Menick, Part One, the Early Years

Okay. Let’s get down to business.

The first time I went to a Disney park, according to my mother, who is an unreliable source, is 1955. This is the year Disneyland opened. I maintain that the first year I went was 1958, and that in 1955 we only got as far as Las Vegas because as soon as my father encountered his first one-armed bandit, we were staying put. We saw the entertainer Ted Lewis at a nightclub and my mother and I both recall that distinctly; I also recall being babysat at some desolate Vegas motel the likes of which were torn down during the Nixon administration. What little kid would recall “Me and My Shadow” but not Main Street USA? What do you say to that, Mother Menick?

In either case, my exposure to Disney was at an early, impressionable age. I was also a committed devotee of Walt’s various television shows. I had a little rocking donkey that I would watch TV from those Wednesday nights when the Disneyland show came on, or as my father put it, I would sit on my ass watching television. (His sense of humor was severely stretched by those one-armed bandits in his future.) I watched other shows too, but in those days, Disney was the Cadillac, and everything else was local and low-grade. Disney meant big feature films that blew you away. Everything else was, in our household, referred to as Farmer Brown cartoons, with a lot of barnyard animals chasing one another around. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed those Farmer Brown cartoons. But, well, they weren’t Dumbo.

I watched Disney’s various TV shows probably until they went off the air (and then I started watching the Disney channel when Kate was born, using her as a convenient excuse). This means that my entire life I sat there and watched old Walt introduce whatever, making him a very real person in my little life. He connected to kids well, unlike, say, Ed Sullivan, who I also saw every week and who had the personality of a fire hydrant. As you probably know, the creation of the physical Disneyland was to some degree financed by ABC, in return for which Disney created his TV show. That show, especially in the early days, was directly involved in marketing the park even before it was built, and even as the park was able to stand on its own and the show moved away from its original home on ABC, the connection to the park remained. Each show was either a segment from Fantasyland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland or Frontierland, the same divisions as the physical park. Week after week we saw stories connected to the concepts of these lands, and often we saw stories about the park itself. The park promoted the TV show, the TV show promoted the park, etc. Disney was always marketing his stuff eleven ways to Sunday and back again. Don’t forget that we also had the Mickey Mouse Club, which was on every day for half an hour further beating Disneyana into our little brains.

For kids of my generation, this stuff was mental opium. There was no resisting addiction to Disney, and no desire to do so. The Mouse wasn’t perceived as evil then (although there was a nascent critical literature, which I admit I didn’t read much of in Miss Marino’s third grade). The need to go to Disneyland became palpable. And I was lucky enough to go a number of times because we had relatives who lived out west in Salt Lake City (they were the town’s token gentiles), and my father worked for an airline, which in those days meant readily accessible, and free, airplane transportation. This was a magic combination.

So I saw Disneyland very early on, either the year it opened or shortly thereafter, and although unlike locals in California I didn’t haunt the place, I saw it every few years, just enough to inspire but not deflate a sense of awe. There was no other place on earth like Disneyland. My brain was completely Disneyfied by both the place and my exposure to the other Disney products, having been raised on the television show and, of course, the feature films. Nothing was as sure a bet for parents as dumping their kids at a Disney film matinee while they went off doing whatever adults do when their kids are at the movies. (I don’t know what that is because when Kate went to kid movies, I went with her.) So Disney was not only a part of my regular life, but contained a magical place where that part of my life achieved its apotheosis.

Of such are the attics of our brains stuffed and organized.

What's wrong with this picture?

If you're not following @NostrumNation on Twitter, you're really missing an awful lot. It's Jules's direct line to the universe.

Inventory

I thought it might be a good idea to take inventory, it being the end of the year and all. I know that the VCA hates to miss anything.

Websites

Starting at jimmenick.com you get everything that I do, which includes the Hen Hud team material, the Metro-Hudson League (with how-to materials free for the taking), my schedule (including a regional calendar of all northeast events, plus), my podcasts and the Nostrum archive (which Jules is too lazy to port over to his own site).

Blogs

There is, of course, this blog, which is fairly central. Here is where I explain to you in depth what is wrong with you, with forensics, and, occasionally, with something else. Of course, in real life I am not the bilious person I appear to be here. In fact, I am something of a milquetoast. I prefer to tell you what I think of you here, where you can’t punch me, rather than in person.

Additionally there is the Coachean Feed Blog, where I write up various items I pick up off the internet that appear to be of value to forensicians. Since occasionally I tag an article without putting in into that blog, the best way to follow my Feed is here, or through your own RSS reader (I use Google Reader).

The TVFT blog announces new episodes of The View from Tab, and also includes some interesting discussion of our content from the outside world.

For work I run this blog on books and book-related stuff. Not a lot of entries, but what’s there is choice, if you happen to be a reader.

I also provide technical support to Jules and the Nostrumite on their blog; I was the one who recommended they use Blogspot, since I was using it up the Wazoo.

Podcasts

TVFT has morphed into me and Bietz and OC with lately CP and anyone else interested. Earlier episodes included deep background on LD subject areas, Great Debate Adventures (fiction barely disguised as nonfiction, or vice versa), the complete From Caveman to Frenchman lectures, some notes from various tabrooms, and maybe one or two other odds and ends. The webpage itemizes everything.

Additionally I narrate Nostrum, because Jules and the Mite are too lazy to do it, and if you think I suck at it, you should hear them.

Both these podcasts are available on iTunes.

Twitter

@jimmenick is mostly automatic cross feeds from the Coachean Feed (but not the complete set), plus my own random thoughts. This summer I will be tweeting from the great Disney Debate Adventure.

@debatetab is live when I’m running a complicated tournament, for purposes of group announcements.

@selecteditions is manual cross feeds from the DJ blog.

@nostrumnation is maintained by Jules and the Nostrumite, and has nothing to do with me whatsoever.

Tools

My favorite web time suck is my RSS reader, which collates hundreds of sites for me, organized by debate, entertainment, books, news, Disney, etc. I use Tweetie for Twitter, I’ve dabbled with Apple’s web iLife app but mostly I just cop other people’s code, and I’m a dedicated Mac user with the occasional drift into virtualization to run the PC-based TRPC software.

Et cetera

I seem to be moderator of something on lddebate.org, but I seldom look at it. I do have my own Facebook page, plus I seem to be part of some other pages like the TVFT page. I never look at the LinkedIn updates I get, but some people like this site for their DJs and I do connect if someone asks, but don’t come to me for a publishing job because, unfortunately, I don’t have any. I don’t follow threads on WTF (aka VBD) because the noise level is too high, but I do occasionally read and post if something particularly interests me, but mostly I feel that, with all of the above at my disposal, I need to post somewhere else like I need the proverbial hole in my head. I like to buy games but seldom play them more than once or twice; they seem like something I should do but I don’t seem to be able to find the time for them very often.

For entertainment I mostly just enjoy this.

And that, as they say, is that.

And so we bid a fond farewell to 2009-10

It’s nice to see that NDCA honored O’C with a Educator of the Year award. Unfortunately, I gather that when the award was announced, O’C had wandered off somewhere, and was never made aware of it. Let this be a lesson to you, young padawan: Do not wander off. Wandering off never led to any good, but has often led to much bad. Being a wanderer off (or wander offer, as some linguists would have it) is a dangerous business. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

I put paid to my official year this last Saturday with my regular judging stint (this is my third year in a row at the 6-rds RR, which means I can practically set my calendar by it). Six whole flights: what a burden! It was fun, of course, some of the time. One guy played a rap song as his 1AC. I penalized him for not citing his source, and gave him low speaks because, uh, he didn’t speak. I also suggested (for the bazillionth time) that if your judge announces a paradigm of traditional resolution-based bias, ignoring it is worse than just not asking in the first place. I found myself aggravated by the idea that “the Joe Blow evidence takes that out” is an argument. “The Joe Blow evidence takes that out” is a commentary on the argument, which must still be made to convince my antediluvian little mind. Why do we bother to argue at all? Half the debaters are running the same evidence. Let’s number it all, and the AC can say #23, #28, and #3, and then the neg can just refute by saying #7 takes out #23 and I can say Aha, how convincing, and we’ll move on from there. It’s called Lincoln-Douglas Debate, not Lincoln-Douglas Inventory. And I was irritated that I had to drop someone on the basis of a definition, but if you concede a definition and then you run content counter to the definition and get called out on it, if there is any sense of rule-based order, there’s not much I can do, even if I think you otherwise won everything because if your case doesn’t stand, it falls, end of story. Worst of all, I was forced to vote in favor of a case that led to nuclear annihilation. As I said in the oral, it felt so 90s policy to me, and I hated myself for it. But in fact, that was my favorite round of them all. What can I say?

In typical Sailor fashion, we managed to leave behind at least one computer at the school. How does one forget one’s computer? It’s not like a coat, where you go outside and it’s cold and we never forget—Oh, wait a minute. We’ve left a string of coats up and down the eastern seaboard. Oh, well. At least the Panivore was impressed that I used the word fiat on a ballot. I think she imagines that all I understand is the social contract and Danish pop music. Talk about your young padawans!

I have announced to the Tars that we will be having a wrap-up Bean Trivia game next week, which will give me enough time to rustle up some new questions. I think I’m running out of categories: I looking at the Hittites, the unpublished song lyrics of Cole Porter and shoe sizes of the Americas as possibilities. There’s going to be a lot of losing of beans if I don’t fix that up a little bit…

CP on the Pffft topic

"I often throw out ridiculous topics to my debaters when teaching generic skills such as flowing or case organization. Such topics include “Resolved that ketchup is superior to mustard” or “Resolved that the US should nuke France.” These topics are more fair and debatable than the NCFL PF topic." More...

