Tis a puzzlement; time marches on; shin-guards for Declaimers; peace on the camp front

For reasons that elude me, I will have no speech entries for the Pups. As of today all of the Sailors’ Speecho-Americans have bowed out (not that all that many signed up in the first place). We will need to figure this out when the season begins, but I sense a need for re-grooving. Not wanting to go to Yale simply does not compute in the forensiverse. Usually it’s the other way around, you have to fight them off, given that it’s three days of goofing around on a nice campus in nice weather with great competition. As I say, re-grooving may be in order.

Whatever you do, never write anything about technology. It moves way too fast. (Note: Copies of Lingo are still available on Amazon.) I managed last week to post a Nostrum episode that had chat rooms and ubiquitous program disks from AOL, written just as IMs were making it big. Time’s fun when you’re having flies, as Kermit said. Meanwhile a recent TWIT was considering the possible end of email (which I think is migrating to the telephone as texting). Life is just one damned thing after the other.

There’s a whole song and dance orthodoxy on dressing for success, and dressing for speaking, if one wants to extend last week’s discussion on maintaining team standards. Your clothes should not detract, they should make a statement of professionalism, etc. The only analogy in high school that I have subsequently been able come up with for dressing for debate in de rigeur but seemingly non-essential outfits is cheerleading, where everyone in the activity dresses a certain way and there’s no immediately apparent need to do so. Then again, I couldn’t think of very many competitive activities that had no uniforms, although often the uniforms were only important for performing the activity when it came to the footwear aspect; e.g., baseball, where there’s no problem knowing which team is which, yet they dress uniformly from team to team, while there is indeed a need for a runner to wear cleats. For that matter, there is also a need for a batter to wear a helmet. Here there’s a direct connection to debate. I have often proposed that debaters be required to wear helmets, at least in bubble rounds. So far no one’s taken me up on this.

And, for what it’s worth, WTF is on short rations for the next week as the hoi have left the camp and only the polloi have stayed behind. Will this lessen the ex-cruz-iating coverage? One can only pray.