Winding down

I sent out the JJ topic materials last night; a ton o' stuff to sort through. It was fun reading the names of the old debaters at the time, and seeing the cases they were running. And interesting to figure that all the old problems will return to haunt us. There are so many ways to argue the rez poorly, and a lot of ways to argue it interestingly, and with any luck, the people doing the latter will be able to avoid the people doing the former, but as always with that, it's Good luck, Charlie.

Jeff, having taken umbrage at being accused of looking like a debater, from a post roughly as old as my socks, claims that the novices now not only read this blog, but that one of them even has it bookmarked! Will wonders never cease! Next thing you know, NoShow will turn up at two meetings in a row, and I'll have run out of bile fodder.

I thought next week was a full break for them, as it is for me, but there is school Wed thru Fri, the poor dears. I was hoping they'd use the week off to pretend to research (except, I guess, for Jeff, who would simply look like he was pretending to research, and the bookmark guy, who would take the opportunity to do all sorts of other exotic computer-agey things, like maybe attempting double-clicking). Oh, well. Maybe they'll learn something in school.

I did start writing up the BusinessMan lecture, but it's going to take forever to make it intelligible. Talking is one thing, writing is a whole 'nother thing altogether. Which should not be such a great appercu for a forensics coach, but I do suffer from a slight case of Debate Dementia (and don't say you haven't noticed), so forgive me this once. And speaking of forgiveness, or debate dementia, if O'C really expects me to photograph my tin, he will test my software. (Parse that, you spalpeen!) Of course, he'll never know my concern because he never reads this blog--he's too busy posing for the cover of Atlas Shrugged, which is the only explanation I can come up with for that bizarre picture of him on the VBI advertisement. "Who is Jon Cruz?" Hmmmm. You could make a slogan out of that!

Jersey has chimed in favorably on the Modest Novice. Mostly that leaves the families running the New York territories to make it a reality. Somebody'll have to make 'em an offer they can't refuse. And if you're interested, we're going to pair the third round of Grands hi-low, which makes a lot of sense to me. It used to be hi-hi, which means the top two hit, and it wasn't unusual for one to put the other out of qualification, even though they clearly both deserved it. Now it's like a short invitational tournament, where one round can't ground you. That is as it should be. We are trying to qualify the best, after all, not just have them knock each other out of contention.