There's a touch of manifesto to this. But the idea that we might not go to a tournament that ignores us? I mean, duh. Can you say NYSFL?

Been there. Doing that.

Winding down in numerous ways

Any pfffter doing the CatNat Boogie might wish to look at the comments on the TVFT blog. If there isn’t enough there to base cases, then you’re not thinking hard enough.

In preparation for a move at the DJ, I’ve taken down a lot of crap memorabilia in my office and boxed it up. All I have left to look at is a postcard of a Fra Angelico, a ’64 World’s Fair calendar (April is General Electric’s Progressland), a limited edition Cheshire Cat pin, an honorable mention ribbon from the NYCFL, two family photos circa 1984, and a Mid-Hudson League medal (V1.0). In many ways, this arcane assemblage is the story of my life, give or take a few key incidents. I just thought I’d point that out.

Speaking of packing up, I now need to pack down (which ought to be the opposite of packing up) the crap tools in my traveling tab bag. God knows what’s in there in addition to the obvious. I did retrieve the granola bars and put them in my golf bag, so I don’t have to worry about feeding the mice over the summer. But the thing is, at tournaments people give me stuff that I toss in there, and I forget I have it, and then April rolls around and I look and say, Oh, great, a coupon for an iPud for only $24.95, then, oh, pooh, it expired two months ago. If anything good turns up I’ll let you know. I think there’s a Sims game in there, for instance. I never got the hang of that one. Maybe some other stuff of note. We’ll see.

Tomorrow is the last Saturday morning on which I will be setting an alarm until September. If that doesn’t mark the end of the season, nothing does.

TVFT announces hiatus, @NN announces ignoble return, etc., etc., etc.

We are nearing the end of this season on TVFT. Which is interesting, because until last night, we weren’t even aware that we had any seasons. But taking one consideration with another, it seems that this is the time to fold, while we’ve still got a few chips on the table, or something like that. We were going to comment on the Pffft comments last night, but we were all sort of tired of Pffft, although we did excoriate the CatNat Pffft topic for a while because, well, if ever a resolution deserved looking up the word excoriation in the dictionary, this one is it. I should be going to Omaha just to judge that rez. I’d pick up the con every time, sort of a mercy ballot. Actually, word on the street (if the street is in the Vatican) is that they’re using the resolution to weed out the atheists in the organization. Anyone who casts a con ballot will immediately be sent to Texas for regrooving, after first emptying their pockets of all those two-dollar bills with TJ’s picture on them, not to mention leaving their nickels behind for charity. I think they’re giving the TJ-branded lucre to Parker and Stone to back their upcoming Mormon play on Broadway.

Is the world getting weirder, or is it just me?

Anyhow, last night we also talked about tricks and psych-outs, although mostly that turned into a discussion of the more subtle aspects of the debating game. I actually suggest you listen to this one, if you’re a debater. You might get something out of it. You’ll also get to see the quintessential O’C, because for no known reason, in the middle of the podcast he wanders off. That stuff doesn’t wash out, in other words.

And then I think we’ll wrap it up next week, or maybe have one more show after TOC. I know that Bietz has written a manifesto of sorts to the Advisory Committee (how unusual) with various suggestions, but I don’t know what they are, nor how much he wishes to reveal, although normally he’s pretty forthcoming about stuff like that, given his commitment to transparency. I like to think of it as Open Bietz. Whatever. So one more or two more shows, then a break for a while until so much new stuff builds up for next season that we have no choice but to continue. However, I may try to get some folks on the side to record interviews or something, just to keep the momentum going. We’ll see. Skype makes it so easy to do, I figure, why not?

Meanwhile, if you’re following @NostrumNation on Twitter you saw the message that Buglaroni will be returning. That came as quite a surprise to me, I have to admit, because nothing I’ve seen in the future episodes (not that I’ve seen all that much, although I am a week or two ahead of you for obvious reasons) has any HPB in it. So I guess it won’t be for a while. Still, at least even I can now see the point of following the guys’ tweets, although at the moment I think I’m the only one who does.

Chetan-a-Go-Go; judge ettiquette; the Sailors' Official Team Song; Charmed, I'm sure

Chetan Hertzig has been running his Six Rounds of Spring RR for years now. First it was up in Massachusetts, then in NYC, and now it’s just down the road at Harrison High School. Last year was the second time I went, but I’ve been sending students since forever. Of course, from my point of view, it’s one of my few annual judging events. I can imagine that the students at the other side of the room are just thrilled to see me. My speed abilities get pretty rusty from underuse, for one thing. I’m not terribly against speed, as members of the VCA know, but speed needs to be calibrated correctly for the judges. If they can blaze, blaze away. If they can’t, slow down. Simple enough, and it has ever been so. LD speed wasn’t invented last year, you know. But to flow speed you need to do it often, and I don’t. I’m still poking away on a legal pad because the few times I’ve tried to flow on a computer I’ve not done well with it; again, more experience would probably solve that, but more experience is not forthcoming. I’ve long ago disappeared into the tab room, where my speed and accuracy is fairly decent. I’ll continue doing what I do. Considering the number of coaches who’ve been around as long as I have who neither judge nor tab and who spend entire weekends contemplating their team’s navels, I’m not exactly totally ready for the dustbin. When I am, I’m sure the Sailors will toss me there.

By the way, if you’re supposed to be judging at a tournament and I give you a ballot, the correct response is, “Thank you for giving me something to do for the next hour and a half,” not, “You’re going to make me judge again, you illegitimate offspring of a one-legged goat?” How would you like it if I took a round off? “I’m not going to pair round four,” says I. “I’m too tired from pairing round three.”

Jeesh.

As I was driving around last week something called The Sailor Song by a group called Toy-Box came up on my iPod. I’d never heard it before (I’ve got a lot of music on my iPod that I’ve never heard before, and even more that the Sailors hope they’ll never hear again). It turns out that somewhere in my travels I had ripped an album of Danish pop songs. Whatever. Anyhow, in my mind this has now become our team song. I recommend you watch the video on YouTube, and you will see why. Keep in mind that I am not saying that I think this song is good, although I cannot get it out of my head. It is more…unforgettable. So is the video. You won’t thank me for this, but henceforth, whenever the Sailors appear in force, we will be singing this song. Look on my debaters, ye mighty, and despair.

I’ve also managed to get JV addicted to Charmed, an app from hell that is, in a word, hard to put down. It’s of the old match-three variety, but you can turn the Touch in any direction and gravity kicks in… I recommend it to you, too. You can load your own background music, so you can play it while listening to The Sailor Song. Do I have your best interests in mind or what?

This is why we nail the bed to the floor

“Resolved: That the constitutional right of freedom of religion has wrongly evolved into freedom from religion.” Okay. We can now move away slowly from the crime scene. Bietz suggested in a private communiqué (no communiqué with me is private for long!) that he’s had enough of Pffft on TFVT. The Cats must have heard him loud and clear, and responded with a resolution guaranteed to shut all of us up forthwith. If you don’t recall, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” And I love a resolution of dubious fact modified by a judgment of “wrongly.” While the line of history from the Constitution through to the latest declarations on the subject from SCOTUS is an interesting narrative, one must in this instance contend with a (possibly) false premise leading to a moral judgment? And argued, potentially, in front of panels who have already accepted the premise and drawn a deeply held religious conclusion from it? Either you argue that it hasn’t happened or it isn’t wrong? I’m with Bietz. (By the way, a word to the wise: Flip pro. Oh, wait. It’s CatNats. No flip. Okay, a different word to the wise: Skip your con rounds, unless your opponents are raving lunatics.)

We return you now to our regular scheduled broadcast.

There were some interesting sidelights to the Lakeland tournament last weekend. First of all, O’C chezzed up with us again, as he does here and at Byram. To get him in the mood for the DDA (that’s Disney Debate Adventure), I dug out a bottle of WDW shampoo and a little Mickey Mouse soap I had stolen from my hotel room last time I was there and put them into his bathroom. He loved them. He also stole them, no doubt for the O’C loo back in the city. This didn’t bother me that much, but he also stole the towels, the pens, the alarm clock and the Knight Rider lunchbox. Jeesh.

In preparation for the MHL side of the tournament, we had asked member schools to nominate literally all their novices for recognition with what we were calling the Modest Novice awards. We thought it would be fun to have some jokey awards that acknowledged everyone’s hard work through the year, and also aided in team building and community building, which as I said yesterday, are big with me. Most programs rose to the occasion with fantastic results. It’s one thing to have your own private humorous awards, but when they’re public, it forces a level of creativity that will make the joke work with others. For the most part, they did. We asked that upperclassmen be the ones to come up with the categories, unique for each kid or, occasionally, pair of kids. I’m pretty sure this will be a standard feature of the MHL grand event in years to come. There were things like “Most Likely to Call His Judge a White Supremacist” and, for a policy team with one very big guy and one very little guy, “The Cutest Couple.” I got a real kick out of this.

Of course, there were numerous other awards as well, what with O’C and Stefan both sorting them out and whatnot. They are the godfathers of a new group, the New York State Debate Coaches Association, in aid of getting coaches working together to promote regional debate, so they had recognition awards for that plus the tournament per se, plus the Modest Novice awards, plus the People’s Champion Award (for the challenge round), plus one remaining award I have in my possession and will announce shortly. With O’C, in other words, you’re never at a loss for awards. Come to think of it, I had some old trophies in my house, and when he took the soap and the shampoo, he also stole them!

