Countdown to semi-finality

Registration closes at nine o'clock tonight. If I only knew how many rooms we have at the grammar school, I could conceivably open a slot or two for LD, but my hardware engineer has abandoned me, and no one else seems to be rising to the occasion. Of course, we don't really need LD. It's just more trouble for everyone.

The housing list will go out tonight at some point. Last night was a novice meeting, and I heard their various tales of woe, but it sounds as if berths are getting notched for the arriving horde. And I do like novice meetings. At this point I know who all of them are, and they know something about debate, and we can actually talk intelligently about things for, oh, 60% of the time, which is pretty good. It's not easy being a novice, being judged primarily by the inept and the inane. If you can survive your first two years of debate, you can survive anything. Varsity debate, say what you will about it, at least allows you to do whatever it is you want to do, and to expect reasonable success based on your efforts (or reasonable failure, if your efforts are true stinkers). Unspellable told me something about an opponent of his running a critique of the word "is." Shades of Bill Clinton! I do hope it was a joke... Anyhow, one thing about novice debate, it does tend to be about the topic. Speaking of which, a new topic should be coming down the pike shortly. Here we go again.

O'C showed me an early version of the sexchange function I was suggesting he put on DOA. I was impressed. Originally it was intended to be called judgesexchange (you can figure out the capitalization), where judges and tournament directors could go to buy and sell souls, but shortening it to sexchange seems to be the way to go. I applaud DOA doing something useful, aside from its primary goal of keeping Smilin' Justin B up at night, fuming. I would have liked to have had the sexchange when starting up Bump. I've got a lively enough pool, but they are SO Hen Hud (YAYYYY!). This is not going to be a tournament to run, say, a K of the word "is," if you get my drift (this is aimed at you, you sniveling kritiker, you!).

Next week is the captain election. Hoo-ha! I gather there has been some campaigning, and that Jeanine Pirro refuses to consider going for the job and that she will stay the course running against Hillary. Which is as it should be. Pirro would not make much of a captain, if you ask me (but damn, she'd be one helluva Hardware Engineer—there'd be no begging for rooms with her around).