In which we get all historical

I continue to find it curious that my post in which I mentioned the EILDR (the Eternal Irrelevant LD Resolution, “Resolved: Some b.s. or other that doesn’t matter because you’re just going to argue what you feel like arguing anyhow”) has been viewed about five times as much as any other recent entry. Obviously it touches a nerve. Or maybe schools are just getting ready to vote for it this summer at NatNats and have done with it.

Having recently read about a tenth of an article on RVIs on the Briefly site, I realize that my lack of knowledge of modern LD and my lack of interest in modern LD are now in perfect alignment. The article, which begins by bemoaning the lack of debating the actual resolutions, goes on (and on) about theory and combating theory and all sorts of analysis of the mechanics of rounds, and I’ll bow to its authority I guess but I can’t say I cared much. Come to think of it, almost all the articles they publish go way inside baseball, talking about the mechanics and leaving me totally cold. I mean, strategy and tactics are one thing, but meta analysis of meta analysis is, well, way too meta for my taste. Even the people who wish we were debating resolutions, like the author of the RVI article, are pulled into the abyss.

So I look to the history of LD. I wasn’t there at the very beginning, but close enough, I think. Given that the point was to develop an activity different from policy, early LD was very much not policy, and very much concerned with basic ethics. It drew on canonical writers like Locke and Mill, which have always struck me as good starting texts for high school students interested in philosophy, and argued mostly about conflicting rights. Some of the resolutions were remarkably ethereal (e.g., bad government vs. no government) but if nothing else, the rounds were generally accessible. Accessibility was, in fact, a touted virtue, later to be one of the touted virtues of PF. Unfortunately, accessibility is in direct opposition to the average debater’s self-image. The great debater is the master of arcana, not of open discussion. The more arcane the study and the less accessible to the average human, the better and smarter it must be.

The first move away from the classic LD brought reams of evidence into rounds. It brought the subjects being discussed a little more down to earth, and I don’t think this was necessarily a bad thing. Whether the topics drove the reach toward evidence or the reach toward evidence drove the topics is moot. Topics became more real world, meaning that real-world analysis (i.e., facts) were needed, and people started to have cards in LD rounds. We were still connected to classic ethics, though. This was, to me, a fun period in the life of the activity. You learned some stuff about the world, but continued to analyze it from a workable philosophical position.

It was probably just a matter of time before people tossed out the canonical ethicists and brought in some sort of replacement. Seeing that much of the judging was done by college students studying philosophy, it makes sense that the philosophy they were studying, and passing down to their judgees (and the people they trained at summer camps), was the fashion of the day. To LD’s great misfortune, the introduction of the replacements for the canon coincided with the last dying gasps of postmodernism in academia. For all practical purposes, academia was moving on past most of the unreadable nonsense of the pomos, but we managed to latch onto it as if it were still all the rage. I think part of this may have been driven by the college students’ yearning for something, well, inaccessible, and the unreadable drivel promoted as philosophy by a lot of pomos filled the bill. If you could claim to make sense of this material, you must be quite the clever one. The fact that much of this material, even if it did make sense, was irrelevant to ethical issues was beside the point. The muddle that resulted in LD rounds was dreadful. You would listen to nonsense that its purveyors were totally convinced was anything but, and when both debaters bought into it, you would just shake your head in sorrow. Of course, they did use some more classic sources, like Nietzsche, for instance. But anyone who knows anything about Nietzsche would probably suggest that, as a guide for ethical behavior, you might want to look elsewhere. Foucault, on the other hand, survived this usage, and it’s probably unfair to toss him in with the Derridas of life. Foucault will be read long after Derrida has become just a footnote (which, probably, was the day before yesterday, at least).

Pomo finally passed into the discarded old ideas bin, to be replaced by an even worse idea, that it was possible to argue something other than the resolution. Whether or not the pomo debates and all their resulting kritiks led to this is another moot point, but somehow the road was paved with arguments that precede our ability to analyze the resolution. Also, theory, developed to combat abuses, somehow grew up to become an argument virtually aside from abuses. Not to put to fine a point on it, but every interpretation of the resolution is not abusive, but it would seem as if every round were about theory, i.e., abusive readings of the resolution, and there you are. Between theory and a priori arguments, you never have to look at another resolution again, and all of a sudden the EILDR isn’t all that funny. You can pick your favorite subject, draw a tenuous link from the resolution or quickly demonstrate that the resolution is abusive on face, and you’re off. You can now draw on whatever scholarship you like about whatever subject it is you’re promoting. You’re on your own.

I have no idea whether or not there are good debates going on anymore in LD. No doubt the folks who have pushed for and developed off-topic debating are perfectly content, especially if their non-resolutional goals are serving their personal agendas, e.g., all debates being about racial or gender politics. The question of whether these agenda-oriented debates move the needle on those agendas is yet another moot point, although a very interesting one. We’ll probably get to discussing that eventually.

EILDR. Sort of sounds like the name of an elf in the The Hobbit.

In which we are happy to find new CPs

First day back, and as always, the DJ provides the crappy prizes most coaches can only dream of.

In which we pref

I have a tournament every weekend between next week and the middle of March. Every weekend. Most of them are big galumphing things, and all of them are unique. I mean, you can’t compare the single flights of e-balloted VLD at Newark to the it’s-our-first-trip-off-the-hog-farm mania of Columbia. Or the nuttiness of the MHL Blowout (which, for all I know, will blow out the MHL permanently) to the seriousness of Bigle X, or the switchback judging of Scarsdale to the Black Hole of Byram’s Academy Comeback (when Kaz will be in Pennsylvania, which apparently is as far away as she could get on such short notice). I’ll find someone to grab into tab there, but I’ll probably have to resort to very serious threats. “Your teams will never debate again at any tournament I tab!” That one works once in a while, although there have been coaches who have taken me at my word and used the threat as an excuse to quit altogether and get back all their weekends back, once and for all. Lucky bastids.

Newark is the first of this run. I’ve been working that one since the beginning of my tabbing days, fresh off the MHL conveyor belt. Newark used to have its two-day on a normal schedule, with an MHL joining them on Saturday. Depending on the size of the invitational, we had this weird venue back in the day. There was this school within walking distance of East Side, I think it was a grammar school, where everything was Lilliputian and we were tabbing in some sort of closet and you felt totally cut off from the real world, except that Jonathan brought in really good food for lunch. Since the move to the new Science building, Newark has been a joy, with a very nice tab room complete with microwave (the difference at any tournament between staring at the cold judges’ lounge food bleakly and grabbing it lustily for a little heating up and a fine feast—it’s all in the steam rising from the plate) and private bathroom. Jonathan backloads the LD division with enough judges to single flight, which moves things along admirably. This time—a first—we’ll be using MJP. JA has been vocally against this for a while, but seems to have either been won over or simply given in. He offers one wrinkle, though, which I’m surprised more folks haven’t taken me up on when I’ve offered it in the past. The priority will be 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 2-3, 1-2, 4-4, 5-5. That is, 2-3 prioritized over 1-2. As JA says, it’s a fairer match debating with your 3 in front of your opponent’s 2 than with your 2 in front of your opponent’s 1. As I say, I’ve offered this in the past, but no one raised their hand. Not that it happens all that often; we usually cover everything with mutual 1s and 2s, as I’ve explained in the past. But if you happen to be a school that has, shall we say, unique prefs, this may be more important to you. I mean, there are some schools that haven’t gotten a mutual 1 since the Carter Administration because they simply don’t have any 1s in common with anyone else in the field. Each of these unhappy families is unhappy in its own way, and it doesn’t seem to affect their success. Of course, people take mutuality way too seriously, as if the slightest shade off somehow guarantees a loss, which, again, I’ve discussed in the past as ridiculous. The best debaters win rounds in front of any judges, and the best coaches train their debaters to do so. Second-rate coaches spend their prep time complaining to tab. So be it.