Then again, for reasons that totally elude me, I now have in my possession, and in the chez, the traveling trophy for LD for Lakeland. Why me, I wonder. Oh, well.

Throwing down the gauntlet

We ran Lakeland’s varsity division this last weekend in a challenge format. Interesting.

We got off to a late start on Friday because we were at the district middle school, which didn’t let out till about 3:30 or so. This was something of a handicap in terms of getting rounds in, but on the other hand, the division was relatively small, about 45 or so, having trimmed itself down a lot after losing its original date in February courtesy of the snowpocalypse. And we did not have a surfeit of judges (which is being kind). We had a pretty good pool, but very few extras. The word on the street was that, if you were a judge, you could expect to be judging something, either varsity or novice, and if you somehow escaped those particular fates, the guy running PF was sitting right across from me trying to wheel and deal, but only with people from his pool who could legitimately go into mine (which was not too many).

By the way, if you’re not on a pairing and you’re trying to hide out so that no one pushes you a ballot, it’s a good idea not to hang out in the tab room. Just sayin’.

We ran round one as a random pairing to give us rankings. Then the games began. It’s very simple. The lowest seed chooses who they want to debate, then the next lowest, until everyone is taken. O’C ran the barking, cajoling the folks into making their decisions, while JV kept an eye on availabilities (we had an odd number, which meant there was a bye to contend with, plus we didn’t want only one school left at the end with multiple unpaired entries), while I did manual pairings as they were called out, literally flipping a coin for sides as I went. Remarkably enough, this went relatively quickly once we got the hang of it (starting after round 2 we just handed out sheets with a list of the pairings we had exported into Excel). After I got all the pairings in I’d jog back to the tab room and run an automatic assignment of judges, which worked every single time! I was shocked. All I had to do was finagle some room assignments, which were sort of baffling TRPC a little bit but not too much. We ran flight A of round 3 on Friday and B on Saturday, which helped move things along, and we broke all 4-1s after 5 rounds, which seemed quite satisfactory.

So what is the point of all of this? Well, it’s late in the year, and it was fun for the participants. This was a regional tournament, and everybody knows everybody and mingles like crazy; I never knew which table to look for my Sailors at, since they kept sitting wherever with whomever, as did everyone else. A word to the wise: if you can make it till April and your team isn’t mingling with everyone else’s teams, you’ve got a serious socialization problem. Since one of my chief goals in this activity is generating that cross-team socialization, I was really happy about this aspect of the tournament. Challenging wouldn’t do for, say, getting a TOC bid, but for building community? Perfecto. (And, fortunately, not a problem for running an on-time tournament, with the three of us making it happen.) There were some goofy things like one Scientologist losing his first round then grudge-challenging the same guy, and losing, then losing his third round and grudge-challenging that guy, and losing again! Our favorite down-four got a special award for that. One way to get applause was to challenge the top seed, but plenty of people wisely stayed in their bracket. And if you weren’t there (as in, you decided that you’d go shoot baskets or go to the bathroom or something during the challenges), the obliging JV picked for you!

For the break rounds, we turned it around. Top seed got to pick. We broke 12, so we did a partial first, letting the top 4 sit it out. Then it got interesting, but still demanding. After all, anyone who made it that far was pretty good, so your choice of whom to debate wasn’t easy. We ended up with a Scarsdale-Hen Hud co-championship. It was either that or have the judges simply pass out from sanction exhaustion.

Would we do it again? Probably. We came up with this as part of the MHL championships rather than the Lakeland event, so next year, assuming that they will be separate, and that the MHL Grand Champs will be in April again, it should make sense at that latter event. I’m game, anyhow. And I think most of the people who were there will concur.

When I was a kid, we had to debate uphill, in both directions.

One thing that came from our Pffft discussion last night on TVFT was the point that, if a topic had a built-in weighing mechanism, it would help solve the evaluation problem. That is, if a topic is, Obamacare is good, that’s too vague, but if the topic is, Obamacare achieves social equality, then you have a specific goal beyond just pure evidence to evaluate. (I know, the example is silly, but the point is clear.) Since the structure of the round, with a 4 minute constructive, so to speak, is just long enough for case material without any framework (the other two minutes, if this were an LD round), if the metrics are built into the resolution, then everything is inherently more purposeful. I like that. It would be nice if the Rippin’ gurus of resolutions were to give it a little thought. Find not only a subject area but a goal for that content to achieve; that way the debaters need to present arguments in aid of achieving that goal, rather than some vague better-than-the-other-side approach.

By the way, there's even a modicum of insight into my own dark days as a high school debater in this episode. Find out what it was like to debate before the invention of evidence! Not that I was able to remember all that much of it. I think Zachary Taylor was President...

I’m down to three Sailors for Lakeland, which means I can fit them in my car. If anyone else drops out, I’ll be able to fit them in my briefcase. Total implosion, as simple as that. Hell in a hand basket, if you want the technical term for it. Anyhow, O’C has sent me all the details of the challenge format, which is mostly just pairing on the fly, as far as I’m concerned. The issue seems to be keeping things moving, which may be easier than it sounds, as long as people pick their challenge opponents with dispatch. We’ve eliminated strikes, which will help; apparently other challenge tournaments haven’t used them, and I can see how they’d gum things up. I think O’C said that in elims, the challenge would work the other way around, where top seed picks opponent. Fascinatin’. I think that means technically not that we literally break to anything but that I just only schedule the top seeds if we’re still in TRPC (I don’t know how I’d manually pair elims, which is contrary to everything known to tab man). Then again, we can just jettison TRPC at that point. We’ll see.

Extra: From the "Things I wouldn't ordinarily admit" file

All right. I give up. I had no idea that Rosemary Clooney had a singing sister who was at some point her partner. And I admit this as an avid, nay, rabid Rosemary Clooney fan.

I've got to start surfing the internet more regularly. I'm missing out on a lot of good stuff.

She sparkles... How pleasant. / She twinkles... How nice.

So last night’s Sailorfest was, shall we say, sparsely attended. The Great White Hunter, this novice who has debated exactly once because of all his prior engagements shooting poor defenseless animals, showed up for a few minutes, but otherwise it was just the admiralty: the Panivore, SuperSquirrel and the People’s Champion (who thinks he ought to hand out the People’s Champion Awards at Lakeland). We are so into next year as the Great Rebuilding. We’ve already got our recruiting pamphlet, most of which is fairly true and accurate (feel free to adapt it for your own team, but please use photos of your own damned kids: just because ours are better looking doesn’t mean you can claim them, except for one or two, names provided on request). Otherwise, except maybe for the odd chez, plus of course Lakeland and the Chetan-a-Go-Go, we can kiss 2009-10 goodbye.

Anyhow, last night I made the mistake of starting a dialogue about Nostrum; I should have learned from Jules’s experience last week. What I screwed up was letting go of a few facts of where the story was going. The thing is, Jules and the Mite send me the material well in advance, so I’m about two months ahead of the rest of the world in the direction of the narrative. The whole vampire thing was met with great apprehension by the assembled (not quite) multitude, but I assured them that no one sparkled. Sparkled? I knew there was a reason I studiously avoided the Twilight stuff. Vampires do not sparkle. They are the dead, animated by stealing life from the living. They have sought and found immortality, but at a tragic cost to their victims and, occasionally, themselves. I am confident that Jules and the Mite will not create nice preppy vampires. That seems entirely counter to the whole vampire ethos, at least as far as I know it. I have to admit that, aside from a couple of tab rooms I’ve been in, my experience of the living dead is fairly slight. We also discussed some other upcoming content, and I realized that the old business truism holds: if you know something others don’t know, it’s usually better to keep it to yourself. The three captains (active and emeritus) dissected stuff right and left and made suggestions as if I could do anything about it. At least my own team realizes the obvious, that Jules and the Mite do what they want to do, and I am just peripheral to the process. In any case, in the future I’ll keep my knowledge to myself, because knowledge is the one thing that, when you share it, you lose nothing, but when you don’t share it, you get to be all smug and smarmy about it.

We also dickered a bit about the content of this blog, over which I do exercise a modicum of control. There was a general sense of WTF over Monday's posting on government obligations (which has a great comment by PJ, btw, if you haven't seen it). The thing is, occasionally I use my head for something other than a hat rack, as me mayther used to say. You might want to try doing likewise. All this thinking, by the way, explains the state of my hairline: as me mayther also used to say, grass doesn't grow on a busy street. This may dissuade you. In either case, I like to mix things up a bit. One day it's notes from the tab room, the next day it's comments on a resolution, the next day it's what the Panivore had for lunch (right the first time!), the next day it's general social analysis. Get used to it. It's all a part of membership in the VCA.

Jules is probably coming down to Lakeland, by the way. He did say he’d let me know for sure Friday morning, but that I should probably put him into the LD pool. We’ll see. I have to admit that I am looking forward to this weekend. O’C plans to be in full emcee mode for the challenge format, modeling himself on the legendary Robert Q. Lewis, at least as far as the glasses are concerned. This is a picture of RQL and Betty Clooney, Rosie’s sister. What I’d like to see is RQL putting the specs on O’C. We could use that as a Cinderella pic substitute for the WDW trip.

And yes, I really will start blogging the WDW stuff shortly. Let’s tie off the loose ends of the season first, so we can savor every turgid moment of Debate Meets Mickey to the fullest.

If I join the VCA, can I opt out of freshman English?

April is the cruelest month, breeding LDers out of the dead land, mixing golf and debate…

What?

