The Big 5-00, a view of tab, all gloves on sale at half price

I am told by the Blogger software that this is my 500th posting. Lawdie, Lawdie, Lawdie. There’s probably enough verbiage here to single-handedly short circuit half the brains in high school forensics. Then again, if I were O’C, my bank book would now read $2.5 million samolians. I’m working for the wrong website.

To celebrate this far from momentous event, there is a new TVFT podcast, a commentary on the highlights of Lexington tab last week. Literally. I’m not sure if my intention is to de-mystify tab or de-mythologize tab or re-humanize tab, but I do feel that there are people who fear to cross the threshold of any tab room for fear of… something. Granted, there are a couple of tab rooms closed for rules purposes, namely Districts and CFL Grands, where everyone is so worried about doing things absolutely by the book that anything that might jeopardize rule adherence is shunned, barred, banned and burned. But normally, aside from the need for quiet so that we can work undistracted when the times arise and rounds need to get out, and aside from not letting random people go through the results if a tournament does not wish it, a closed tab does not mean that the door is closed to visitors, but merely that results will not be shared William Nilliam. I’m all in favor of people popping into tab if they’re the sort of people I might be interested in seeing, or if they have questions, or even if they want to help out (although often the people who offer to help are desperately needed somewhere else, to wit, on the judging floor). I’m even willing to provide the staff of WTF with information for posting for the eagerly awaiting teeming multitudes, provided that I am allowed to give them a good, swift kick in return. As a point of curiosity, in Nostrum tabbing requires chanting in dead languages and the sacrificing of various barnyard animals; this indeed used to be the case, but later, more developed versions of the software have obviated the need for both singing and bloodletting.

And here’s an anomaly. At the Plebe meeting Tuesday, we talked a bit about moral standards from culture to culture. The middies were perfectly content, mostly, to accept that cultures were within their sphere of moral rectitude to punish the theft of a chicken with anything from a small fine to the cutting off of a hand. On the other hand (no pun intended), they all seemed to agree that stealing a chicken was wrong in any culture. In response, I refer you now to my essays on Cognitive Dissonance, You Kant Always Get What You Want, and, most germane of all, “101 Ways to Cook Chicken” (subtitled, “50.5 Ways to Cook Chicken if You’re One-Handed”).