I have heard tell, nevertheless, of folks who game the MJP system. Those who have tried to explain this to me have said that they mark some of their 1s as 2s or 3s or something like that, which might work if their round was the only one being scheduled, but honestly, with all the various restraints and priorities and whatnot, I think they’re living in the proverbial fool’s paradise. Or I am. Whatever. I only have one LDer left, a lone, lorn sophomore, and I do his prefs thus: people who I know hate me get struck. People who do a lot of judging get 1s and 2s. People whose first name is Mr. get 3-5 (because my LDer thinks he’s cutting edge, and no one name Mr. has ever noticed a spike on the flow since the beginning of time). That’s about it. My guy does okay. But, as has been pointed out to me often, what do I know?

In which we take advantage of the few minutes with nothing to do before we're off to see Top Five

I’m looking at a killer bunch of weekends beginning with Newark and ending with Penn. Each one has its own unique issues.

Newark is fairly straightforward, except for some reason there is an awful lot of detritus on the tabroom setup. I can’t really figure out why. Assuming that they simply cloned last year’s tournament, which we ran on tabroom, it should just bring in last year’s tournament. Instead, it seems to have brought in every tournament known to man, with myriad scheduling slots on the wrong day and none on the right day, plus a rather bizarre assortment of sites and rooms. Cleaning this up is just busy work, but it needs to be done. No big deal, just time consuming. Meanwhile Jonathan has thrown in the towel and is using MJP for the first time. Given that he’s doing single flights, he’s a bit worried how things will parse out, but my guess is that the large number of judges required will keep things the way they ought to be.

Then there’s Lexington. The good news here is that I’m not going to touch it. If CP can’t set up a tournament correctly, there’s no hope for the rest of us. And I’m curious to see how he sets up what. As a rule I should be doing what he does (I think), otherwise I get myself into trouble. Since for better or worse I’m probably Patient Zero, this can be an object lesson. (No, I’m not thinking what you think I’m thinking. I am not hoping for it not to work. I’m a better person than that. I’m hoping that not only does it not work, but it takes down all of Lexington HS, every ISP in a fifty mile surrounding radius, and either North Korea or Sony, whichever needs it most. And then I’ll turn to CP and say, “I didn’t touch it!”)

Following this is the Gem of Harlem. For which, at the moment, we have no rooms. No problem. We have days before this becomes an issue.

Last year’s Byram Hills Battle of the Five Wifi Armies has me shaking in my boots for this one. All I remember of that tournament is Kaz and I, lanterns in hand, stumbling in the dark as the winds and rain raged about us, searching for a room, any room, that had even marginal cell phone reception, given that the school turned off the internet for the weekend. I have been assured that in the interim they have installed wifi service to die for. Having almost died for lack of it last year, all I can do is hope.

Then there’s a breather at Scarsdale. We can let JV do the fire breathing and relax and enjoy one of our favorite events. Followed by the Quakers, who will be a whole ‘nuther story, but at the moment, are set up just fine.

And with that, a Merry Christmas to you too.

In which we rub its nasty little belly

I remember very clearly when I first started working in tab rooms how Richard Sodikow would run things from his clunky old Macintosh (clunky, that is, compared to the Macs of today). He sat on the closest thing in the given tab room to the throne therein, barking orders to his assembled myrmidons, typing away. Food would be brought in on silver trays from the judges’ lounge by a never ending parade of eunuchs, although I may be misremembering that last bit. But then every now and then there would be a stop in all activity when Soddie pressed the button to pair the next round. Everyone would hold their collective breath, waiting. And here was the thing. To make the round pair successfully—no certainty in those days of TR for the Mac—Soddie would slowly rotate his finger on the touchpad of the computer, making little continuous little circles until the program finally output the completed schematic. The collective breath of the room would exhale, Soddie would lift his finger, the parade of aphrodisiacs from the judges’ lounge would resume, the printer would start chugging away, and the tournament would continue apace until the next pairing.

I never questioned anyone about that circling finger, but I noticed that Soddie wasn’t the only one to do it. I just accepted it as part of the magic of making a tournament happen. Maybe it was a Mac thing. You had to rub the belly of the beast to make it purr, it seemed. When Jules and the Nostrumite wrote this up in Nostrum, they used the metaphor of sacrificing a goat to explain what happened in the sanctum sanctorum of the tab room. That seemed to be a reasonable comparison. The tab rooms were always closed, no one was allowed in and no one ever came out, information was sealed, and as often as not, things broke down and the sacrifices, so to speak, didn’t always satisfy the anger of the gods. So it went.

All of which is prelude to my oversight in not bringing a goat with me to the CFL tournament last Saturday, the legendary Regis Kristmas Klassik (AKA the Christmas Chlassich). A timely sacrifice could have been very helpful. The thing is, it turns out that tabroom.com needs its nasty little belly rubbed just as much as the old TR for the Mac. As I sauntered into the tab room Saturday after the registration closed (theoretically, as it seemed as if everyone who knew last week how to check in automatically had forgotten, and I had to pull teeth to find out who, exactly, had shown up that day) and confidently sat down at the computer, I encountered the first really disastrous inability to get things done correctly. The rounds that we were able to pair used rooms from the wrong pools. At least one round wouldn’t pair at all. According to CP, who, fortunately, was available, the former problem arose from my not rubbing the belly of the beast after making the room pools. I was supposed to save all the individual schedules again. Oh, yeah. That’s obvious. If you don’t do things in the right albeit secret order, they don’t get done. Which means if, for no particular reason, you’ve been doing it “correctly” in the past and this time you don’t, you have your friend James from Bro Tech manually enter the correct rooms (which, at least, you’ve learned to print out in advance for just such a contingency) while you try to figure out why this one particular division won’t double-flight. Well, in that case, a button I didn’t even know existed was clicked. Needless to say, CP would insist that I had pressed that button, and just as needless to say, I would insist that I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole dancer. Since I blog more than he does, even when I'm not blogging much, it is obvious that I am right and he is wrong.