(I was going over this week’s episode of Nostrum last night and realized that, if you’re not with us on our literary references, a lot of this won’t make much sense. If I say to you Miss Prism, and you look at me as if I have a hole in my head, then we’re not playing on the same field. I realize that you’re possibly still in high school, but you’re supposed to be on the cutting edge of possibly still in high school. I read all this stuff when I was your age. Honestly, I haven’t read a decent book since about 1971, what with various DJs forcing me to read what they want rather than what I want. You don’t think I’m sitting there all day reading Moby-Dick, do you? The thing is, I remember Moby fondly, and recall all sorts of things about it, and dredge them up as called for. It’s about this whale [which is a reference to something else altogether, but I don’t expect you to be all that up on your Comden and Green—I’m not that far out of it].)

Anyhow, April is the cruelest month, as the poet wrote (look it up) because in the debate universe, we’ve got one foot in the camp of still at it and the other in the camp of, it must be over by now. It’s hard to keep track of it because you feel like you ought to be able to finally put an end to it. But no, tonight I’ll meet with whichever hardy Sailors show up to discuss the CatNats “soil” topic, and maybe a little hit of Pffft for this weekend, yet meanwhile, last Saturday I played my first (miserable) golf game of the season. I guess folks who religiously (no pun intended) attend CatNats and NatNats and then run institutes don’t get into this idea that there may be a season and we’re done with it, but most of us sort of run out of gas by around now. By August I’ll be rarin’ to go again, but I’ll admit, for now, enough. Add to this the annoyance of sorting out NatNats for the Panivore (since I’m not going, various souls must be traded to the devil), and you can understand the damp, drizzly November in my—All right. None of that!

For the record, on the first page of a Google search for a certain book, you get Moby Dick’s House of Kabob…

Moby Dick’s House of Kabob?

I think I’ll switch gears completely over the next few days and go into WDW mode…

Government obligations

We talk a lot about rights, needless to say. If we begin our training as debaters with basic philosophy, we learn pretty quickly what we mean by that. My favored validation of individual rights is that it is advantageous for humans to accept that there are fundamental rights inherent in humanity, and to act accordingly, and disadvantageous not to accept their existence and act accordingly. That is, I don’t have to base my possession of inherent human rights on some complex philosophical or theological premise, but simply on the idea that having these rights is more beneficial than not having them, so whether or not they are inherent, they are nonetheless a good thing. So, let’s presume their existence, because we’re better off with them than without them, at which point, it doesn’t really matter where they came from.

We are nothing as philosophers if we are not practical. After all, mostly what we are interested in is ethics, the practical application of morality, i.e., doing the best we can. Balancing angels on the head of a pin is for other scholars altogether.

Basic human rights are fairly few. We have the right to be alive, which means that our existence is self-warranted and therefore cannot be abridged by others. We have the right to do what we want to do, provided that we do not harm others or somehow interfere with their right to do what they want to do while they are not harming us. And we have the right to our stuff, the legitimate ownership of possessions and the benefit of the fruits of our labors.

As far as basic human rights are concerned, I wouldn’t want to go much further than these fundamentals of life, liberty and property because, already, they raise questions of the protection of these rights. Ownership of property and the fruits of our labors is hardly as simple as it sounds, for instance. There are varying cultural definitions of property that undermine to some extent the apparent universality of property rights, for instance. As for conflicting claims of liberty, when what I want to do comes in conflict with what you want to do, we can imagine problems here almost from the point when any two people happen to come in contact, ever. And one can always ask the simple question, does a murderer cede his or her claim to life by abridging someone else’s claim of life?

You can see that as soon as we have populations of people, rather than just one person hanging around in some metaphoric Garden of Eden, we have various rights claims that need to be adjudicated, and rights that need to be protected. To handle this business, we create governments and empower them to do that job. We establish law and order and processes of law and order, and to maintain them and make them viable, we have to give up a little something. If nothing else, we have to give up a little property, because governments cost money to run. We could go a lot further in explaining how rights are abridged for their own protection, but my point here is something else altogether.

Here’s what bothers me, and it bothers me a lot. We have a lot of systematic philosophical thinking on rights and their protection and the establishment of governments, and we can draw on that thinking pretty easily. That is certainly what Thomas Jefferson did in the Declaration of Independence, when he paraphrased John Locke. (If you’re reading this in Texas, Jefferson was a President of the United States and the chief author of the Declaration, but unfortunately for you, he is in your no-fly or, I guess, no-think zone. Sorry about that.) (If you’re not in Texas, I’m not referring to any characters in “Lost” when I mention John Locke. Sorry about that, too.) We can argue handily about natural rights at a lofty, philosophical level, if we are so inclined. But government, especially government in the year 2010, is way more complicated than merely rights protection. We’ve got people literally marching in the streets complaining that government is going to hell in a tea bag, and that somehow it needs to be minimized because it just does too damned much. I’m hardly a deep commentator on the whole Tea Party movement, but it is clearly composed of a lot of complaints about the way things are in the present day, positing much of the blame on the government. Absent any political aspects of this—that in reality this is often one party trying to undermine another party, or in many cases racially motivated—it does play on fears and frustrations that real people really have. These real people aren’t at your local debate tournament, so for just one weekend, instead of hanging out in a high school cafeteria on a Saturday afternoon, hang out at the mall. Take a peep out of the cocoon for a moment. See what’s out there.

What we don’t have, unfortunately, is a handy, readily available theory of government that goes beyond basic rights protection. And this is a problem, because in reality, government does go beyond basic rights protection—way beyond—and we don’t have an acceptable, accepted ethical shorthand for discussing it. We have no ethical road map for how far governments can justifiably go beyond rights protection. We tend to have mostly opinions rather than metrics.

Let’s look at one example of government obligation beyond the protection of rights: roads. Literal roads. Individuals do not build roads, but roads are a requirement of our society. If all the roads in the US were immediately shut down and removed, we could not function. Goods could not travel very far, and if we did not have access to our own family farm, we’d be in serious trouble. (One could look at the history of roads in the US, and find that, with the invention of the car, roads became very much within the purview of government, because at the point where you need paving, a horse galloping across the fields or on a trodden path doesn’t work anymore. Additionally, in the 1950s, Eisenhower embarked on a system of interstate highways, transcending even local governments’ road-building in aid of a national system, reflective of the ubiquitous ownership of automobiles after WWII).

Roads are an example of government doing what individuals cannot do. Because individuals cannot do these things, and because they are required by society, we obligate government to do them. That is my basic premise for understanding extended government obligations. And the things that are necessary but beyond the scope of individuals are not limited to roads. International protection is another obvious job the government does that I cannot do alone. I look to the government to set up the parameters of discourse with other governments, up to and including the conduct of war. I may have opinions on the subject of whom we should fight, just as I have opinions on the subject of where a road should lead, and in a free government I have avenues for expressing those opinions, but ultimately it is the job of the government that I support, and which I am inherently a part of as a citizen, to conduct that business.

The question that is raised is the determination of the limits of what government should do that individuals can’t do. Additionally, one must consider in the mix what can be done neither by lone individuals nor the government but by non-governmental groups of individuals, be they corporate or otherwise. That is, there are jobs that religions do, for instance, that we believe are outside the scope of government (or that most of us believe should be outside the scope of government, but now we’re back in Texas where there is no separation of church and state because Jefferson, by not existing, never raised that pesky issue). There are jobs that corporations should do that we consider to be outside the scope of government. But the question is, which of these jobs are which? How do you argue that providing health care, for instance, is a government job? Or providing broadband? Or welfare? Or anything, even roads?

What you probably need to do is view the issue, first, from the perspective of what only the government can do, and assume that because only government is capable of it, government is obligated to do it, if we agree that it is an important enough benefit to society. Keep in mind that all government works have a cost, so if we consider that the government engage in a particular chore, we have to be willing to pay for it, which means that we need a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether or not to do it. Still, this is the easiest sort of obligation to fulfill, because there are no competing claims on filling it. If only government can realistically take it on, if we decide we need it, the government is obligated to get it. Our roads are a good example of this. Costs of roads are not insignificant, and in some odd vision perhaps some corporation could be created to provide them, but when all is said and done, it is worth it to pay for them and reasonable that the government be the agency to build them. Not a hard call.

Education is an interesting example. Our government has taken on the obligation of educating the young. We tend to make this an obligation of local governments rather than the vaster national government, but that’s an insignificant distinction. We are obligating our governments to do this. Why? I mean, there are plenty of people who believe in home-schooling. There are people who prefer religious-based instruction in at least primary education and often secondary education. Because we believe strongly in government-supported education, we allow for those not availing themselves of this education to get at least a share of it by also supporting home schools and parochial education, at least to some extent. And on top of this, we draw the line at providing college education to all as part of the basic education package, but still we provide state institutions underwritten by the government to compete with private institutions, and we provide government-underwritten loans. The thing seems to be, we value education enough to warrant obligating the government to provide it because, for the most part, if government doesn’t provide it, it will not be fairly accessible to all. If the government stopped providing public education, a lot of people would still be educated, but not all, and we consider this wrong.

From the education example we can begin to draw an idea of what government ought to do beyond the absolute essentials. Or, if you will, to draw an idea of what the absolute essentials are. One big thing seems to be not that only government can do it, but that only government can do it fairly. If it were not done, a lot of individuals would suffer harm as a result.

How about housing? Housing is obviously essential to our lives. Does the government have an obligation to provide us all with some sort of housing?

