his beard. Anyhow, while the B and his interviewer went on about the moral decline of the US caused by all the liberals in the media (like me, thanks for the shout out, B), I learned that there is this period when you can go either way, homosexual or heterosexual, and then apparently you just want to kill yourself because your life is so miserable (if you chose gay, that is; it's all wine and roses for the heteros, who'd a thunk it). This was in aid of discussing Lawrence (the case where Nino ranted about the Homosexual Agenda). Damn, but these gays are organized, with their agendas and their getting you at just the right moment. You wonder if the Borkster lies awake at night wondering if they're coming to get him next. How come the heteros can't get organized too? What's wrong with you people? Anyhow, the more you know about Bork, the happier you are that he's not sitting where he can do the most damage. He also seems to think that the Supes (the liberals, like Ginzie) are in the thrall of foreign courts (i.e., they consult world opinion to evaluate cruel and unusual punishment rather than saying, hell, the framers liked to draw and quarter, so just go with it). My brains start falling out when I read this stuff. Maybe we shouldn't hope for the JA topic after all. Maybe if we get it we should run a critique...

A novel?

That is the question that the Mite and I were arguing last night. Is the new Eco really a novel? After I finished it I passed it along to him, and now he's finished it, and right there we have some sort of record being set, as it's the first time either of us actually finished any Umberto Eco books aside from the short essay collections. I mean, how many people really did finish NAME OF THE ROSE? 'Fess up, fella. You know you didn't even come close. The difference between you and me (and the Mite) is that we admit our failings; you try to hide them. Feh!

Anyhow, the plot is that our narrator has suffered amnesia. He can remember nothing of his life, but he can remember all the books (and comics and magazines) he's read. So he has to recreate himself, and he does this through rereading. Along the way he paints a picture of WWII Italy that is fascinating, perhaps because it's so new to me. The recreation of his self, however, only comes about through—well, read it and find out for yourself, if you're interested. Do I recommend it? Well, there's where the Mite and I part ways. I do, for the Italian stuff. He doesn't, because he feels the novel ultimately fails as a novel. "I like the fact that the pomo is seamlessly and non-annoyingly a part of it, but it's a book with one character, and one character does not a novel make." Maybe. I might mention it in Caveman, when I get back to it, though. It does have that value.

Speaking of which, I will be starting Caveman (and a summary of MHL going forward, among other things) as soon as my new toy arrives. It still hasn't. I shoulda bought it outright, but oh no, get the employee discount, says I. Bloody cheapskate, says the Mite. Who should know about such things. He has posted a new TWHS episode, by the way (or BLT, as a dyslectic might put it in Craigian terms), for those who wonder if he was able to make it through his weekly permanent depression. The only thing that got him down this week was the thing that got everybody down, the terrorist attacks on London. "The unspeakable affects you in ineffable ways," he says, "if you don't mind the tautology." At which point he does refrains from elucidating what he is incapable of elucidating. Me either. Our London office reported to us by the time I arrived in the office yesterday that my friends over there were caught all over the London map on their various ways to work, only a couple of them actually making it in to Canary Wharf, our London office way the hell east out by Greenwich which looks sort of like a cleaned-up B Begins Gotham. But all were safe and unharmed. We live in a small world now. No matter what happens where, we have people we have to check up on immediately. We were all New Yorkers after 9/11. We were all Londoners after yesterday. We are all world citizens when anything happens to any of us. Not an original thought, but no less a true one.

NIMBY

I just read an email from O'Cruz. It's a mass mailing to coaches with kids at VB institute urging them to read all about it on the website. Golly geewhillikers, I gotta check that out!

Meanwhile, Craig cannot possibly be seriously asking for the definition of LOL, but just in case my ironyometer is in need of adjustment, I offer the following definitions:
LOL: How drole.
ROTFL: How very drole.
WTF: What's all this, then?
BTW: I would also like to point out the following:
TMI: I really don't think it was appropriate for you to go into that much detail.
DMV: Where debaters get jobs if they flunk out of law school
PCBs: Polychlorinated biphenyls
PCP: The last thing you do before we attend your funeral, you bloody idiot
IMHO: Failed pancake franchise
CIA: Central Bureau of Culinary Intelligence
FBI: Domesticated version of CIA, known for brown shoes and cross-dressers
VMI: Virgin Military Academy
AKA: Wasn't your name different the last time I saw you? (Example: VMI: Virgin Military Academy AKA Regis)
VBD/BVD: Hell in a handbasket and/or fruit in a loombasket
BYO: Warning—cheap bastid throwing a party
BMOC: Someone other than a forensician

I could go on, but by now Craig is thinking to himself, how drole, as he watches the sun set over beautiful SRO...

Out!

Anyone who wonders what LOL is all about can now see clearly. No, it's not keeping you informed on your activity. It's not even keeping you informed on the so-called national circuit as if that were the ideal of your activity, the focus of your forensic lusts, la creme de la argumentative creme (of people with enough money to actually participate on the national circuit, that is; ever wonder why it's the same schools year after year after year? Think it's because their kids are so much smarter than anyone else? Their coaches are so much better? Wellllll, if you do believe that, far be it from me to disillusion you). The purpose of LOL is to make a buck, folks. I mean, how glued are you to the arrival of Smchugga Skloopki from Kanushka, fellow forensicians?

Gimme a break.

On another note, do I understand correctly that the core of next year's JV division is now living in JFK a la Tom Hanks in The Terminal? Cool!

Oh, yeah. Friday afternoon I went to Hastings-on-Hudson, to eat at Buffet de la Gare (wonderful, btw). After driving about eleven and a half hours, I passed a sign indicating the entrance to the Masters School. Says I to myself, Self, they've got to be kidding. This place is easily an hour away from Ma Hud. This, I continue to my ever-listening self, is going to be interesting. Craig's probably better off staying at JFK. It's probably closer.