A half hour later than our proposed start, we kicked things off. The good news is that we were only running three rounds, and until all the policy judges decided to go to one of the local gin mills before round 3—yes, seriously, they did all disappear for no reason whatsoever, given the fact that they were given a half hour break, minimum, for lunch—we never got more than that half hour off the mark. Curiously, aside from our starting friction, this event also became quickly identifiable as the Tournament of the Disappearing Maverick. First of all, we started out with mavericks up the wazoo. Then there would be more mavericks. Then there were mavericks who were turning into teams with two unique individuals, then they were one again, and then they were quitting the tournament, but then they wanted to come back, or leave again, or whatever. As a rule, I’m okay with mavericks at events like this, at it is better to debate with a handicap than to stay home and play Minecraft, but this time out, it seemed as if we had more lone motherless dogies than bona fide pairs, but in ever-recombining configurations. Go figure.

Anyhow, at the end of the day, the day ended (if there’s one mindless phrase I really hate, it’s “at the end of the day,” but here I'm using it literally, so the usage is excusable). Trophies were distributed, my little team of novices placed nicely, my judge picked up all her ballots, and I stuffed my pockets with the extra medals to give to Catholic Charlie next time I see him, if not before. Which meant that, for the next two weeks, I have no debates and, aside from a boatload of reading, no DJ.

I rewarded myself for this by upgrading my Spotify. I’m typing this while listening to the UK cast of “She Loves Me.”

Life is good. Sometimes.

In which we make an immodest proposal amidst a cascade of beans

Somebody at the DJ has been cleaning out their closets. Which means I’ve just acquired as many crappy prizes as I can carry at one time. Big boxes o’ junk appear in the break room, and people grab them up as if they’re hiding the Ebola virus; in other words, for reasons that are hard to explain, I’m about the only one around here who wants “Ukulele Ike Sings Again.” Then again, old Cliff (his real name) voiced a certain iconic cricket back in the day, so how can I resist? This is why you want to speak well at Bump. From the DJ to the C.P. Closet at the chez to the Bump tournament to your very own assigned space in your very own house, if you have one. (Some kids just get piled one on top of the other in the basement. At least, that’s what they do in Scarsdale. I can’t speak for other places.) These are the best crappy prizes money couldn’t buy if it wanted to.

“Crappy prizes chosen at random, especially for you.” Ah, yes…

The Regis Kristmas Klassik (AKA the Christmas Chlassich) seems to have filled up suitably. I’ll have to meld the JV and V LDers to make them happen, I think, but otherwise it’s quite robust. Novice PF especially is on the lively side. The northeast will be among the last to loosen the reins on LD, but even so, PF is making its move.

In related news, I understand that next year the NSDA, having adopted my idea for the modest novice topic, will be adopting my comparable idea for varsity LD. There will just be one LD topic from now on, and it will repeat at every tournament until the end of time: “Resolved: Some b.s. or other that doesn’t matter because you’re just going to argue what you feel like arguing anyhow.” I’m calling it the E.I.L.D.R., the Eternal Irrelevant LD Resolution. Given that this is de facto what we’re doing already, why not just cut to the chase?

The Sailor entry this weekend has shrunk to just my newbies. One of them, by the way, was this year’s winner in Winter Bean Trivia. We did it Tuesday night, limiting it to the three categories of food, Disney and 60s music. Before long I jettisoned the music category, since although Capt Jake had suggested it, it turns out that no one on the team knows anything about the 60s except that Beatles might have recorded a song or two in them. Of course, one of the teams could name only a single Disney mouse. Timothy. Given that you get a bean per mouse, and that, uh, the corporate gestalt is a certain mus musculus creature, this had to be the nadir of the evening’s intellectual prowess. It didn’t match the unforgettable answer from years ago that the lead Muppet character was Hermit the Crab, but it comes close.

In which we excoriate the adjudicators

Here’s my New Year’s resolution, the first one I’ve made since I was about eight years old: I will try to get myself back in the groove. The DJ has been sucking my precious bodily fluids and upsetting my purity of essence, leaving about 11 minutes a day for everything else. I do not begrudge them this, and in fact, I sort of like having a lot of new stuff to do to fill the empty hours, which weren’t all that empty to begin with. But I feel that I’m shortchanging the Night Job as a result. That is not a good thing. Of course, there are only so many hours in the day, so something has to give somewhere. I guess this means no more bear-baiting.

Sigh.

I am beginning to regret every good thing I’ve ever said about judges, except for a couple of them, and even they’re a bit suspect. The judge pool in general has always had various issues, including delusions of grandeur, the inability to count to one round past their teams’ participation, and an inability to tell time, but this year everything seems to have been ramped up beyond tolerance. Judges are flouting their obligations, disappearing at the first sign of ballots, whining about every round—you name it. My question is, if you’re judging at a tournament, what exactly are you doing when you’re not judging? I mean, is it that much fun to sit in the judges’ lounge (or, more accurately, hide in the bathroom until the all-clear and then go sit in the judges’ lounge)? I’ve already bemoaned the Tiggers, where people have two hours off between each judging gig on Saturday. This is hard work? Judging per se is hard work? I certainly agree that it is work, and it is challenging, but if you want hard work, try something both physical and mindless.

One of the latest maladies affecting judges is commitmentosis. Judges who know better tell us that they’re only committed for [fill in ridiculously low number here] rounds. To which we respond, Parisian airport*: “Oh, really?” I realize that some tournaments on the high school level do run judges by commitment, but these are few and far between. I gather that it is commonplace at college tournaments, but if you’re judging this weekend and you don’t know whether you’re judging high school or college debate, I’ve got to wonder how well you’re in control of your stuff, so to speak. Here’s a dead giveaway: if you see me coming out of tab, it’s a high school, and you’re judging till the cows come home.

And don’t get me started on yabbo coaches showing up at their first tournament beyond the cabbage patch. New to the big wide world ought to mean that you spent some time reading the invitation of the tournament you’re attending, wouldn’t you think? You’re going to travel hundreds and hundreds of miles to an event, wrapped in nothing but your blissful ignorance? Baby, it’s cold outside, and my sympathy for people who want to argue with the terms of the invitation is rather on the low side.

Anyhow, on the agenda upcoming are the Gem of Harlem, Newark, Bigle X, Penn, Byram Hills and Scarsdale, not in that order. Among these, the happy ones are all alike and the unhappy ones are each unhappy in their own way. My Christmas holidays will be filled to overflowing with poring over the tabroom setups and finding new boxes to click or unclick. I’ll use the coal in my stocking to heat the chez while I’m working on all of this.


*(Remember, if you were smarter, I’d be funnier.)