The difference between housing and education seems to be that, with the latter, the government provides an open door through which citizens can avail themselves of the service of education, whereas with housing, we would actually have to provide some sort of literal, physical object, a house or an apartment. What, exactly, would comprise a fair house for a family of five? Tough one. So while we believe, in a humanitarian sense, that people need a roof over their heads, we don’t literally set a claim that the government will give them one. Instead, we provide general funds through which people who are homeless can find some sort of shelter. We subsidize them, in other words. If you lose your job you get unemployment insurance, at some point you can get food stamps and things like that. We don’t get you an apartment, but we help you to pay your rent. Not much, though. You might end up moving in with family or something. You might lose everything. We grieve for you, but we don’t solve the problem for you in any specific way.

So what is the underlying reason we support education and not housing, the reason we have decided that education is a government obligation and that housing is a personal obligation, aside from the specificity of the property involved? I would suggest that we connect housing to something beyond and aside from the government. Our homes are a reflection of our lives as a whole, our income and spending, our jobs, our position in society. Housing is, to a great extent, tied into the capitalistic system of working for profit and taking a share of that profit to support ourselves. That’s what people do with jobs, and jobs are considered the fabric of the corporate capitalist system. To be a member in good standing in this system, you work. (Those who have lost their jobs in the recent recession talk a lot about the anomie that results from losing their positions in society.) If you don’t work, you are not a member in good standing, unless you are actively job hunting and therefore presumed to be simply on hiatus, a member in good standing in absentia. So if you don’t have housing because you don’t work, your position as a non-member of society in good standing deprives you of any potential entitlement to housing. Why should the government provide you with what you should be providing for yourself? This could also be tied into the idea that providing housing is in conflict with property rights. Government protects the property you have, but it doesn't get you property. Maybe housing cuts too close to the core of individual rights?

Mostly I think the difference between housing and education does, in fact, seem to point to a difference of fairness. While it would be unfair not to provide education to all, we do not perceive it as unfair not to provide housing to all, because while the former would be impossible for many to obtain, the latter, housing, would not be impossible if people just got a job and worked. Maybe, also, the numbers would be smaller. Not providing housing to all affects a small number, whereas not providing education to all would affect a vast number.

Because it is so difficult to establish meaningful parameters, we argue endlessly about what the government should do just about everywhere. Libertarians want the least amount of government possible, leaving life to one’s own devices. Socialists want the most amount of government, creating a system of the most achievable fairness. Most of us are somewhere in between. If we could only devise a mechanism for measuring when the actions of the government are balanced by the fairness of the results of taking those actions, we would have a reasonable blueprint for action, and a reasonable guide to when those actions are obligated.

And that is how I would address a resolution calling for the government to take on the burden of any action above and beyond protecting basic human rights. That is, I would, in my case, set up a mechanism for measuring when the actions of the government are balanced by the fairness of the results of taking those actions, compared of course to the results of not taking those actions, and I would use those results as the tool for mandating or not government actions. Yes, it is absolutely consequential, but one can reasonably argue that virtually all government actions must be weighed consequentially, since they exist in the real world and not merely in philosophical papers. More to the point, the government “must” inherently do only a handful of things that are intuitively obligated, or if you prefer, deontologically obligated, at least by the definitions of government we use in basic political science. But as I say, all government actions are, by definition, real world, and therefore subject to real world analysis. They must satisfactorily meet the criteria of desirability and achievability according to a real world test (there can be no absolutes in politics, only presumptions based on reasonable data).

This is not relevant to CatNats and "soil rights,", but mark my words: these resolutions will come. If not in LD, then every time you turn around in PF. Unfortunately, people in PF rounds often don’t provide the underlying thesis analogous to LD’s V/C, giving judges little to go on. (See my PF notes, elsewhere.) If at the very least you can begin with a political model of some sort, and then measure how action plays out in that model, you’ll give me something I can follow and understand and, as a judge, measure. It’s worth a try. But the bottom line is, when you venture out of protecting basic human rights, you venture alone, without the body of literature to support you, that is, without an accepted ethical framework forged over centuries. You are forced to provide your own ethical framework, your own rationale why this must be done, not because it's good but because it's obligated. Plenty of things are good, but that doesn't make them government obligations. Constructing and deconstructing government obligations is a big job. But as government gets bigger and bigger, somebody's got to do it. Often, that somebody is us.

Have fun.

All right, it's April 1

I have no spoofs in aid of this particular holiday, no remarkably witty tricks to pull, no memorable burlesques that you will be talking about for generations to come. I will leave that to others with more wit and imagination than I.

To make up for this sad lack of creativity, I have dug up my old O'C interview. Newer members of the VCA may never have heard this, while older members who recall it fondly will have a chance to relive it. Older members who cursed it to hell and back and wished never to be reminded of its existence, on the other hand, will just have to look elsewhere for the April First entertainments.

Jim Menick (sort of) interviews O'C: the mp3.

Obama wins the Kenyan vote!

You’ve got to love CatNats. “Resolved: That the United States government has a moral obligation to afford the same constitutional rights to all people on United States soil.” What they’re trying to say is that constitutional rights protections should (or should not) apply equally to citizens and non-citizens, but they’re so afraid of people going off-rez that they’ve provided a bizarro “all people on United States soil” concept to replace non-citizens that, well, just makes you love the English language. Realistically, though, it’s not the world’s worst topic, I don’t think, although personally I find it pretty one-sided.

A while ago we had a similar topic, and often debaters took this as license to argue that the right to vote should somehow be granted to non-citizens. This was, and remains, ridiculous. Simply enough, no polity exists of people who are not members of the polity, by definition. Only judges who left their brains at the door of the room could be convinced otherwise, but, of course, there were such judges. (I tended to use this as a litmus test of tabula rasa, myself. If your slate was wiped that clean, you were just too dumb for the room.)

If you don’t buy that (hmmm, that’s some clean slate there, pal), let’s look at that wording in the rez: “the same constitutional rights.” Now let’s look at the right to vote in the Constitution.

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof.” “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” “The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.” “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.”

Maybe I’m missing something here, but every single iteration of the right to vote requires that a person be a citizen (although more loosely in the Senate requirement, where one must be one of the “people thereof” that state, which is tantamount to the same thing). That is, the power of the vote goes to citizens much like the power of being Commander-in-Chief goes to the President. One can’t simply claim this power willy nilly. I can’t say that since the Constitution grants someone the right of being CIC, everyone should have that right. To wit, you would have to amend the constitution to apply the right to vote to non-citizens, which means that clearly that right is not a "constitutional right" at the moment, which is what the rez is talking about.

However, the word “citizen” does not appear at all in the Bill of Rights. Duh.

The legitimate arguing of this resolution will be about whether the enumerated rights in the Constitution, i.e., the Bill of Rights, ought to be applied to all. (And, yeah, it’s on our soil, so the US can’t grant rights to people in Ulan Bator. Duh again.) There are plenty of people who feel that the answer is no. Non-citizen immigrants, suspected terrorists and felons are all among those whose rights are moot. Unfortunately, they’re a disparate bunch, and it’s hard to unify them in an argument. The illegal working at WalMart should be a different case than Osama bin-Laden who should be a different case than some drug dealer who was just released from prison. Normally I would look for the unifying factor to find debate material, but aside from their all being on the questionable side of rights allowances, there really isn’t one. So, good luck with that. Still, however, one or the other of these will allow for the best debates. I haven’t thought it through myself to know which ones, but illegals seem intuitively the ones worth arguing about on both sides of the rez.

We’ll see. I’m meeting with the Sailors Tuesday. I’ll be interested to hear their take on this, since two of them are heading to the CatNats Conflagration.

People you never want to hear from again

Boy: you guys are a tough audience. All right. Let's move away from debate. The object of this one is to determine which person you want to never hear from again the most. In other words, you vote for the person you like least in each pairing, the one you most want to disappear from the face of the earth.

The year in debate - a mini-bracket

The top half seems a lot tougher than the bottom half, but what do I know? Granted it's a little Northeast-centric, but that's only to annoy Bietz.

The "rude" tag seems especially appropriate for this one.

Bracket for a Sunday morning

When you're tired of the Times crossword puzzle (which shouldn't take longer than half an hour on an off day), try this bracket on websites.

This had to be pretty obvious

Dickens over Wells because real literature trumps science fiction. King over Paterson because he writes his own books.

And in Dickens vs. King? Duh.

Complexity rules

Curiously enough, everyone advances for roughly the same reason: complexity.

Wells over Doyle for defining sf vs defining one aspect of a genre.

Dickens over Austen for writing about the whole world vs one small aspect of the world.

King over Connelly for writing all kinds of books vs writing crime fiction.

Patterson over Sparks for variety vs love stories (and, to boot, no Miley Cyrus films).

BTW, it has been suggested by the Panivore that there be an N1 bracket. Why should I do this? The vast Nostrumian Nation should be assembling that one. It would give her something to do on her way to "Grease." No, wait. Grease was last weekend. This weekend it's Greece. I always get those two confused.

Last night I looked at NatNats registration. This is more fun.

Doyle advances over Poe because he created a character that is as alive today as ever. Poe had more ideas, but ultimately Sherlock is eternal.

Wells over Verne for a better sf imagination. Time travel, space travel, deep earth travel, etc., versus trains and boats around the world and a submarine, all practical enough in their day.

Austen over Eliot for the sense of humor.

Dickens over Thackeray for depth of canon. Thackeray is good, but, ultimately, Dickens is better. That's just the way it is.

King over Steele for having further pervaded all aspects of American culture, and personal variety.

Connelly over Crais for purity.

Sparks over Roberts for (wait for it) sincerity.

Patterson over Brown for having more than one or two ideas.

Needless to say...

...I am incredibly involved in March Madness.