Happy Fourth. Reminder: TJ quotes liberally from Locke in the document we happen to be celebrating. (I'm sure TJ would have quoted liberally from Foucault if he had had the chance -- TJ was a notorious Francophile.) Read into the thing again; as always, it's printed on the back of the Times. And enjoy the coming weeks as we select a new Supe! Your country at its best, sorta. You should be reading up on all those variations of judging styles, especially if good old judicial activism is a Fall topic. Fascinatin' stuff, eh? What else are you going to do all summer? Hang out at JFK?

Mite in the Middle

I've bought myself a new toy. More on this after it arrives. All this waiting is making me, as Herman might say, akimbo.

And this week I got the school district bulletin with pix of Justin and Ben, leading the charge so to speak. Another era ends. To think: I'll never see any of the graduates again (until early next Fall, when I start paying them). Don't forget, all, send me your college emails. Hen Hud Needs YOU! You need MONEY! It's the perfect arrangement. (Bump, btw, is mandatory for all graduates. Period.)

I've heard from the Nostrumite, who tells me he was going to post a new TWHS episode this morning. I assume he did. He almost didn't make it. He is in a state of permanent depression over the decline and fall of the Hollywood empire. "It's the glorious Fourth," he writes, "and I have absolutely no desire to send myself to the poorhouse by going to see a movie. My annual tradition is gone kaput!" War of the Worlds? "Independence Day with scientologists." Mr. and Mrs. Smith? "I'll stick to Hitchcock, thank you very much." Herbie Fully Loaded. "The only way I'd see that is if I were fully loaded myself." He's got a point. There really are few movies anymore that get one to actually go to a movie theater. So what will the Mite do instead? "Odelie and I are planning on renting DVDs of whatever's left in Blockbuster by the time we get there Saturday morning." Great idea. That three-out-at-a-time Netflix thing only goes so far on a holiday weekend. "They'll probably still have Racing Stripes in stock," he predicts.

They probably will. Frankie Muniz fans rejoice!

Countdown to WTF!

I have received the following from my trusty correspondent at you-know-where:

Mr. Menick:

H. I'd spell out "Hi," but we're too rushed here at WTF HQ. Only 4 more days! Holy Hannah's Hosiery! Or as we say here as we zip about, HHH!

Needless to say, we are agog, agape, atwitter, amok—some of us are even akimbo. Being the only debate institute in the country is not easy. We are expecting countless thousands of innocents to descend on us this weekend, each one with a nice big check payable to the WTF Beer and Retirement Fund. We've got former debaters who know everything there is to know meeting with these innocents and telling them everything they need to know so that they too will know everything there is to know. It is as if the entire sum of all knowledge ever will be contained right in our hyper-modern meta-dorm! If we all jump off a chair at the same time, people in China are going to feel the bump.

I may not be able to communicate with you for a while again, until the brouhaha bubbles down some. I know you wish you could be with us, especially when we cash some of those Beer and Retirement Fund checks. We are well aware that the only knowledge we won't have here will be yours and a few of the other dinosaurs', but we figure if we train people to use enough speed, no one will ever know.

Have a happy 4th! Our fireworks here will be all mental! May you and yours be mental as well.

Your f (I'm too busy to type out the word "friend"),
HM
CR

Pffft? Pfui.

Sabrina has finalized the Monticello invitation. I feel as if I'm late already. Where's the Bump invite? After last year's installment, I sat down and wrote up preliminary changes to the invite, mostly telling people that if they brought brain-dead judges we would draw and quarter them (and their judges), but I've quieted down a tad since then. Still, I will be sending out how-to-judge instructions, and handing them out, and maybe reading them during the rounds. I do like lay judging, but not so lay that they've been blindfolded, gagged, kidnapped and dropped into the round directly from some non-English-speaking country and now they're wondering if 14 points is enough to give because it says right here on the ballot that 14 points means I am in Ecstasy Listening to your Greatness! (Actually, the judge will come up to me and say something like, "Kerfloyin-ze mala oola mintz?" At which point I draw and quarter them.) (And I am in Ecstasy Listening to your Greatness sounds like— No, I won't go there.)

So, I've got to polish up my judge instructions. I have my tried and trues, plus Ewok's mom's notes, plus Matt J's fine discussion. I will put these all together and see what happens.

As for Monticello, I am happy to see that the JV division is eliminated. I do feel that second-year folks can do fine in an open division, and will encourage the troops accordingly. (If you're a troop of the second-year pursuasion reading this, consider yourself encouraged.) I also see that Pffft is going to be happening. I might start encouraging a little Pffft. Why not?

(Only 39 hours till DOA begins. I am all atwitter. Throw water on me, please. Throw water on them, please.)

The Supes go on hiatus (just in time to lead their labs at VBI)

The two Supreme Court decisions on the Ten Commandments yielded enough opinions and dissents and concurrences to keep interested parties busy forever. Keep in mind that Nino believes that all law comes from God, an opinion that I will not allow in our debate discussions unless the person offering that point of view offers an inarguable warrant. I mean, did Nino *see* God do this? Can we go to the videotape? It's an argument that doesn't stand up in court, if you know what I mean, personal beliefs notwithstanding. Anyhow, the point is that religion in public life may be the most hotly contested issue of the day, in that, as you well know, religious beliefs can inform all actions. This part wasn't written down, but Nino verbally decried those who were standing up for religiosity v. irreligiosity, saying that there was no way the Constitution defended the rights of the non-religious.

I love Nino. I can just imagine the homosexual agenda people getting together with the atheist agenda people. Maybe they can all go fishing with Nino next time he heads out with Dick Cheney on the old private yacht. That would be one hell of a party!

Additionally, the Court continued what the Times seems to feel is its assault on the Press. You should read the analysis of that in today's paper. Does the media deserve special protection (what we associate with the First Amendment) when it doesn't warrant special protection? Raise your hand if you can tell me the name of Tom Cruise's fiancee but not the name of the winner of the election in Iran. Then ask yourself, which one is Bush more likely to invade (no doubt because God tells him to)?