In which we go into Tigger tab

One of the things we did at the Tiggers was get Dario into the tabroom.com world. He was slightly (and rightly) hesitant about using it for the first time at such a venue, but he prepped up on it in advance and played around and read my lovely manual, so he was rarin’ to go by the time he arrived back in his home state. (Why anyone would ever move out of New Jersey is beyond me.) Everything worked pretty well for him, although to be honest, someone else set everything up, i.e., me. I continue to maintain that the real work of tabroom is setting it up right, and the day someone sets it up completely right, including CP, is the day it comes out of beta. Still, in actual practice, it does work great. Ballots go in, rounds come out. With a big field, it’s a piece of cake. And changing (and fining) judges goes like a breeze. What’s not to like? With a small field, on the other hand, well, good luck, but that’s not a flaw of tabroom. Small fields force us to break the rules, or even more accurately, keep changing the rules on the fly. If HAL 9000 couldn’t do that, I don’t know why tabroom should.

Still, there were a couple of problems. At least one of them CP now understands; apparently I was unclear in my hundred previous complaints about it. There’s a way of adding text to a ballot by entering it into some boxes, and the text I was entering just wouldn’t take. Given that some of this text was the phone number to report results, this was problematic, and a lot of ballots went out without the number, so we didn’t get the electronic feedback we usually get at the Tiggers. Worse, before round 1 the ballots wouldn’t print at all, and it was just a lucky guess on my part to look on this page, where yet a different box was filled with junk data. I deleted it, and things started moving again. At some point during the weekend I began thinking that the problem might be browser based, so I switched from Chrome to Safari, but that did not fix the problem. Oh, well. At least now CP claims to know what I’m talking about.

We also had some room pool leakage. The 5 PF rounds on Saturday are in their own rooms, as are the simultaneous LD rounds. But during the last round, a few of the PF rooms snuck over to the other pool. They had not done this previously, and there was no reason for them to do it now, given that we had made no pool changes all day. In other words, data creep. Go figure. We had a few free spots so we were able to solve it quickly enough, but it was a bit scary, forcing me to go over all the rooms for the rest of the tournament. Next time I’ll print up a pool list and hang it around my neck for the duration, so if something goes wrong I’ll have a record of how it’s supposed to be.

But these were minor issues, in that they got solved quickly. More importantly, the MJP worked beautifully. We made occasional improvements, but most of our double-checking uncovered no way to make things better. A couple of the break rounds went out without us touching a thing. Since we were only once stormed by someone demanding a different judge (and in a most annoying, uninformed and prejudicial fashion), I guess the attendees at large were pleased with the results. There is no question that MJP with tabroom is, round by round, about half an hour faster than MJP on TRPC. You just can’t argue with that. And since virtually all LD these days is MJP, well, there you are.

In which we are back home from Tiggertown

I realize I’ve been off the grid—or maybe it’s on the grid—a lot lately, whichever phrase means not writing anything here. As I’ve been saying, the DJ has been seriously sapping my time way beyond the 9 to 5; actually doing the debatey things I usually talk about in the leftover time precludes commenting on it here. In other words, it’s not as if there haven’t been interesting things to talk about in our little universe, it’s just that I’ve been living them rather than talking about them. I’m sure the VCA will forgive me for a while as I get things evened out.

This last weekend was the Tiggers. For some reason this outing brings in more newbies to the tournament world than most other tournaments. It seems as if half the teams attending email me in advance every five minutes telling me how new they are and asking questions and whatnot. They’ve never been away from home before and this is the first time they’re sticking their team toe into the circuitry waters. I have no idea why Princeton and not some other tournament. Maybe it’s the whole New Jersey thing. People don’t want to visit Princeton, they want to visit New Jersey. It is the Garden State, after all. Maybe they’re coming to see if they can find the gardens. Then again, maybe other tournaments have the same number of newcomers, but at those events the noobs keep their mouths shut. Or maybe I’m just being too nice. (No. That can’t be it.)

Now that we’re conducting run-offs more often, the idea of judge obligation is becoming increasingly difficult for some people, usually the newer ones, to understand. Not only did the Tigger invitation clearly state that the obligation went to the first full elim after runoffs, it stated it in seriously bold type. This means that reason number one for not showing up to the first full elim was that “it wasn’t in the invitation.” Nice try. “No one emailed me about that” is also a good reason for screwing up, on this and other things, although since I have godlike powers, when you come to me with that I can easily determine your email status, and if you’ve turned off accepting tabroom.com emails, you probably don’t want to complain that you’re not getting any. Of course, it is much better to come to tab and argue that the judging requirement is ridiculous and therefore you shouldn’t have to do it. I mean, yes, I really want to have that conversation. Although this is my favorite: Them: I need a round off; I judged every round today. I am suffering from neurasthenia, I am battling the sickness unto death, etc. Us: The schedule is set up so that after every round you have two hours off. This is the most luxurious schedule this side of paradise. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

I did love that. While I can sympathize at normal tournaments when judges do pretty much work every round, but then again, when I go to my job in my morning, I am expected to work the whole day! Imagine that! I even usually eat at my desk. So if I’m judging at a debate tournament I should get plenty of time off? Feh. Of course, I also believe that tournaments shouldn’t go on endlessly. I spent a lot of time paring down schedules when I first started having some clout. But I was more worried about debaters than judges. I’m not saying judging is easy, but as jobs go? I can think of worse.

Speaking of judges, there does seem to be a belief among regular college-student judges that they are so valuable that they don’t really have to show up to pick up their ballots until the spirit moves them, if at all, thus doing their level indirect best to get the tournament off schedule. The last ballots picked up are always, inevitably, the highest preffed college student judges. Again, with a two-hour break, there’s no excuse for this. At the Tiggs, we stopped posting the judges and demanded everyone show up for judge assembly. This meant that ballots went out, straight or pushed, in about 5 minutes, compared to the half hour of phoning and hair-pulling that we started out with. The thing is, if you post the judges, people who aren’t on the posting stay at the saloon where they’re drowning their sorrows rather than hauling themselves over to judge assembly. Hence, no backup judges. This seems to be location dependent, and for some reason the Tiggers has it worse than anyone else, I think. At a tournament where there’s nowhere to go, like the Pups on Saturday, you don’t have to do this, because any judge who didn’t pick up is upstairs in the library. So one has to go with the flow of the geography, which is different every time. CP, of course, would say that e-ballots would solve, and I appreciate that argument to some degree, but not here. Half the judges weren’t linked, if you throw in the novice rounds sharing the same rooms as the varsity (hence the two hour up and down).

Still, working the Tiggers is fun. Like all the colleges we work, the hosts are great company and work hard, and the vast majority of the attendees get a good tournament and are appreciative of all that goes into that. So in a nutshell, it was a long, tiring but satisfying weekend.

In which, amidst sniffles and hacks, we debrief Wee Sma and prepare for the Tiggers

I managed to catch weesmalexitis last weekend. I think this is a direct result of a conversation I was having with someone recently about not getting many colds in my dotage. This one is a doozy. My brain fell out Sunday night. Literally. (Okay, metaphorically.) I’m beginning to come around now, just in time for turkey.

Wee Sma was a breeze, mostly. The big divisions moved along with dispatch, allowing 5 rounds and a final in PF. (Does LD feel the hot breath on its neck yet?) We had hoped for e-balloting, but we had more people opting out than opting in. I will admit that using a phone is problematic, because you can’t use it to flow, but flowing on paper and then using the phone? Apparently this is beyond most people. Not a big deal, really, but coaches need to tell their judges, especially their parent judges, to bring a device that will work in 2014. Tabroom is in the modern age only to the degree that the users enable it to be there.