Yeah. Right.

On the other hand, I do always like brackets. It's been a while. This one is sort of interesting: something I came up with in the DJ. It's not as easy as it looks.

Thank God they don't do Declamation!

Last weekend was our District tournament, where I got to do my annual visit to the world of the Speecho-Americans. It was actually quite enjoyable.

First up was a USX round, on foreign policy. Straightforward enough. A couple of folks bunched at the top, how will US do in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Texastan and whatnot. People either knew what they were talking about or they didn’t. Then it was FX, an African section. Oy. “Will things in X get even worse?” was the topic 6 times in a row. The answer was always yes, because the government is corrupt, the government is getting more corrupt, and no one outside of the country cares. That’s three areas of analysis, with the extemp two-step for each one, plus the summary. Tough to do well, actually, because you would have to have actual insight and evidence about this vague continent that we, as Americans, like to pretend doesn’t exist. I applaud those who did well (since they were double-entered, as often as not it was the same ones who did well in USX). I remain a fan of extemp, although when it comes to ultimately separating out the top performers I don’t necessarily trust myself. It’s a long time between Number 1 and Number 6 if those two are the ones battling it out. Maybe CP can explain how to judge this to me.

Saturday, since Sailors were all over the LD map, I was seconded to OO finals. Normally this would have had me slashing my wrists, but it was pretty good. I was happy to see that my first choice won at the end of the day. My criteria for judging were a combination of performance and content, which for some reason seemed an easier call than whatever criteria I was using for Extemp. Go figure. I guess there should also be a phogna bologna criterion: the more you sound like the sort of person who makes me want to go slash my wrists rather than listen to you (the down side of OO), the lower I rank you. If your sincerity act isn’t working, in other words, you’re screwed.

After that it was on to Duo finals. Saw one guy who blew me away with a partner who was pretty good; no one else came close to this guy. But that didn’t necessarily add up to a winning pairing (although, in the event, I ultimately felt that it did). Let me tell you, LD judging by comparison to speech judging is about as much fun as having a hundred Hottentots banging on your head with frying pans during a hurricane. LDers have so lost the art of speaking as anything other than shoveling in a lot of evidence that I am, momentarily, brought back to the good old days of bemoaning that loss. I hadn’t thought about it for a while, to tell you the truth. (Shades of the Legion of Doom!) And I don’t think that LD loses value as it reaches Policy speed any more than I think Policy lacks value because of its speed, but of course, that value has almost nothing to do with public speaking aside from the act of literally doing it (having the courage to stand up and speak, that is).

The day wrapped up with a round of PF. It was an unclear debate, with lots of hassling over one piece of evidence, and in some ways an example of experienced debating versus intuitive debating. Experience knows enough to cover everything while intuition points you to that one thing that you think you’re obviously winning. The flaw in that intuitive approach is that putting all your eggs in one basket is a cliché indicating potential problems for a reason. Unless your basket is made of cement or something. Anyhow, Mother Ruff and I split on this one, and she demonstrated what I consider the bottom line requirement for any judge: she stuck to her decision and felt that she was right, period. Not that I thought she was wrong. It was a round that could have been evaluated either way, which is too bad when it comes to sending people to Kansas City. (Or really good, depending on your position about sending people to Kansas City.)

At the end of the day, speaking of KC, we will be sending the Panivore. She says she can’t wait to sample all the different kinds of barbecue, not to mention the—Wait a minute! That’s not the Panivore. Wait till she tastes what they call bagels in the Midwest. I’ve got a feeling she’s not going to want to go to Kansas anymore.

I the Jury

I am mildly disappointed at not having to go to NYC for jury duty. On the positive side, I don’t have to go down to NYC for jury duty, but on the negative side, I sort of enjoyed my previous jury stints. For a couple of weeks way back in the 70s I did two weeks of Manhattan civil court. This was back in the day when you went there and hung out. For two weeks a bunch of us played cards every day; I was never once called even to interview. At one point one of our group led us to his favorite Chinese restaurant and we had a great lunch. It turned out even greater when the guy turned out to be the owner! There is such a thing as a free lunch after all.

Those two weeks, by the way, made me an expert on civil law.

Then I spent a month or two on grand jury duty in White Plains. We’d show up a couple of days a week and, yes, as a result I became an expert on grand juries. The range of cases was large, but there was nothing really horrible: no murders or deaths, but there was one serious beating. Lots of DUIs. A little general mayhem, including the guy who was running down the street naked when he was arrested, and his explanation was that he had lost his clothes in a craps game. He was one of the high points of the experience, because he testified on his own behalf (against counsel). A word of advice: don’t do what your lawyer tells you not to do. And also, don’t bet your clothes on a roll of the dice.

I figured that this time out I would become an expert on criminal law. I also figured I would put what I have learned about nullification into practice, but alas, neither was to be. I do feel that I have served, however. Going by a Kantian interpretation of intention, coupled with the finagling I did at the DJ to make myself available to this great country of ours, plus the two telephone calls to a different area code, this looks pretty convincing to me. I should, by my lights, be off for the next four years.

I’m sure criminals, both state and federal, are in complete agreement with this interpretation.

We weigh in on the controversy

You may have been following the hoo-ha over Pffft topics. Jonathan P came out with a long piece about it, and the Wunn and Only replied on the part of the NFL. The issue is whether NFL "sold" topics, and whether this is wrong.

I don't know. I mean, given some of the crappy topics over the years (the discussion of better ways of choosing topics has been ongoing, including on TVFT), I probably would pay to make them better, but I don't think that's the issue. If the topic is, say, "How much better is Pepsi than Coke?" then we are probably in trouble, but if it's some vague newsy thing anyhow, I'm fairly agnostic. The NFL obviously needs to support itself beyond the dues I pay for nothing other than possible admission into a tournament I cannot attend. I realize that. Non-profits are not morally bound to be unprofitable, but merely to support their cause. Nobody I know complains about President Ersatz Lincoln goofing around at NatNats year after year. (If it were the Gieco gecko, though, things might be different.)

Anyhow, I'll just speak for myself. I, personally, could use an extra $150,000. Therefore, I will publicly announce that, if you're willing to give me money, I will write blog entries on whatever subject you want. I'll have Jules and the Mite write the subject into Nostrum. I'll talk about it with the other wieners on TVFT. For an extra $150,000, I'll advocate a position recommended by you. So, let's say you're Texas. For $150,000, I'll write up a piece on whether Thomas Jefferson should be considered a founder of the USA. For another $150,000, I'll write up a piece called "Thomas Who?" and point out what a %#*&@ bastid he was and explain why lips that speak his name should be ripped from their faces.

So now you know why I do all this. I'm only in it for the money.

If only there were some money in it.

5ive: isn't that pronounced five-ive? Weird.

Jackie, Tito and Jermaine have now officially added Marlon, but we still need the occasional Michael. (Translation: CP is now sort of the fourth TVFT panelist, whenever he isn’t doing DJ stuff, but we’re still happy to take on other people now and again.) Having a fourth person allows us to have someone take a day off for whatever reason but still the show will go on, although whether this is a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen. CP is certainly on our side of the forensics fence, running as many tournaments as he does, plus he brings us a Speecho-American perspective we are otherwise lacking. It should work out well. On the down side, CP was our only certified listener, which means that now, for all we know, no one at all is listening. [Sigh.] (And yes, I had to look up the names of the Jackson 5. Give me a break, please. If I knew the names of the Jackson 5, I would have retire to Tibet to live on a mountaintop and get all this crap out of my head. I’m bad enough as it is! The Jackson 5? Feh!)

Scarsdale HS has finally reopened, for those who are keeping score. JV is happy about it, of course, since the alternative was to hold Districts in his apartment. I’m not looking forward to it myself, mainly because the whether is so gorgeous that who wants to be cooped up judging an Extemp round when they could be outside just being warm and sunned on? I’ve got to figure out some way to play on Sunday. I’ve got to check if the golf courses are open! For that matter, just sitting on the porch relaxing in the warmth, reading a book, occasionally being bitten by Tik (pronounced teek)—there’s worse ways to spend an ordinary Sunday.

Scarsdale Relief Fund: Contribute Now!

Scarsdale HS is the site of our District tournament this Friday. It’s also the site of the only totally shut-down school district in the region, thanks to the storms over the last weekend. Rather than taking their buses to school, district students have been seen on the decks of their family yachts, sailing down Main Street and sipping champagne cocktails wondering when the world will return to normal. “This sort of weather behavior is simply not acceptable,” one irate parent was quoted on the news last night. “We are not poor people in the third world. We will not stand for it!” You can’t help but sympathize with them. I’m running a clothes drive if you want to help out. Send me your old tidy whites or whatever, and I’ll bring ‘em with me Friday to clothe the unfortunate wet Scarswegians. It’s the least we can do.

Other than that, things are pretty steady as they go. Managed to put out a double dose of Nostrum this week. Thank goodness Jules and the Mite work ahead. I felt the doubling sort of made up for the lack of narrative last week. For some reason, I heard from O’C who seems to think that somehow the character of Halefoil Cumcut is based on him. This is ridiculous. Jules and the Mite insist that, while Nostrum is based on a true story, none of it is based on any of O’C’s true story, but if it were, he would more likely be mysterious samurai sword murderer than anyone else. And he’d be serving a life sentence in prison for it. “O’C Behind Bars” — It’s the Prison Movie You’ve Always Dreamed Of. In Disney 3D! Special Guest Star: Cinderella. (You know, Jules and the Mite should take note of that. I hate to do their work for them, but inspiration is inspiration, eh?)