I assume most people did follow through on the emininent domain discussion recently; as DOA pointed out, it is potentially a topic next year. In a way, it's a classic: how about a quote from Mr. Spock? "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Those Vulcans were obviously of a modern Utilitarian bent.

So now the Court is done for a while and no one quit in a huff. The prospect of a congressional battle over Rehnquist's replacement just has to have your juices flowing, but we won't see it for a while. Maybe old Bill is waiting for Jeb to take over the White House.

Long live the Bush dynasty! Semper arbusto (or something like that, as the Romans used to say)!

Memo to Tom Cruise: Take her away, please.

Obviously I saw Batman Begins this week. Aside from wondering whether Katie Holmes is a dropout from the same acting academy that flunked Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, one has to say that, finally, someone has gotten Batman right. Then again, watch Pacino in INSOMNIA. Nolan knows how to direct actors. Simple as that.

They also showed a long preview of Charlie and the CF, speaking of directors whose Batmen were near misses, making one wonder how JDepp manages to get weirder with every single picture. All right, every other picture, if you count Neverland.

And I heard from the Nostrumite last night, who claims he is in a state of permanent depression over the fact that, with the school year ended, he now has to make the rounds of institutes, where he is teaching his fine brand of polician strategy and tactics across the country, leaving Odelie behind for weeks at a time with no company other than the Nostrumutt, Pecksniff the Nostrumian Applehead, and her congregation of High Episcopalians. Oh, the torture of a busy life. I prefer my existence, where all I have to do is dig up old juvenile justice files and send them to the team and go back into estivation. (That's a great word, estivation. Feel free to take it and use it yourself, whenever it seems to fit. Tomorrow's word is musth.) Anyhow, the lad vows to keep up his TWHS episodes, a new one of which he promised he would post this morning. I haven't checked yet, but I've never known the Mite to back down on a promise, except that time at the baccarat table with the go-go dancers back in Monte Carlo, but we won't go there. This time.

I can't wait

.
I've found the perfect crappy prize for O'Cruz.

Now he has to do something crappy-prize worthy.

Why I can't retire

.
You know, I'd be inclined to send money to these Nigerians if only they were better spellers. If I ever go into the SpamScam business, I promise that everything, including my phony name, will be correctly spelled. Maybe I'm supposed to trust them with my money because their crappy spelling is proof positive that they're really Nigerian? Is that how you can identify a Nigerian in a lineup? "Hey you, number six. Spell Mnemosyne!"

Anyhow, speaking of crappy stuff, I have been amassing tons of it. My office is overflowing with crappy prizes, including a real find, a 1972 Guide to Being a Secretary. I also have Hans Blix's book on how to disarm Iraq. All kinds of good stuff. Which is why I can never retire from the Digest. If I did, I wouldn't have a source of crappy prizes anymore. None of this is Digest stuff, of course, just the detritus that floats up on our shores. By the same token, I can't retire from debate because I keep bringing this stuff home and my house is filled with it, and I have to have something to do with it because I don't think the local sanitation folks would pick it up for love or money. Then again, I could leave it out on bulk pickup day. Neighborhood scavengers will take anything! Finally, someone who really wants my Andrews Sisters LPs.

Craig tells me they're arguing juvey justice at VBI. Talk about chestnuts. I'm pretty sure this was a good topic when we last did it, about 3 weeks ago. It's sort of real. Most judges just decided on the basis of, if one of these two kids killed the other one, would I want to send him to Old Sparky? Nasty SOBs were dropped left and right, while saintly, naive looking puppies picked up like it was going out of style. Try to look innocent! That's the best advice I can give (until I go home and dig up my research). I wouldn't be surprised to see it get voted in, precisely because the coaches won't have to do much work. God, we're a pathetic lot.

Bloomsday

.
I heard last night from the Nostrumite, who is in a state of permanent depression over the end of the school year up at TWHS. "My first season in the place and I haven't accomplished anything," he told me. Nobody at TOCs, nobody at CatNats, nobody at LapsedCatNats. It's not easy working with a new team, he says. "I'm still married, though, so I guess that's something. And we did spend Bloomsday yesterday reading aloud, as all good Joyceans must. 'Stately plump Buck Mulligan... ' "

Ah, Bloomsday. June 16th. The novel Ulysses takes place entirely on that day, and many people celebrate the occasion by hitting up the old tome again. In some places, they actually have public readings of the entire thing. I'm glad that the Mite is keeping his hand in literary affairs, despite his self-described poor showing in forensics. "If I could write like Joyce," he says, "I'd be an Irishman now." Which is probably true. Of course, if he wrote like Joyce most of us wouldn't be able to make any sense of TWHS, which he has just updated. "My plan is to throw up a new episode every Thursday or Friday," he says, "give or take the odd Thursday or Friday, and factoring into it Odelie's plans, whatever they may be, and traveling with the team and everything. But this coming summer should be okay. Having just gotten back from a honeymoon, it's not like we're going anywhere else for a while."

Too bad he couldn't be at LapsedCatNats, though. It was bad enough he missed meeting O'Cruz in Milwaukee, but to also miss him in Philadelphia? Jeesh. We could even have gotten a picture of the two of them with Soddy. Maybe that would clear all of us of the charge of actually being one another.

News from my favorite correspondent

.
Dear Mr. Menick:

Hi. How are you? I am fine.

Things are winding down here in Philadelphia. As you know, there was a lot of talk about replacing some of the statues of Ben Franklin with statues of Jon Cruz, but the mayor finally decided that the time just wasn't right yet. Next year, maybe. After Villiger.