The smaller divisions required a little bit of card shuffling. Kaz had originally attempted some North Lex and South Lex stuff, but given that they’re all Lex as far as the system is concerned, that really didn’t get off the ground. Cards it was. Tabroom itself, aside from telling us early in the morning that it couldn’t pair the rounds it had just paired, was fine. Meanwhile Dario, who’s never used tabroom, is shaking in his boots over having to do it for PF at Pton. He’s playing with a dummy tournament to get the hang of it. I promised him that it’s easy as pie and has no problems ever and that the nightmare that was the Lost Round at the Pups was an anomaly. I hope that’s true.

In my deathly state, in any case, I’ve been doing the last busywork of Pton. The rooms are in, the schedule is correct, all the right buttons look to be pressed (which I’ll be checking and checking again and again as we get closer). Last year, thanks to the meningitis scare, we cut out all the ribbon clerks early and had enough room on campus to do some things that unfortunately we can’t do this time. We’ll be back to the two hours up, two hours off arrangement in LD. PF will go one after the other, as usual. In any case, this allowed me to scare up a few extra rooms, so now everyone who’s going to be in seems to be in. I’m not expecting much droppage, if the earlier tournaments this year are any indication. Even Kaz noticed it at Wee Sma. People who sign up are staying signed up. And I’m pleased with the way we handled the waitlists. Unlike the Pups, where it was first come, first served, we waited a while and then let everyone who was signed up in on an equal basis. No favorites, and certainly no favorites because you happened to be there first, the most suspect warrant for getting in I can imagine.

And there you are. Have a nice turkey.

In which we put Bump to bed

There isn’t much more to say about Bump. I get stressed out by it, but by now it’s a pretty well-oiled machine. This was the first year Fr. Michael was in tab, replacing CP, and he seemed to enjoy himself. (Michael being there, I mean, not Palmer not being there.) There was the issue of tab being in the noisy library. I think next year I’ll give them a classroom and then move them over to the library for elims. That should work better. In any case, they got us out earlier than last year, even with very tight judging, so there you are.

MJP with a small pool is dicey at best, plus we just barely managed to cover everyone. Not having alums to draw on is murder. I figure I need a good 5 extra judges, plus I need schools who bring highly preffed judges to go the distance. That might mean tinkering with the results, but who’s going to remember whether they won or lost the odd break round? Speaking of which, one of my newbies wanted to see what LD might be like, and I wish to thank our semifinalists for going so fast that she didn’t even realize they weren’t talking about the resolution. So she managed to get LD out of her system and is now firmly committed to PF. And I will be doing a lot more analysis on MJP as a whole, now that I’ve started. I’m really curious to see how it’s affecting things beyond just my one tournament. Will my initial hypotheses hold up? We’ll see. I’ll pass the data along to Bro Ryan as well, since that sort of thing is right up his alley.

And now, with Bump behind us, we coast into Thanksgiving with Wee Sma Lex, which I always enjoy, and which gives the Sailors a little Bump of their own. It allows novices to get their first housing under their belt, although I sorely wish they had a novice PF division. Given how many PFers they have overall, I can’t see why not. They have a novice policy division, and a novice LD division. Just sayin’. We’re going to be trying out a new restaurant Friday night. Fred the Lion, who is semi-Chinese, declared that the Chinese restaurant in Lexington is pretty lousy, but we didn’t need this level of authority to make this determination. We’re going to try an Italian place. I sorely miss the old Italian place, and the less old Italian place that succeeded it. Italian always works well with debaters. Those who are panivorous can always eat spaghetti alla niente while the rest of us our chomping down the real food. Of course, the trip home veers off to Reins’ Deli, where no one is ever disappointed.

And then there’s a week off, and some little Tigger event…

In which we ponder what happens after meatballs

Things seemed better in hand for Bump 2014 than in some previous years. Everything ran smoothly and on schedule round-wise, as far as I could tell. The fact that we ended earlier than usual on Saturday night would seem to confirm that.

I always pass housing along to a parent. Now that we only handle out-of-staters, the number is much more manageable, although we certainly can’t handle the load just relying on the team. So the housing person does a lot of calling around, and brings in legacies, and the job gets done. The main confusion this year was one school that a) decided to forego its housing and b) didn’t bother to tell us. There were a few panicked moments when we thought they were being housed in an undisclosed location somewhere in the backwoods of Sailorville, and there was a bit of running through the halls plaintively calling their names. I finally got the coach on the horn who gave me the oops alert, and that was that. Oops this, if you know what I mean.

Food seemed to go well. There was enough of it for everyone, that is, and it was there when it was supposed to be there. The candy Speecho-Americans kept asking me questions like, could I give them change or would they get special service credits or somesuch, and I kept looking at them as if they just escaped from a lunatic asylum, but we’re used to those sorts of exchanges. Because there had been some thefts from the high school and lockdowns and whatnot a couple of weeks ago, all the doors were closed and there was only one point of access, but that proved to be no problem. As far as I know, the lost and found business operated once again with fully one hundred percent of the items lost completely unconnected to the items found. That is always one of the great Bump mysteries. If we ever found something someone actually lost, it would be a miracle.

We gave the varsity trophies out in the rounds, but I did do short ceremonies for the speaker awards for the two divisions, about 5 minutes each. I like talking about crappy prizes, and students like hearing about them and getting them. The Traveling Tray of PF returned this year—it’s the 2nd Place Bump Speech Award from 1981—as did the Traveling (Fruit) Cup for LD. The TT of PF now has a beautifully embossed nameplate, sort of, if pasting an index card on the back and attaching it with green tape and me scratching the name of the previous winners counts as beautiful embossing. There may be some dispute over that. The (Fruit) Cup winner, whose school doesn’t usually come to Bump, had the temerity (or foresight) to leave it behind after beautifully embossing his own name on it. Which means it will find its way into my basement where TK (pronounced teek) can use it as a scratching post when he’s down there chasing mice. By the way, O’C was saying how the retired can of soup that substituted for the fruit can during the wilderness years is looking pretty dicey on its perch at Bronx Science. He says when you shake it you can hear the meatballs still bouncing around in it. I had to break it to him that it was a can of chicken stock, sans meatballs, which made him start to worry about exactly what is bouncing around in there. We agreed that not shaking it again in the future would be the better part of valor.

In which we begin debriefing on Bump

Well, another Bump is in the history books.

