Reservwar. Resevar. Reserve-ar. Reservarzyar...

I have posted the latest Nostrum recording and pdf in the appropriate places. There is no question in my mind that when the evildoers Jules and the Mite wrote these things, they knew that someday I'd attempt to read them aloud, and that I would find the task Herculean. I never knew how incapable I am of pronouncing the word "reservoir," for instance. The title of the episode (for no reason I could detect) is Reservoir Hot Dogs, three words that simply do not come tippingly off the Menick tongue. Fortunately for the Vast Coachean Army, I have edited out the clunkers, and the ensuing curses, so you'll barely notice the problem. Aaarrgghhh!

I'm rather marveling at the hoopla over the NFL committee. As you can read from yesterday's post, I'm pretty agnostic about it in general, and as I wrote to the Legion of Doom last night explaining my position, I don't believe that the committee should attempt to do too much, or expect too much in the way of impact. They are, after all, changing the very specific (?) rules for very specific venues, i.e., NFL tournaments. And even in that context, how much do debaters and judges look at the rules (which are hell on earth in the tabroom, but that's a different issue altogether)? Still, there will be an impact beyond NFL. After all, to the degree that anyone "owns" an activity, NFL owns LD. It's their baby; for better or worse, they created it. And what they say about it today will influence it beyond its natal borders (even if only to influence national $ircuit types to storm the barricades and swear off any allegiance and curse the NFL's collective souls to perdition).

I've been communicating with the Muffler (i.e., MFL's Chris Palmer) about the Bullpup tab room. I had originally thought that I might have to use TRPC From Hell, because I thought we'd need to print ballots, but that won't work, so I can see no reason not to use Good Old Classic TRPC instead. The real problem with the new version, in this case, would be its occasional tendency to mix the different divisions into one, unlike Classic, which uses a different field system and always keeps divisions separate. I have watched Monticello, NFA, Bump and MHLs all suffer through this problem, and have no intention of ever suffering through it again. But the problem of having only single divisions on an installation is the complication of sharing judges, as one would wish to do to some extent if there's a V and JV pool. Anyhow, I told the Muffler I'd enter all the data and get there early on Friday to work through registration, which should lead to the least amount of start-up glitches. We'll see.

There was some discussion of flex prep (which I really do think sounds like a good name for a shampoo) on ROTFL; NoRelation, if you ask me, had the question knocked. I stopped reading after his post, since I now felt I knew what I thought about the subject. Other than that, things are pretty quiet over there at hellinahandbasket.com. Mostly Uncle Bubba is sharpening his intergalactic Borg communication chip to bring us second-by-second coverage of the whining that inevitably accompanies any CatNat. Plus there's trying to figure out who's who, when everyone is listed by code. It'll keep the Chutster out of mischief for the day, anyhow. I've been telling him he should take up a hobby, like macrame or something. But no, he'll be in Chicago giving out hellinahandbasket.com tee shirts (or probably selling them--I wonder if they still have their donation thing going; if you refuse to support them on religious grounds, then support me: just put the money in an envelope and send it to Jim Menick/Vast Coachean Army/Good Old U S of A, and I know the post office will find me).

Speaking of religion (as we were, parenthetically), part 3 of Fearless Freddy is about just that. Religion as tantamount to (mental) slavery? This guy must have been really popular at the weekly church socials. I'll bet he never once remembered to bring the cole slaw.