It's been pretty hectic here, as you can imagine. Most of my time was spent trying to figure out which code was which person. Keeping everyone's identity a secret is really important, as you know. It's like Batman and Bruce Wayne; if everyone knew Batman's secret identity, he'd win a lot more rounds than he would if he just went on talent alone. Or something like that. Anyhow, you can imagine how hard it is to find out that 14393023-A34-B34^^7&-X is actually Joe McDoakes from Kalamazoo. There's like twelve thousand people here, and usually the minute I found out their code, they dropped out of the tournament. It's been a busy week for me.

Too bad you can't be here. You'd get a lot more NFL points if you actually showed up some year. I know you think that NFL points aren't worth all that much, but Mr. Wunn is working on an arrangement where they can be exchanged for frequent flier miles on TWA (which will be great if TWA ever starts flying again).

After this is all over we head back to KGB headquarters to get ready for our annual summer camp. "That's when this forensician idolatry all pays off," or at least that's what some instructor from another institute told me. "They tell the little bastids how cool they are, and then they soak 'em all for a couple of Gs each. What a scam!" Of course, that's all sour grapes, I think. Our KGB camp really is better than the one that guy has in El Paso, for instance. I mean, yes, they can cross over the border for cheap dentistry, but we've got Forensic Idols!

May all your Christmases be white.

Your friend,
Herman Melville
Cub Reporter

Exercise

.
I decided to start walking in the mornings for a change. For a while now I've been on the treadmill, which has its advantages and its disadvantages. Obviously, it's indoors and therefore not dependent on the weather. And you can time it, and you can sense pretty easily whether you're giving yourself a decent workout by just looking at your speed setting. The thing is, when you rank the most boring things in the world, being on a treadmill has to fall somewhere close to judging declamation. So to make the time fly, I bought a little TV/VCR combo, and I watch stuff that works in a treadmill situation. Poker works real well. Fifty-seven-part series on the Civil War don't. You need something that's not too good or too dull that you don't really have to listen to, given that you're making a racket already. AFI's 100 Best Puppy Movies works. Rat Pack bios are perfect. Star Trek Enterprise is good, because it's so lousy you'd never actually sit down and watch it, but no one ever really does get enough Klingons in one's life so this is just the right fix. I have high hopes for Battlestar Galactica. I've been watching the miniseries, and it's quite good. Sexy cylons was a mighty inspiration! In my day they were just clunky robots, which may be why the original series fizzled out. Sexy robots, on the other hand, and the thing would probably still be in syndication. I've got the whole show on tape, ready for the treadmill. I just hope they don't default back to clunky robots.

But walking is different. You plug the old iPod into the old earholes and head out. The music is quickly inconsequential, provided that it's lively enough to keep you moving. That is, your Kindertotenlieder probably won't get you to the corner, if you know what I mean, and Gregorian chants would have you run over by the first Suburu to come along, but a little Steely Dan is just what the walking doctor ordered. Except maybe Boddhisattva. That one always stops me dead in my tracks. And to think, ol' Skunk is now a stockbroker.

Anyhow, as I was saying, walking is different. When you walk, your mind is free to work. And work it does. I had forgotten that. You just start traveling down various mental paths and working things out, your legs pumping away, the rhythms subconsciously keeping all your physical systems on go. After about 45 minutes I get back to the house with ideas for MHL trophies, a completely functional generic response to resolutional critiques (which I was clever enough to write down, with Pip's help—downside of any of this noodling is that if you don't take notes fairly quickly, you might as well have watched sexy robots on Battlestar Galactica), menu ideas for the next week and a serious longing to participate in the 50th Disneyland Anniversary. That's just one day. I'm going to get back into this for a while. Maybe I can come up with another novel.

Sexy robots will just have to wait.

Am I the only one...

...whose immediate thought yesterday was, "Great; now Michael can dedicate himself to the search for the real molesters"?

Over the weekend I updated the Hen Hud rules, a holdover from the meeting way back when with the speechifiers. They were mostly interested in internal stuff, such as how many tournaments you need to attend and issues like that, which has never been much of a deal on the debate side. The only thing I've ever really held out for is that you can't judge if you don't debate. There have been occasional rollovers who sort of want to lord it over younger kids, which strikes me as a bit of a crock. I certainly have had students who have given up debating but still judge, like Burgers or Ben or Sarah, but they've maintained their connection to the team by attending meetings and shown a willingness to pitch in where needed. What bugs me is folks who want weekend vacations with the team who I never see any other time. That doesn't work. Still, I didn't bother including that in the rules; that's a case-by-case issue. There are some new rules, however, that you might find interesting. Dave is going over this stuff now, and it won't be official for a while, but I thought I'd give you a sneak preview.

1. No singing on the bus. Anyone caught even humming while be dropped off in Hartford.
2. No bathroom breaks in Connecticut. It takes long enough to travel route 84 without having to take bladders into consideration.
3. All debaters must learn to play Spades.
4. Roulette and craps will no longer be allowed at team meetings.
5. All discussion of postmodernism will be conducted in French, but with Canadian accents.
6. Any student caught robbing a Seven-Eleven will be suspended from the team for three days.
7. Any student who can install a wireless network in Menick's house will be allowed unlimited Seven-Eleven robberies without suspension.
8. The song title in question is "Take Me Down to the Prairie Dog City." This makes more sense than Paradise City, and is much funnier.
9. Anyone qualifying for tournaments during golf season can haul their own butts to 'em.
10. The VBD website is permanently blocked. Anyone found gaga-ing national circuit debaters will be sent to a correctional institution in Juarez for six months with no personal items except a copy of O'Cruz's Star Wars Christmas album, a jar containing Dan Bruno's burgered-to-death appendix, and a 1943 Vassar class offering guide (There's a war on, ladies!).

Otherwise, mostly it's status quo antebellum.