We started up better than usual this year. At the point where we know everyone is on their way or here, pairings can start, and they did. Since people had either texted their information or simply checked themselves in from the road, we were golden. Registration table opened at 2:30, and my team crackheads the heads of my crack team collected the money while I hovered around feeling useless. Then I made the traditional opening remarks that easily half of the people in the cafeteria are able to hear, and there we were. I did a short briefing for the PF judges in the library, then went back out to get the novices started and on their way down the hill, and we were off and running. I gather that there were some issues when the novices arrived as the assembled Mothers Against Damned Debaters grabbed their innocent children and did their best to protect them from the clutches of the PF novices, but O’C and Kaz handled the day, and soon things were on an even keel. Luckily I wasn’t there for that. It’s probably not good form to open the tournament and start beating up on the MADD mothers. O’C and Kaz are much more politic than I am.

There were some magical moments. We had a glitch with the room pool assignments, so JV quickly redid the pools. No biggie, except for the room SB-2, which is in an alcove off the main entrance of the grammar school. JV thought it was in the high school, however, so he put it in for VLD. When round one went out, the judge assigned to SB-2 in the high school, a room that doesn’t exist, picked up her ballot, announced that she knew where that was, grabbed a debater and disappeared.

Much time passed. Three other debaters who were supposed to be in SB-2 were in the tab room looking perplexed. Knowing as I did that there was no SB-2 in the high school, I was now perplexed too. Grabbing my pith helmet and elephant rifle, I went off in search of this mythical spot. I looked in the basement, but all those rooms were locked, with “Keep Out Bumpites” signs on all the doors. Back upstairs, the three debaters looked at me desperately, asking me to help them, Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope. All right, sez I. This time in addition to pith helmet and elephant rifle I grabbed our major domo and the A flight debater and tried again.

This time we went down not one flight but two. There were no lights. There was merely the suggestion of a path through the dark. Down a few more steps. Up a few steps. Down a few steps. Up a few steps. Indiana Jones (to change gears on the Lucas comparisons) would have turned back long ago.

And there was the judge. In a room marked Brigadoon, chatting away with the one lone debater. The door was locked. We banged on it for an hour or so before they finally heard us. I threw in my debater and told them to have their flight and, if they could, try to get back before Christmas. Then the major domo and I hurried back the way we came, chased by a giant ball.

Who says nothing interesting happens at debate tournaments? If this wasn’t worthy of a Tale of Great Debate Adventure, I don’t know what is.

(More to come.)

In which we learn something new about MJP - judges don't matter

I find the following fascinating. It is far from scientifically certain, but I would expect that further exploration along this line, if someone had the time and some really good Excel skills, would confirm these conclusions.

My hypothesis is simply that MJP, or more to the point, judges in general, don’t matter that much. I’ve sensed glimmers of this in the past (and reported on it), but the more I think about it, the more true it seems. Obviously there’s exceptions, but we’re talking the rule here. And I think I can safely say that as a rule, good debaters can pick up just about any judge. MJP is nice, but it may turn out to be a more important tool for lesser debaters in the long run.

People use MJP as a tool for determining their judges. That’s a good idea, and I’m in favor of it. But of course, there are some rules of engagement in the tab room. First and foremost, teams on the bubbles get first priority for their prefs, moving up the win/loss scale to the undefeateds and then going down to the out-of-contention folk. What this means is that the people who will get their highest preferences at a tournament are the ones who need them most. The opposite is also true: the people who don’t get their highest preferences at a tournament are the ones who need them the least.

The Bump tournament had a small judge pool, ranked across 5 levels + strikes. With 83 VLDers over 5 rounds, the average pref was 1.7. That seems about the way it should be.

Of course, I was not tabbing my own tournament, but I was in the tab room often enough to watch the sausage being made. One round in particular stood out, round 4, where 8 out of the 10 of the undefeateds got 3s or 4s. As explained above, this is because there were a lot of people ahead of them in the line for the most desired judges. Meanwhile, there were times in the day when people came by to query a placement of a judge that seemed low. This got the little grey cells a-glowing.

Today I looked at the top four debaters at Bump, the semifinalists, and poked around on a spreadsheet. In prelims, they won 19 of 20 rounds. The one loss was in front of a 4 judge. But here’s the interesting part. The average pref for the tournament overall in prelims was 1.7. For these four folks, their averages in prelims were 2, 2, 2.4 and 2.6. One of them, who did not drop a ballot all day, got judges preffed 1,3,3,3,3! Another one of them, also undefeated in prelims, got two 4s.

What’s the unifying factor here? I would suggest that it’s not prejudicially favorable judge placement, but damned good debating despite the judge. I know way too many coaches who question placements. I’ve already reported on my unhappy experiences on Yale when we were forced to put out less than desirable placements and people stormed the proverbial barricades. My response was that maybe you should spend more time teaching your debaters how to appeal to a broad base of judges rather than complaining that you’re not getting your preferred narrow base.

The four top debaters at Bump (and I promise you their elim rounds were no picnic either) demonstrate—if not with statistical certainty then at least with anecdotal evidence that suggests that statistical certainty is possible—that good debating, winning the ballots from the judges you get, is the key to success. Trust me: the tab room has already done its best for you, but tab can only do so much. It’s the debaters who win rounds, not the pref sheets.

In which we open the Bump help desk

This is just a mild sampling of what I've seen in the last 24 hours. It’s—almost—verbatim.

Q: Can you tell me what PF topic you’ll be using in November?
A: The November topic. From 2019. Why wait till the last minute?

Coach: Please note that one of my students is allergic to Coquilles St. Jacques.
Me: Damn. And we had already prepared Coquilles St. Jacques for 400 people. I’ll tell them to toss it out and find some leftover debate ziti from back when Newburgh had the Bump weekend.

Q: What happens if it snows?
A: Precipitation freezes before it hits the ground and turns the water into little crystals.

Q: Can I switch a lot of things around completely?
A: Ka-ching!

Q: Can I have another slot in everything, and then another one, you’re the best, please please, none of them are showing any symptoms of Ebola, much, and I wouldn’t ask except I always do.
A: No, O’C, you can’t.

Coach: Can you put another LDer in, please?
Me: We’re at the point where people are going to be debating in the bathroom.
Coach: That’s fine. She’ll like that. She’s meant to debate in the bathroom.

Parent helper: Can I have some kids to help out cleaning up Saturday? But they have to be really good ones.
Me: Have you actually ever met any of our kids?
Parent helper: I’ve given birth to some of them.
Me: I rest my case.

Q: Can you explain a lot of stuff to me that’s clearly answered in your invitation?
A: Of course. I only write the invitation to keep my hands busy during the early part of the season.

In which we Bump things up

Bump is full. More than full. All shut down, moving along nicely. There are more tables being used for rounds in the library than I would normally like, but that’s what happens when PF is double the size of previous years. Of course, I’m seeing that at every tournament I do. PF is growing and thriving. LD certainly seems to be holding its own, however, at least for the time being. There is the issue of it being a lot easier to run a squad of single entries versus a squad of team entries, for one thing. On the other hand, I continue to read a lot of articles about LD on the various sites and blogs, and I progressively find that I understand less and less of it. I’m happy to ascribe some of this to my increasing mental decrepitude, but at the point where people are arguing with a straight face whether there is a need to address a resolution, ever, I wonder if all those kids on my lawn aren’t suffering from their own decrepitudes. Good grief!