Having nothing to say, I won't bother saying it

Instead of wasting time here, go to Nostrum Nation and waste time there.

Feel the ooze!

I wish there was all sorts of juicy stuff to report from the Bobcat at Byram Hills, but I went, I tabbed, I left, and there you are. I played with a website for the WDW trip during the down time (and drove O’C crazy by doing so), but that was the extent of the extracurriculars. Oh, yeah, there was also another Storm of a Lifetime, but that was mostly down-county, and while I gather that Scarswegia is now under twenty feet of water, I was able to drive home unassailed, picking up lamb chops at the local market and enjoying them back at the chez in a timely manner. Then I watched an episode of ST:TNG and collapsed into bed to await the coming of DST. How exciting, eh?

I manged to get postponed off jury duty till next week through no efforts of my own, which means I’ll be able to do a fairly full stint at Districts, oh joy, oh rapture. That means judging 2 LD rounds, 2 PF rounds, 1 extemp round and one random round of God knows what, which will wind up the month of March handily enough. After that, a couple of weeks off in this hiatus before the hiatus, followed by Lakeland and the Chetan-a-Go-Go. Then it’s the real hiatus.

I can feel the excitement just pouring out of me. And out of you too.

Escaping steam

So last night we did TVFT with CP, and I think it went swimmingly. When you throw the four of us together, you’ve got an awful lot of tournament direction in one place. The material is probably interesting enough on its own merits; for those who run or are contemplating running tournaments, it’s probably even valuable.

Send money directly to my house, if you agree. I’ll split it with the other guys. Really.

I am feeling that sense of the steam slipping out of me, as far as the season is concerned. For a lot of the year I start up early or midday on Fridays, going through till late Saturday if not further, and now I look ahead at, well, not much of anything other than a long stretch of uninterrupted (aside from jury duty) DJ. I’ll be going after work tomorrow to Byram Hills, which doesn’t start till 5:00. Since I have no entries (for a variety of reasons, ranging from SATs to plebe ennui) I have no reason to be there for registration. I’ll have all the data ready, O’C can process late changes, and we can get Round 1 out on the dot of 5. No big deal. Next week is Districts, which, jury duty notwithstanding, I wouldn’t be there on Friday anyhow, and Saturday is a short day, and there you are. After that, aside from Lakeland next month and the one-day Chetan-a-Go-Go RR, it’s over. If you were me, you’d feel the steam slipping out of you, too. I will note that I’m going over to the golf shop on Sunday to get my clubs regripped, so I’m not totally without entertainment for the off hours…

Still, there are debate things to do. The recruitment pamphlet. Nostrum narration (I should be back next week). More TVFTs probably until at least May, although I would imagine we’ll go on hiatus for the summer, especially since the other two goobers will be instituting. There’s the WDW debate trip, which I’ll bore you to tears over (real big crocodile tears if you’re one of the people who decided not to join us). Plus I have a vacation to England coming up, although I tend not to talk too much about stuff like that, although I’ll probably take a lot of nice pix with my new SLR and I’ll post them somewhere.

And then, all of a sudden, it will be September again. Anyone know the signup deadline for Yale?

This is how the year ends

I think we’re done for the year meeting-wise, aside from prepping for CatNats after the rez comes out. It’s hard to scare up much of a Sailor quorum these days, and other than Lakeland coming up, and Districts, the season is about done. Not with a bang but with a whimper…

Next on the agenda is organizing the CatNatting Sailors—SuperSquirrel and the Panivore—both of whom are traveling en mere, as the Frenchies might say if that were actually a French idiom. Since I can’t go, they’re keeping it all in the family. I’ve got my own family thing that weekend, although I will admit that I’m not unhappy about it. Nebraska? Been there, done that. I mean, I’ve driven through it a couple of times, and I haven’t missed it in the intervening years. What did SBO call it on his blog? “Fly-over forensicians,” despite the fact that there’s probably more forensics per capita there than in the northeast. Whatever. (And I do thank SBO for taking over the Nostrum chores this week. Now if I could get him to take over the TVFT chores, I’d be in hog heaven.)

Last night only the captains showed up at the Chez to chew the fat, which is precisely what we did, with little form or substance. I’m putting together a pamphlet for recruiting, and we talked about that a bit. Then the PC told me about some episode in N1 where Starbuck (at which point I interrupted, “Who the hell is Starbuck?”) and the Don play miniature golf at a philosophy-themed course, which sounded pretty entertaining to me, since I’m both a fan of golf and of philosophy, which I feel are already inherently combined. Then we gossiped about all the Sailors who hadn’t shown up, and the Panivore complained that she was going to have to miss a couple of post-season tournaments because she has to take care of her pets (which are very large and you can sit on), and at some point Pip the Wondercat (who is a bit larger than usual these days, but I wouldn’t try to sit on him if I were you) came downstairs to visit, an unusual occurrence at chezzes, and they marveled at a cat who doesn’t bite you as soon as look at you the way Tik (pronounced teek) does. See what I mean about meetings reaching there whimpering endlife?

TVFT later tonight, Alice tomorrow night, Bobcat with O’C the night after that. Ain’t life grand?

This post has more labels than content. Modernism forever!

TVFT fans rejoice! CP is joining us this week (he says). We’re still on the tournament-running kick, and since he runs a lot of the biggest, he’s the perfect victim guest. I gather he’s a little disappointed that we don’t do video, though. I guess he’s never seen Cruz, Bietz or me in person.

In another piece of interesting podcastian news, I was given this week off by Jules and the Mite so that a special guest star could do the job. I gather they’re coming out with episode 6½, not only not narrated by me but not written by them. Whatever. One never knows with these guys… I think I’ll use the time to go see “Alice.” Historically most Burton films look better than they are, but with Wonderland, there may not be anything wrong with that.

This weekend is Byram Hills’s Bobcat tournament. It will be a nice reasonably sized event with both LD and Policy. O’C and I are doing the former, which means a lot of catching up from not having done the postponed Lakeland event: that soundtrack to all of Epcot (4 disks!) is burning a whole in my travel bag. Speaking of soundtracks, the one song guaranteed to send Sailors out of the windows of my car is the Main Street Electrical Parade music, “Baroque Hoedown.” Eardrums have been deliberately pierced, just to avoid it. These Sailors have no taste in music whatsoever.

Why I don't write Nostrum: I don't have to!

There’s the Panivore, and now there’s the Little Ruffian (a Speecho-American). Who knew that he too was panivorous. I had talked to him in the past, and he intimated that by comparison to his famous sibling, he would eat anything that wasn’t nailed down. So after CFL Grands Saturday, we all went together to a team dinner at India House, our usual haunt.

Let me put this in the simplest terms: the details of the Little Ruffian’s omnivore nature had been greatly exaggerated.

I had already decided what the Paniovore would be up to. A mango lassi and a poori would tide her over well enough, and she was willing to go for it. As we were looking at the menu, the LR explained that he had never been to an Indian restaurant before. Or, it would appear, any restaurant. So what do you like to eat, we asked, still believing that by comparison to the P’s bread and milk shake, he would be tucking into a virtual Babette’s feast by way of Mumbai.

Pizza, he answered.

No meats. No vegetables. No fruits. No dairy. For some reason Dave, the Speecho-Coacho, believed that he could convince the LR to have some sort of beef dish, but 1) the LR doesn’t eat beef, and 2) this was an Indian restaurant. (Remind me to get Dave’s recipe for his famous Passover ham.) It turns out that the LR will eat a potato or an onion, provided the moon is in Pisces, so I ordered him a potato-and-onion-filled dosa, which is about as bland as you can order at India House without the manager coming over and asking you to leave. Meanwhile other Sailors were ordering the usual dishes (plus a fantastic Indian calamari dish—excellent!).

When the dosa arrived—it’s a foot-long crepe stuffed with, well, potatoes and onions—the Panivore started picking uninvited at the edges (the crepe part uncontaminated with either potatoes or onions) while the Little Ruffian just stared at it for a while. Finally, he produced a knife and fork (thus settling a few side bets about whether he had ever handled either of them before) and cut off a smidge. And I mean a smidge. After an hour he put that smidge on his fork. This was followed by a team reading of War and Peace in its entirety, in the original Russian, by the end of which time the forkful of dosa was poised outside the LR’s far-from-open mouth. Finally, the maw was ajar, the fork was thrust into the mouth, and the food was taken in.

There was a pause throughout the restaurant. Conversations stopped not only at all the surrounding tables but also at the bar and in the kitchen, plus outside where the dishwashers were catching up on their hookah smoking.

No expression showed on the Little Ruffian’s face. He didn’t…hate it. But, well, he didn’t like it either. After a moment, he shook his head.

“Geronimo!” one of the Sailors yelled, and within seconds each had taken a portion of the dosa, leaving nothing in front of the LR but an empty plate garnished only with one soggy bay leaf he had warily pulled out of the thing before taking his one bite.

And then the poori arrived, followed by both plain and garlic nan. With that, brother and sister had found their nourishment, and I’ve never seen so much wheat disappear so quickly, or at least not since Stalin’s final Five Year Plan, but that’s another thing altogether. Every time the waitress walked by we put in an order for more nan. I understand they had to quickly hire an extra team of chefs just to keep up.

So, we asked at some point during the evening, are your parents like this? No, was the reply; they’ll eat anything. Which is why, whenever the young ‘uns are on the forensics trail, the parents are—you guessed it—out to eat. Apparently as soon as the kids are out the door, Mom and Pop head out to any restaurant they can find. Their middle name is Zagat. They’ll eat anything from sheep’s brains to worm butts.