Tim Averill sucks

.
I just read his interview on DDT. I mean, the interview was fine, and I like Tim and everything, but I've known this guy for ten years and not once—I repeat, NOT ONCE—have I ever gotten a lobster out of him. Nor a crayfish. Not even a shrimp. Go to his tournament and they feed you chicken soup and albino bagels, while in the back room among the elite apparently it's all lobsters and caviar and Waiter, bring me shad roe. Jeesh. But here's the big question. Averill and I are pretty much the same age. How come he can retire and I can't? It makes you wonder. Of course, my understanding is that most of the northeast is looking forward to a tournament without another Tim Averill Retirement Tribute. We can all finally breathe easy again.

I heard from the Nostrumite last night. He's in a state of permanent depression mourning the death of his PDA. It's an old Handspring that, as he put it, "died and died again." Apparently it winkled out on him, taking all his unsynchronized data with it, and although he thought he had fixed it, it winkled out again a day later, this time beyond any hope of resuscitation. "I didn't really lose much data," he says, "but that little black box has been an old friend to me. I've known it longer than I've known Odelie." It's always a bad sign when a newlywed compares his wife to his Palm Pilot. "The real issue is, what to do about replacing it. Get a new model? Switch to the—AARRGHH—Microsoft platform? Or blow off the whole thing and spend the money on something else I really want?" And then he goes on to ask me if I've looked at those new PSPs yet. Will this guy never grow up? What kind of choice is that, a data machine vs. a PSP? Should I buy a PS2 or a microwave oven? Jeesh. Given that the Mite is up there in Averill country, maybe he should just invest in some lobsters (God knows he isn't going to get any freebies out of the old Timster). Anyhow, he told me he'd posted a new episode of TWHS, so losing the Palm hasn't set him back all that much. I wonder if TW will serve lobsters next year at its tournament. It's worth considering...

Duck Soup

Last night the Brewers let me down. I hereby withdraw my support. Anyone who has thought to turn to this weblog as their primary source of baseball news will have to look elsewhere.

While thinking of things filmic, I happened to notice that Duck Soup is on TCM tonight. If you've never seen it, I strongly recommend that you correct this deficiency in your personality ASAP. It is the best of the Marx Brothers movies, which is saying a lot. I fear sometimes that the Bros and their ilk (e.g., W.C. Fields, whose Bank Dick is also on tonight) are sort of lost to the NapDyn generation. I was raised on that stuff; they always seemed to be on the TV on rainy afternoons on those stations in the corner of the dial. Remember, I grew up with seven stations. There was no such thing as narrowcasting. So if I was singing "Hail Freedonia" you know that a couple or forty million other baby boomers were doing likewise. Nowadays they probably play Duck Soup just as often, but how do you find it in a universe of a bazillion channels? On top of that, there is a (rather philistine) mindset that one should only watch new movies, as if films are comparable to milk, turning sour if they're left in the fridge for too long. Granted that many films don't hold up, but age alone is not a count against them, just as age alone isn't a count against, say, paintings. "I only like new paintings." Who says that? For that matter, who says, "I only like old paintings." What Duke Ellington said about music is true of all art forms, that there are only two kinds: good, and everything else.

Speaking of quotes, U. S. Grant was cited as saying, "I have two favorite songs. One of them is 'Battle Hymn of the Republic.' The other one isn't."

Humor was so much easier a couple of centuries ago.

I heard from Herman Melville last night. PCP's cub reporter is already in Philadelphia, apparently manning a booth in the airport so that the PCP website can photograph everyone as they pick up their luggage. "It's not very comfortable, sitting next to carousel number eight for twenty-four hours a day, and the federal security people have been giving me the eagle eye, but it will be worth it if we can get a shot of one of PCP's recently announced instructors as they scoop their laundry up off the conveyor belt. That's what the fans want to see." I guess so. Which brings me back to W.C. Fields, and quotes. On poker, when asked if it was a game of chance: "Not the way I play it." Given one last request when about to be hanged: "I've always wanted to see Philadelphia." And allegedly (you can look it up and disprove it) printed on his tombstone: "I'd rather be in Philadelphia."

Phildadelphia doesn't have much of a reputation; Babylon on the Delaware it isn't. Still, I love the State House area, the sense of history of this place, the Founders roaming around (probably making Philadlphia jokes), the funk of the South Side, the market, statues of Ben Franklin everywhere. It's a nice little city. I wish I could go. Someday, if I'm still in this activity but no longer in the Day Job...

Actually, I did chuckle over the time machine...

If this keeps up I'm going to start reading the sports section. Go Brewers!

And, oh yeah, I managed to get that box against the wall in God of War, and my next challenge is battling the Hydra. I am probably the worst video game player in the world. I just sit there randomly hitting the buttons over and over, hoping something will happen. Eventually something does, or I give up. As you play any of these games they're always slow-feeding you instructions on new subtleties, presumably at the point at which you're ready for them. Tap lightly on L1 while breathing garlic on the X button twice, then let go of R2 for special Groin of Power Spell. Like anyone can remember that stuff. Just hitting the buttons at random is enough for me. It's thoughts like these that will probably stop me from spending a fortune on a PSP, despite the attraction of instantly available games for all the debate down time.

I'm always doing my best not to spend money. It's not as if I have all that much of it, but I would like things like the aforementioned PSP, an iBook or 12" PowerBook, a portable DVD player, a cellphone smaller than Chihuahua, a new PDA. I may or may not get anything of these things, depending on forces of lust beyond my control. I did just get a standalone hard drive, however. This way I can dump all my stuff in one central place for both my active home machines, and not have to think about it again. Seems to be working fine, so far, but I haven't tried hooking it up to the Windows 98 machine yet. That's tonight's challenge. Then I'll take on the Hydra.

And I've come to the conclusion that Napoleon Dynamite is simply the bright line between blind youth and benign old age. I have yet to find anyone past one score and five who likes it, or anyone under that age who hasn't memorized it. Fortunately, it's easy to memorize. One viewing was all it took for me; it only has about four pages of script, recited very slowly. What I'm thinking is that I can drop little Vote For Pedro references into my everyday conversation in order to look cool while I'm husbanding my Tots. That ought to fool the little buggers!