The other events on the docket are also marching along. The Tiggers is overbooked, which means that the people who signed up yesterday are expressing surprise at being waitlisted. Really? Every day I see new tournaments come up on tabroom, and if they’re tournaments I like, I grab some slots. Alternately, I could wait a month and wake up one morning thinking, I wonder whatever happened to the such-and-such tournament that usually runs this weekend that I need hotels, airplane tickets and Secret Service clearance to attend, much less slots at the tournament. Other surprises, from the Bumpish universe: I need to cover all my entries with judging? Can’t you just make this one exception for little old me? This is a skep sheep trigger: i.e., I respond by explaining to them the Tragedy of the Commons. Why are you charging me for late changes if I almost made the deadline, kind of, except I really didn’t because I’m not quite used to having set the clocks back a couple of weeks ago? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So once more unto the breach this weekend, the annual low point of my night job. Just think. It will all be over on Sunday. Ahhhhh….

In which we discuss the Universal Right to Debate

There is, apparently, a perception by some of a universal Right to Debate at the high school level. This RTD is warranted thus: Debate is a very good thing, therefore all students are entitled to it. As far as I know, but I may be wrong about this, there are no other such rights in the high school community. In the normal course of events, students take advantage of whatever program a school has to offer, and only what a school has to offer. There is no perceived right to football, or fencing, or annual musical theater performances, or chess, or any other extracurricular activity that might be a good thing. Schools are not obligated to offer a complete menu of activities beyond basic education (which, in many cases, is hard enough). If a school does not have a particular program, no matter how good that program might have been if it existed, the fact that it doesn’t exist would seem to preclude participating in it.

Not so with debate. The RTD overrides all other concerns.

Needless to say, I wouldn’t do what I do if I didn’t believe in the benefits of forensics. Twenty years in, weekend after weekend, on my own dime, ought to demonstrate that. (Remember, I already have a day job.) The benefits of forensics are not in question here. What is in question is access to those benefits.

There are those who give time and money to working and developing programs. The Soros Group has, for instance. Certainly the NSDA is built around developing and maintaining programs in schools. Plenty of local organizations do likewise. Meanwhile, we have a broad network of camps for training debaters, after school or during summer breaks. We also have people who sell materials to debaters to enhance their performance, including the NSDA, which is not free and which offers expensive packages beyond basic membership. There is nothing wrong with this. Plenty of non-profits take money in to support their projects, and for-profit in general is also perfectly acceptable. Offer something that people want and sell it for a price they are willing to pay? Sure. Cap Good. No problem.

A lot of people love debate and its benefits. A lot of people have built careers around it. So far, so good.

Over the years, a broad network of competition has developed around the country. One way or another, this competition is open to various kinds of participation. NSDA and CFL (and MHL and NDCA and NYSDCA and NYSFL and presumably plenty of others) impose limits on who can be a member and therefore compete. None of these is entirely open to everyone. And I’ll throw in general invitationals here as well. For the most part, all of these competitions are open only to their members. In the case of some of them, membership is determined by various rules and some sort of dues payment. High school invitationals have a more common law sense of membership, a presumption that the participants are high school students; a corollary to this is that they represent the high schools they attend, and that they are not simply random students who happen to be attending high schools. Any high school debate tournament, with perhaps hundreds of students attending, needs to proceed on generally accepted criteria. That those hundreds of students are attending with the knowledge of—and as far as the tournament is concerned, recourse to—their official administrations has always been a given. The reason for this is because of the unfortunate possibility of something going wrong. It can be accidents, illness, whatever. I have seen serious instances of both over the years. Official entries from schools are equipped (as well as anyone can be equipped) to handle these situations. Adults are in place, medical forms are viable, etc. Additionally, tournaments can only run effectively when the participants understand the obligations of attending tournaments, knowing who has to be where, and when. The fiascos resulting from being a bad guest can equal the fiascos of being a bad host.

Until recently this has all been a given, an unspoken expectation. Today, however, we have RTD debaters who feel they are inherently entitled to debate.

There are two general universes of RTD debater. The first is the maverick, the lone wolf student from a school that doesn’t offer debate. Sometimes the school knows about this maverick, and supports the student’s endeavors. Sometimes not. The mavericks might arrive at a tournament alone, or with a college student who is not legally an adult, or with a parent who is acting merely as chaperone but who is often tossed into a judging pool with no understanding of the activity whatsoever (and, often, with little understanding of the English language). The only acceptable maverick, I would say, is the one traveling with the endorsement of the student’s school, in the company of an empowered adult. This adult can judge, or not, but only if the judge is up to the task (and as a former parent judge myself, I’m pretty liberal about this, and as a tab director, I’m usually happy to enable it by putting parent judges into PF rather than VLD). Unfortunately, the acceptable maverick is being outnumbered by those pulling shenanigans. False school names. False student names. The aforementioned English-as-a-non-existing-language parent in the VLD pool (getting no rounds, of course, and then asking me what to do about lodging for the night at 10 o’clock and I’m heading out to my own warm blanket). Nevertheless, the interwebs are bustling with pleas to let mavericks debate, regardless of (and sometimes in spite of) their shenanigans. After all, debate is good, and there is a universal RTD! Yes, it is, and no, there isn’t. If your school doesn’t offer a debate program, that is not the problem of the schools that do, nor the tournaments you wish to attend. If as much time and energy were spent within the school working with the administration to start teams, to provide debate—the good thing—to as many people as possible for the longest term possible, as is spent flying lone wolves from one circuit tournament to another, we’d have wall-to-wall novices every weekend.

The other general universe of the RTD debater is the club member. Until recently I think most folks have been accepting of club debaters, mostly because they hadn’t given them much thought. The club premise is simple: you pay them money, and they train you to debate. Straightforward enough on face. But because debate is a good thing, and there is a universal RTD, the clubs feel that they should be able to debate against high schools, representing the clubs. Which has led, in (my) recent memory to a series of shenanigans and mendacity and irresponsibility that has left no club untainted. Not paying registration fees? Oh, that must be some sort of miscommunication. Fines for not meeting obligations? Oh, you never send me that email (all five times). Club debaters from schools that actually have teams ending up facing each other in rounds, and going to tab to ask for new assignments? Or club debaters pretending to be representing a school only one of them attends? No adult responsible for the club at the tournament? Oh, I don’t know anything about that, even though I’m the only grownup here. One judge covering entries from multiple (most likely unofficial) schools and weaseling out of judge fees? You mean that’s unacceptable? How can that be? We’re wonderful people who really want as many people as possible to debate.

No, you’re not. You’re in the business of selling a service, and not doing a particularly good job of delivering that service, otherwise most tournaments I work at wouldn’t have banned you, for cause, from returning. The trail is clear. The reason clubs are being pushed out is not because we won’t “give them a chance” (as one article I saw put it), but because we have given them many chances and they’ve repeatedly screwed us over. Telling me that you’re really wonderful and things will be different this time isn’t going to hack it. The lack of responsibility on the other end seals it. If we have a problem with a school (and we have had such problems), we go to the administration of that school, which takes responsibility for it. If we have a problem with a club, we go to the administration of that club, and they disavow any knowledge of any wrongdoing, and tell us how wonderful they are and how much good they’re doing for debate, then they accuse us of discrimination, or being anti-education, or whatever else occurs to them to distract from their own shortcomings.