I’m not quite sure where we should schedule our next team dinner. The Panivore sibs pronounced themselves well sated by all the available breadstuffs. And the rest of us enjoyed the usual menu of curries and whatnot, including that great squid. So maybe we’ll go back to India House again. The entertainment value alone was worth the price of admission. Next time we’ll see if the Little Ruffian will eat rice. Probably not, but one never knows. Then again, Indian rice has peas in it. The LR did look at the rice at one point and ask what those little green things were.

On the bright side, when these two go to college, imagine all the money their parents will save by not having to purchase the meal plan!

Yes, we always do talk about you when you're not there. What did you expect?

A nice Catholic dinner last night. We gossiped about everyone, including you. A fine time was had by all.

We’ve definitely settled into the three-judge mode for tomorrow at Grands. So hard. Judges splitting flights and going from room to room, judging the same people on different sides, everything on cards, with the computer doing little more than nodding its approval. Yucch! We usually don’t finish up till the cows go home. And I hear it’s going to be a nice day. The good news that I’ll be back in the city Sunday, for lunch with Kate and whatnot. It’ll cover a multitude of sins.

And the Lakeland-MHL Mashup is mostly sorted out. Stefan posted his info and I posted ours. This whole VLD Challenge Format looks like fun, I must admit. The point is to end the season with a bang. Since for me the NY States remains unsatisfactory, this is our chance to do something valedictory for the season. Additionally, it’s close to home, it’s tabbing with O’C, and it’s totally goofy, so it’s worth the effort. I hope we get a good turnout of friends who feel likewise.

Speaking of valediction, the Sailors really haven’t done anything slam-bang to end the season in as long as I can remember. I’m starting to cook something up in my mind. We’ll see how it works out.

Manhattan Lodestone closes. Thousands of students sent out to the street to sell pencils.

We TVFTed last night. I thought CP might join us, but he was apparently too busy making money at his day job (and also trying to convince Jules that the authors of Nostrum couldn’t possibly have been lost in the snowstorm in which they were lost because the snowstorm didn’t exist—this is over at the Nostrum Nation blog—which is sort of like Richard Dawkins lecturing at the Vatican, but that’s another thing altogether) so it was just the usual suspects. But it was interesting. We attacked tournament management, and in 45 minutes barely got started. Rather than do a 3NR-type 20-hour podcast (wink, wink, but I listen to those guys myself on their less esoterically polician issues, and you probably should too, just to keep up) we decided to break it up into parts. In other words, more to come. At least this time we actually recorded it, and it was worth it, as compared to last week when we didn’t record it, which was better still because it sucked eggs. This one also includes naughty bits, although my swearing and O’C saying “Bleep bleep” after the fact isn’t really what I would call effective airwaves management.

Bleep bleep indeed!

Speaking of Nostrum, one of the things about being an old mentor to the lads is that I get to find out what’s going to happen before anyone else. (The Panivore thinks there’s something odd about this, but as a general rule, the actors in a play know get to know what’s in a play at a point before the audience finds out.) I was able to share a few tidbits with O’C, not enough to give anything away but enough to keep him on the edge of his seat. He seriously thinks that he’ll be spoofed in the series at some point. Hmmm. I do know that the list of characters on the Nostrum Nation site keeps growing, and that O’C is tracking it obsessively for clues (the fact that Manhattan Lodestone’s ultimate “e” had inadvertently not been bold-faced sent him into conniptions; I had ask Jules to fix it or face losing O’C to the darker more padded reaches of Bellevue). ’Tis a strange and glorious world we live in.

Catholic dinner tonight, poker tomorrow, Grands on Saturday. Great entertainment all around, if you ask me.

Department of Clarification

For about the millionth time…

Last night we chezzed it up in Sailorville, and the subject of Nostrum arose. The usual belief that Jules and the Nostrumite are not the authors of this series was yet again refuted by yours truly. I mean, Jules has a blog, and a life, and whatever, that has nothing to do with me. I am the speaker of the words; that does not automatically make me their creator. Think about it. Let’s say that last night you watched “24” on TV. Do you really think that Kiefer Sutherland made up all his own lines? Jeesh.

By the same token, do you really believe that there’s a Jack Bauer? For some reason, people believe that in Nostrum there’s some sort of one-to-one ratio of fictional people to real people, as in, Seth B. Obomash is really [fill in the blank] or Amnea Nutmilk is really [fitb] or Hamlet P. Buglaroni or whoever is [ditto]. It’s not so much that people believe everything they read, but that they read everything so literally. What are we teaching our children in the schools these days? What part of “It’s fiction” don’t people understand? If it were just a chronicling of real life, Jules and the Mite would have labeled it nonfiction and, although maybe they would have changed the names to protect the innocent (i.e, themselves, from libel suits), they would have indicated that what was at hand was unabashed truth. Nostrum, on the other hand, like all fiction, is abashed truth. Its roman a clef leanings are minimal. In other words, there is really no mafia don nicknamed “The Whale,” and the character of Hans Castorp is a direct name steal from The Magic Mountain (by Thomas Mann, not by Six Flags) and is not directing a movie starring young Buglaroni. My favorite leap is when people claim that categorically such-and-such was based on so-and-so doing you-know-what, when in fact the Nostrum story was written five years before the real life event. Not only do people not understand the concept of fiction, they’re also a little fuzzy on the concept of timelines. Mes etoiles! at Hautboy LeMonde (who does not exist and is not based on something that hasn’t happened yet) might say.

In other words, Nostrum, while “based on a true story,” as it is sometimes noted, is a work of fiction. And it is written by Jules O’Shaughnessy (a bookstore clerk and pretender to the throne of Moravia) and the Nostrumite (a teacher and debate coach at Tennessee Williams HS).

(By the way, please do not infer from this that The View from Tab is also fiction, written by Jules and the Mite, and that O’C, Bietz and I are just reading our parts. There are no such people as O’C and Bietz, and even if there were, Jules and the Mite wouldn’t have bothered to invent them.)

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss

I do not like DI, you ham!
I do not like emoting spam.

I do not like it, NFL:
I say that it can go to hell.

And Declamation is the pits.
It gives me pains, it gives me fits.

I do not like it, CFL:
I say that it can go to hell.

PF is cool, except the flip,
And focuses, with all that lip.

Why can’t they all be calm and nice
Instead of being nasty mice?

I do like Pol, but not the speeds.
I cannot flow when my brain bleeds.

OOers make me cry and moan.
They whine and mope, grovel and groan.

I do not like them, not at all:
Not when they’re short, not when they’re tall.

I do not like them, NFL:
I say that they can go to hell.

I do not like the Duo pairs
With blue serge suits and spiky hair.

They sing when they do not perform—
In hell they would be nice and warm.

And then, of course, there is extemp
With mostly made-up evidemp.

“Time” Magazine, March Eleven?
Don’t expect extemp in heaven.

The Congress folk make phony laws
That give the average person pause—

“Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker!”
Squeaking worse than Muppet Beeker.

Finally there’s Lincoln-Douglas
To educate and entertain us.

But speed and cards, K and theory,
Make LD like CX, Dearie,

Only blander (and much shorter):
It should go to hell, it oughta.

I do not like Speech and Debate.
I do not like them, no, I hate!

I do not like them on a bus,
I do not like their angst and fuss.

I wish they’d join the football team
And keep their mouths shut—that’s my dream!

The season continues, beaten down but not bowed

So now we settle down into sorting things out.

O’C and Stefan had a long correspondence about the combining of Lakeland and the MHL Grand Championships, most of which sort of flew by me. Mostly Lakeland will be Lakeland, with some MHL froufrou. It’s going to be fun to have a summary two-day event to mark the end of the season, even though from Stefan’s point of view, a summary two-day event to mark the end of February would have been more desirable. I know what it’s like to cancel a tournament. At least he did so for the storm of the century. Canceling a tournament and then having a couple of cumulus clouds over the horizon be the only sign of weather is very, very depressing. I remember the year I canceled Bump, on a Thursday. That Friday I woke up to over a foot of snow in my driveway. I couldn’t even make it to my car. I fell into a snowdrift and had to be rescued by the local sanitation department. I was overjoyed. I’m sure Stefan felt likewise, although as far as I know, he didn’t have to be rescued by anyone.

This weekend is CFL Grands, which around here is very tough. Six LD slots for about twelve excellent LDers. It’s quite a bloodbath. If there’s over twenty entries, which looks likely, JV and I need to assign 3 judges per panel. Very tough. I, for one, am praying for a field of 19. Please join me in that prayer. Last year, with only 2 judges per panel, we single-flighted and finished even before the Declaimers. It was like waking up to a foot of snow after you’ve canceled your tournament!

Speaking of the CFL, this week the officers get together to celebrate the end of the season with a nice farewell dinner. Farewell, 2009-10! Or at least farewell to the Catholics of 2009-10! Since I can’t do Omaha, this really will be my last Catholic weekend for a while. Any Sailors who qualify realize that they will be CatNatting without me. None of them seem too upset by the prospect. They’re so eager to go to Omaha at any cost that they’ll do anything, even abandon me in a snowdrift until the sanitation department comes along and rescues me. No offense to Omaha, by the way. If Omaha didn’t exist, I would be among the first to invent it. May you ever rule the waves!

After that, there’s Byram Hills, then my probably abridged attendance at Districts thanks to jury nullification duty. So, stuff keeps happening, at least up through the send-off at Lakeland. Life goes on, in other words, while preparing for the Great American Disney Hoo-Ha. I mean, it is all about the Disney Hoo-Ha. Everything else is just…debate.