Addendum re Brewers

Okay, I was half right. The Yankees still suck. And the world is going to hell in a handbasket when AL plays NL. Jeesh.

Ask me about the Mets pitching staff; I'm ready!

I now know everything there is to know about baseball. The Brewers beat the Yankees last night. This means that, A) the Brewers are probably in the American League (I was wondering about that), and B) the Yankees must really suck. With this information in hand, I'm ready for everything. Maybe I'll take up sports betting...

And then there's the Lincoln-Douglas Education Project (people.hws.edu/barnes/ldep). Going back to my ruminations following TOCs, apparently the fears go deeper than I had understood. I just got an open email from Jason Baldwin explaining that the feeling is that this is the moment to save LD, otherwise it's over. That's sort of scary, because if these feelings have spread as much as they have around the coaching community (Timmons, Wycoff, and Miller are among the founding board members of LDEP) then we're talking serious fears. I've been protected by being in too many tabrooms and by not giving a horse's patoot about national circuit. The good thing is, LD is held together by a pretty thin thread, that thread being the handful of folks who actually throw tournaments. If all the tournament directors are in agreement about stuff, and can actually come up with ways to improve that stuff, we could really see positive change. I have, of course, signed up to join this illustrious group. It will be interesting to see what we come up with. I, for one, look to lay judging as one possible savior. The further we move away from general (albeit informed) adjudication, the further we move toward specialized and possible agenda-laden adjudication. Regardless of what that agenda might be, it would undermine the academic value of LD: learning to read, write and speak. Implicit in RWS is that students read, write and speak English. At the point where it's Chinese, or meta-Chinese, it's policy with one person per team. At which point, no parent chaperones. At which point, fewer participants. At which point, Hello Public Forum.

The possibilities are mind-numbing.

Settling into Summer

I'm making the reservations now for the Yale hotel. It's just around the corner (the tournament, not the hotel). I would love to let one year rest before beginning the next year. But we're also hacking around the MHLs, I've begun instilling some discipline on myself on the team webpage update, and I hope to have the Bump site up before 9/1 for a change. This is ridiculous.

I also wonder if I'm cut out for video games. I am stuck on God of War after putting in about 11 minutes of game time. I know what to do; I just can't do it. I keep pushing this block toward the archers, and they keep shooting the block. #&^%^$% archers! When this begins to get me down, I say to myself, Yo, let's watch a movie. Everyone recommends Napolean Dynamite, so what the hell. Pop it into the old DVD player. Hmmm. Good credits, but that was about it. Here was a movie that, if you ask me, definitely could have used some archers. Why is everyone recommending this to me, not just teenagers but adults (all right, stunted adults to be sure, but adults nonetheless)? It is, I grant, unique, but would it have killed them to actually be funny? Nothing worse than staring stone-eyed at the TV for an hour and a half just wondering about the state of mind of those people who liked this thing. When the most amusing thing in a film is 'Tater Tots, you know you're in trouble.

Jeesh.

The answer to the question, by the way, is City of Glass by Paul Auster. The book, not the graphic novel (no cheating!). I mentioned this earlier as the perfect postmodern novel, but never actually named it. It distills all the themes of narrator/narration/language that I'm working on in Caveman. I'll analyze it there, but if you're curious now, check it out. Don't expect to actually enjoy it, in that boring conservative pre-modernist sense of a good read. It's not a reading experience the way, say, The Hobbit is a reading experience. But you may find it fascinating.

Finding time for Caveman is getting difficult. We're on summer hours here, which means a longer day and golf on Friday afternoons. I keep thinking there's a joke somewhere in the concept of Sumer hours, but I can't really figure one out (as in Sumerian, not icumen in). I'll leave it to you. (I know, if I were smarter, I'd be funnier. Yeah, yeah, yeah.) Still, if I can give just one night a week to Caveman I might have it finished before the summer is over (Sumer is already over).

I need to concentrate. Settle down a little. It's summer. Enjoy it. Debate is over. Ahhhhhh...

Lightening up

All right. Enough already. I'm running out of words. When do I get my paycheck for this stuff, anyhow?

I heard from the Nostrumite last night. He's in a state of permanent depression over having to get back to the real world again after his honeymoon. He and Odelie mostly just lapped up sun and pina coladas for a couple of weeks while the rest of us were in Milwaukee (his guys hadn't qualified, which was too bad, because I wanted to see the expression on O'Cruz's face when I introduced him to the non-existent Mite). As proof of his return, he has posted a new installment of TWHS, and he claims he is back in business sharpening his metaphoric pencil and bearing down hard. So marriage obviously hasn't addled him all that much. Yet.

As for me, I've got a couple of things to do. I want to break down the PF Nationals topic (preferably with an Uzi), I'm looking forward to my first free Saturday since April to continue my fruitless pursuit of wirelessly connecting my home computers, I'm back on the golf course on Sunday with all new grips (when people tell me to get a grip, I do just that), last night I embarked on God of War, the galleys of the new Doctorow are on the credenza (but first I have to finish the Eco), Caveman continues to beckon (I did very little in Wisconsin), my fingers have forgotten what the piano keyboard feels like, the new Paul Johnson Art book is sneering at me from the coffee table, there's the summer reading list to settle, much hassling over MHLs for next year, etc., etc., etc. You know, maybe I should have retired when they gave me that award!

A Tale of Three Cities, or, Walt was Wrong

.
In the last few weeks I have worked my way through the cutting edge of urban critique. Las Vegas, Santa Fe and Milwaukee; from these three cities you can learn just about everything there is to know about the unreality of everyday existence and the death and life of great American cities, without having to read Jane Jacobs or Jean Baudrillard. It's amazing how our lives are sometimes much more interesting than they appear on the surface. Somewhat along the lines of my favorite quip—if you were smarter I'd be funnier—there's the idea that if you just pay attention a little bit, and think a little bit, you'll find a lot more than you were expecting.