The clubs, as profit generators, can easily solve their problem by going to the schools of their clients and working toward official entry as those schools. As for the lone wolves, they can stop thinking about their own attendance at TOC and start thinking about how they can bring the benefits of debate—which they claim is a universal right—to others. You think these efforts won’t be rewarded? You think wrong. But you think ignoring making these efforts won’t be noticed? You think really wrong. Those of us who have given their souls to debate want nothing more than everyone possible debating, not because there’s a universal right to debate, but because there’s a universal value derived from debating. But the non-school community, clubs and independents, have brought down the wrath of the school community on themselves, making a hard thing—running tournaments—into something even harder, turning registration into an adversarial process, and making people like me get progressively more angry.

C’est tout.

In which we send a tournament into oblivion, among other things

We did it. We canceled the Montwegian MHL. As far as I can recall, this is the first time ever that this has happened. It’s as if a blanket of befuddlement fell on the debate community, disconnecting everyone from their normal pursuit and making them all forget how they spend their weekends. And meanwhile they’re breaking down the doors at Sailorville to get into Bump.

Weird craziness.

I sent out the 2 minute warning on Bump TBAs last night. I’ll drop them tomorrow, if any. I don’t think anyone really doesn’t know who they are bringing, so I’m more interested in getting them to get rid of who they’re not bringing. I’m still waiting for final room count from the grammar school, where the novices will be. I’m hoping to squeeze a little more blood from that particular turnip, but who knows? Part of the problem of modern life that prevents me from having the information I need to operate is the number of people I deal with who do not consider email an acceptable form of communication. I do realize that in the younger circles mail of any sort is an alien beast, but I also notice that at the DJ, if I want to communicate with someone, I use mail for mail-like things, IMs for instant-like things, and talking on the phone for talk-like things. A medium for everything and everything in its medium. All communication is not a text, in other words. A text implies immediacy. Read this immediately! Now! An email implies, read this when you can and act accordingly, and it will be in your inbox so you’ll be able to find it now and again later. It has always been among my goals to civilize the savages who venture onto my team. The ability to communicate like an adult is, I think, a part of that civilizing. The reward to them is participation on the team, which one presumes is of value to them. Then again, I wonder how they can avoid email so easily. They all have smart phones, all of which notify you when you get mail. Sharper than serpents’ teeth, these kids these days who are mucking up my lawn.

Of course, I’m also plagued by people who don’t use email because they’re, they claim, not computer savvy. In 2014? Jeesh. I got my first office computer in 1991. Where have these people been since the Papa Bush administration? Yeah, maybe you’re not proficient in Perl 5.20, but reading your mail?

[This is where I put down the computer, so to speak, stand up and bang my head against the wall. Again. That’s why I have no hair. The wall wore it off.]

In which we are earnest

For reasons that defy analysis, we are teetering on the brink of cancelling the Monti MHL In a word, no one is signing up. Granted, it’s always been a smallish event, but it is nevertheless always been a useful one. (Then again, I haven’t got any Sailors going to it, so who am I to complain? I think in our case it’s because people are taking this opportunity to pursue their other extracurricular activities. There are other extracurricular activities? Who knew?)

I was disappointed this morning to see that O’C will be doing Oscar Wilde for next Halloween, rather than my choice, which was Chester Bea Arthur, which would have allowed him to reuse most of this year’s costume. Then again, I am thinking of going with him next year, wearing boxing gloves. (True Wildeans will get that reference, which is pretty nasty. The rest of you can Google it. And I am a true Wildean. Always have been. There’s even a character called Bunbury in Nostrum. And to be honest, I’m probably a bigger fan of Wilde than I am of Bea Arthur, so there you are.) Anyhow, prepare for sunflowers. I do hope O’C brings along someone to portray the wife and kiddies. And Bosie. (And even more parens: the wag who coined “If you were smarter, I’d be funnier,” use to work with me at the DJ, where, he once claimed, when it comes to editing our books, “the love that dare not speak its name can take a number.”)

Meanwhile, I’m really threatening the Fates with Bump division sizes, which are way too big for the sites. I won’t say I’m rooting for Ebola to hit the region, but a little dengue fever wouldn’t be so bad. Or the yaws. Whatever. I’m just hoping there’s a sudden whoosh of registrants toward the exit when things close next Monday. I don’t think many of them will be replaced.

In which we drive through Scarsdale with our noses pressed up against the bus windows, watching all the well-to-do puttin' on the ritz

Walt Disney World has been trying to keep it hushed up, but apparently someone stole the audio animatronic Chester A. Arthur from the Hall of Presidents last week. Fortunately, there was a duplicate CAA being used as one of the cavemen in Spaceship Earth because, let’s face it, there aren’t that many people riding the attraction who look at the caveman and say, You know, that Neanderthal looks suspiciously like our nation’s 21st President, or vice versa. So the caveman is now in the Hall of Presidents in place of CAA; he’s the one wearing a bearskin. What role WDW suspects that O’C played in all of this has yet to be published.

While himself was giving out antique flags to people and telling them, “Chester A. Arthur, you spalpeen, not Rutherford B. Hayes”—and for those of you who have trouble with this, you can tell that Hayes preceded Arthur in office if you go by their middle initials but turn them around, a handy guide indeed—the rest of us were resting up for the Scarswegian CFL. As I walked into the building Saturday morning, JV promised me that we would get in a full four rounds because we could single flight, as he had more extra people on his team than he could shake the proverbial stick at, and sure enough, that’s what we did. Everything went swimmingly on the nuts and bolts side, except somewhere along the line the PF event description disappeared, and tabroom was unwilling to put it back. Likewise with another tournament Catholic Charlie was working on (we were together in tab). I told him to photograph it and send it to CP as proof that 1) there was a problem and 2) I wasn’t causing it. Normally I would do a screenshot rather than a tabroom selfie, but I have no idea how to do screenshots on a PC, and we were working on Scarswegian machines that were all of the Windows persuasion. We were also working in the lovely library, a space way more conducive to good tabbing than the usual spot JV gives us in the science wing surrounded by all sorts of, well, science. Not that I have anything against science, mind you—if it wasn’t for science, we wouldn’t have Velcro—but this was bright and airy with a soupcon of cell service. What more could you ask for? And they do have an invitational coming up...

Meanwhile, on other fronts, the DJ remains nutty, which is why I haven’t been posting much because my free time has gone elsewhere as a result. I expect this to keep up for a while, and I apologize to the VCA for it in advance. There are only so many hours in the day, but I understand that CP is working on that for the next release of tabroom. I’ll report back then, no doubt whining about it mercilessly.