At some point in the mid-twentieth century, urban planning was the replacement of rickety depressed areas with new subsidized housing. You can get a great sense of this when you're on the train passing through Harlem going into Grand Central. You can see some decrepit, crumbling streets, and you can see some big, ugly, anonymous apartment buildings. The theory was that replacing the crumbling streets with these apartment buildings would somehow alleviate the problems that had led to the crumbling streets. At the same time, at least in New York, there was enormous destruction of neighborhoods in general in aid of the building of roads and bridges under the vision of master builder Robert Moses. Moses, in his lifetime, was responsible for practically every major artery in New York, including the city, Long Island, and all the way up to Niagara Falls. He built the Triborough, the Whitestone, the Throg's Neck, the Verrazano. He build every major highway on Long Island. He built Jones Beach. He built much of the Taconic. You name it, he built it. The problem was, or at least one problem was, that Moses had little or no regard for the harm that his constructions did to the areas in which they were built. Quite famously, the stretch of highway through the Bronx from Van Cortlandt Park to those small bridges like the Alexander Hamilton was once a tight, low-income neighborhood that was ripped apart in a blood battle that may not even have had to happen if Moses had simply routed his Cross-Bronx Expressway a few blocks away. But Moses, who was a compromiser like George W. Bush is a francophile, wouldn't even listen to the idea of an alternative.

In the early 60s, Moses was planning the Lower Manhattan Expressway, an elevated eight-lane highway through Greenwich Village connecting the East River to the Hudson River. The damage to lower Manhattan's neighborhoods as neighborhoods is probably incalculable. Jane Jacobs was among those who stood up to, and eventually defeated, the most powerful man in NY. Jacobs' urban theory is a simple one, that the life of a city is in its diversity on the streets, the interplay of people in neighborhoods, the humanization of what is otherwise the enormous scale of place. There are 8 million people in New York City, but to individuals there are only familiar families and familiar shops on your street, where children grow up playing in the parks and the old folks sit in the sun playing chess—you get the picture. Jacobs was right, and she wrote about it, and she is a key figure in understanding modern urban thought. Which is why Walt was wrong. His view of EPCOT, the city of big buildings of commerce separated from residence, is an extremely clear portrait of the modernist (and now discredited) view of urban planning. That city is, ultimately, devoid of life. A living, breathing city is a hodgepodge of residence and commerce and young and old, and that diversity is not only the sign of urban health, it is the cause of urban health. Walt, by building a city that would prophylactically solve for the urban problems that do exist (slums and everything that goes along with poverty), would create a lifeless shell of a city that would never survive. Urban problems must be addressed, but with an eye on the people, not the architecture or the roads. (Malls, of course, are another jejune answer to the problems of the city.)

The other thing Walt did, and this is why we enjoy reading Baudrillard, is create Disneyland, where reality is refined into themes of unreality (e.g., compare a real main street with Disney's Main Street). Disneyfication begins to pervade modern thinking, and over time, back in the real world, designers start emulating unreal themes into so-called actual existence. That is, architecture becomes consciously disneyfied to the extent that we are living in a total world of unreality, or at least a world where the real and unreal are indistinguishable.

So, a tale of three cities. Start with Milwaukee. What marks downtown Milwaukee and connects it to the themes of modern urbanization, is its skyway (or whatever they call it). This is a series of passageways about one flight up above ground level connecting apparently all the main downtown buildings. I took a long walk through it Sunday, and it was deserted. At one point I entered the federal building and went through metal detectors and saw the only other human beings (uniformed guards) in the system. This kind of skyway or something like it has been built in a number of cities, ostensibly to connect hubs and to protect people from the weather. But what they do is remove people from the commons of the ground level. You don't need permission, you don't need to look employed, you can be any kind of bum or race or religion on the streets, but indoors, in the seemingly private sphere of the skyways (even if the skyways claim to be public) you have what is essentially the mall mentality vis-a-vis security. No hare krishnas. No homeless. No teenagers hanging out. No one of dubious ethnicity being dubiously ethnic. The end result of this elevation of traffic from the streets is, literally, the death of the streets. After walking the skyway I did the same trip on ground level. Mostly there's empty storefronts. Whether or not the skyway has killed downtown Milwaukee, it has certainly killed downtown Milwaukee's streets. They are dead. I would guess that they are also rather frightening at certain times, since all the "safe" working people are up above, these dead streets are inhabited by the hare krishnas, the homeless, the teenagers and the dubious ethnics. (There's an essay in Variations on the Theme Park about all of this.)

Las Vegas, of course, is the theme capital of the universe. Arabian souks, Parisian streets, St. Mark's square, ancient Luxor, Manhattan... You've seen the commercials for Steve Wynn's new hotel, the hook of which is, it has no theme; this being Vegas, you would have to say that its theme is themelessness. You can write your own analysis here of the city as a whole, or reality versus unreality, whatever. One analysis is as good as the next. Either you find the place fun or you think it's hell only hotter; it's almost the same thing with WDW: either you find the place fun or you think it's hell only hotter and more humid.

The more interesting place, caveman-wise, is my third city, Santa Fe. This is one of the oldest cities in the western hemisphere. It's got an "old town" that is, allegedly, the old part. But is it? All buildings, young and old, are built to look as if they're old adobe. The new buildings look just like the old buildings which means, in fact, that the new buildings are themed to resemble the originals. Are those real Indians selling real artifacts or real Indians selling what tourists like, and has what tourists like replaced what Indians make? Maybe they're just not real Indians. The whole shebang represents to some extent all those horrible things you hate about commercialism, but then again, some of the stuff is nice. I bought some. And as for all that adobe, why is the rest of the city also adobe? Or more to the point, built to look like adobe? Has the alleged unreality of the old city spread into the new city? What is the bright dividing line?

Fun stuff to think about. These three cities, one after the other, had Menickean juices flowing, anyhow. Which means I'll probably finish Part 5 of Caveman in the year 2008.

Resolved: Apples are the best fruit

.
One imagines that the contestants at CatNats were all complaining about the judge pool. This is only fair, since the judges were all complaining about the contestant pool. Curiously enough, however, the elimination-round contestants were uniformly a strong, experienced group representative of elimination rounds everywhere. So this judge-pool-lite that is CatNats must have somehow managed to figure out, despite its incredible randomness, who the strongest contestants were. Which is a tribute to the contestants, who must have appropriately adapted to their general audience. The Old Farts maintain that this is one of the underpinnings of LD's value, the need to adapt to audiences (it is an important aspect of any speaking gig, throughout life). The OFs don't say that you should have to adapt to someone who's never heard of LD, but you should be able to pick up ballots from someone other than a former TOC debater. The more parochial the activity becomes, the less catholic it will be (if you'll allow a little vocabulary borrowed from the moment).

Meanwhile, there were those other contestants. I was judging up a storm (for me, which means I still probably managed to get more time off than anyone else), and I was astounded by some of the things I saw and heard. My average points were about 24. I saw some good debaters, but seldom in the same round. [Note to the kid who came up to me afterwards and said he read my blog, I thought you were good. If you had told me ahead of time that you read my blog, I would have thought you were great.] [Note to everyone else going forward: If you're not on my team and you read this blog, keep it to yourself. It's bad enough that my life is empty, but for you to be with me in it does not reflect well on you. Log off and read "Moby Dick."]

What bothered me the most was the almost uniform lack of negative advocacies. I was even told once that the rules of LD place the burden of proof on the affirmative, while it was hit or miss whether the negative would tell me that all the neg has to do is prove the resolution is false (or the affirmative wrong) in order to win, or whether it would simply be implicit in the argumentation. Now I've been down this road in the past, but that never stops me from taking another trip. As you know, I am cursed with a rather profound innate understanding of the English language. Not only can I interpret straightforward sentences such as debate resolutions, but I understand with hardly any need to be bopped in the head the implicit aspects of these resolutions. Often a topic, like CatNat's "imparting of knowledge ought to be the primary goal of formal education." looks to the uneducated, non-English-speaking eye like it is about one thing, in this case, the imparting of knowledge. But Menick, recognizing the clever trickery of those Catholic resolution makers, sees that the focus is, in fact, the question of what should be the primary goal of formal education, with the imparting of knowledge posited as the affirmative advocacy. (Some CatNatites argued on the aff only that education was a good thing; these folks obviously had had little, at least insofar as debate theory was concerned.)

But this is too hard to understand. So let me try something else.

My point is that there is no such thing as a topic where all the negative has to do is prove the affirmative wrong, where the affirmative has an advocacy and the negative doesn't. Just because the neg advocacy is not explicit doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I mean, you could debate this way, but it doesn't make much sense. If the negative advocates no postion on a topic, then if any piece of the affirmative advocacy survives the round, the affirmative wins. In the unlikely event of no pieces of the affirmative surviving, since there is no alternative offered, we have a draw; however, since we can't have a draw, we rely on the judge to intervene. How, strategically, does this make any sense for the negative? Unless they argue perfectly, they lose, and if they do argue perfectly, they ask the judge to toss a coin. If the negative does have an advocacy, however, an alternative position to the affirmative, then the neg has an alternative to offer after having shot down the affirmative. Now the judge smiles and writes NEG on the ballot in big letters (unless of course the affirmative shoots down the neg advocacy, and we're back to the coin flip again, but that's another matter altoegether).

Let me provide an example that is metaphorically identical to CatNats. Resolved: Apples are the best fruit.

The aff value is health, with a criterion of varied ubiquity. Contention 1: Apples provide more vitamins and minerals than any other fruit. 2. Apples are easy to come by in a variety of flavors, more than any other fruit. 3. Apples can be made into a lot of different products, more than any other fruit.

The bad neg value is autonomy, with a criterion of protection of rights. The neg's sole contention is that some people don't like apples, and making them eat apples dehumanizes them.

Now, you should be able to see the problem here for neg. Aff has had 6 minutes to declaim on all the positive virtues of apples; neg will no doubt use a lot of its NC time to refute these claims, but some of these claims are pretty good. And all neg says in its own constructive is something that is, well, not constructive. Think about that good old English language again. Both sides give a constructive case. But this neg didn't construct anything, this neg simply attempted to tear down the affirmative construction. The likelihood of tearing down the entire construction is slight, and even if you do tear it all down, every last apple branch crushed in the dust, without any construction to consider, what is a judge to do? Not only that, but the neg has put the entire debate on affirmative ground. All we're ever arguing is apples; apples is catnip to the affirmative, and the affirmative wants nothing more than to discuss apples. Yeah, great strategy, neg: keep the entire argument on aff turf. Do you think the US would be independent of Great Britain if Washington had had to fight in downtown London?

You can boil what I'm saying down to something so elemental that even a CatNatite can understand it.

"Sith is the best Star Wars movie because of its special effects."
"No it isn't."
You be the judge. Based on the argument above, what is the best Star Wars movie?

Negative positions are always implied in the resolution. A comparison is suggested even if not clearly stated. Some of those implications are easier to divine than others, but they're there if you do a little research. But, come to think of it, there are even times when there is a clear comparison in a resolution, and some debaters STILL don't offer a true negative position. Remember, this isn't only about theory, it's about practicality. The odds of winning on the neg without a clear constructive position are against you, and certainly your odds of winning on the neg are always better when you propose a clear position of your own. This is pure strategy. It's obvious.

And Sith is so far from the best Star Wars movie that I don't even have to offer any arguments. I dare you to refute this.