Beginning to wrap up the decade. Step one: find a big enough box to put it in.

I’m home today because I have a couple of extra DJ days that I have to take in 2009. It’s given me a chance to do some things that otherwise I’d be rushing, like organizing the data for the Regis End-of-the-Decade Conflagration on Saturday. There’s something about this contest that draws debaters like [enter you own humorous metaphor here; I’m off today]. 270 entries? We should get a octos bid for this!

Speaking of which, CP tells me that the latest TVFT went off sync and was pretty unlistenable. Oy. Thank God we weren’t saying anything important. The thing is, we like doing it and will probably continue. Bietz had a software suggestion to grab directly out of Skype. This is not as clear as what we’ve been doing, but on the other hand, it is what it is as it was. That’s probably where we’ll go.

I am quite deep in the process of collecting Bean Trivia material. O’C owes me some debate questions, and I’m working on everything else. (He could ask me who’s the coach at Hen Hud and I’d probably get it wrong.) Some questions just don’t work. Some are just plain hard, some are just plain easy, but that’s okay. Here’s one for you: Which Beatle’s first name was James?

(Of course, that’s not really trivia because who knows that? Perfect trivia is something, when you hear the answer, you realize you did actually know it.)

We’ll probably be going on hiatus here shortly for the holidays. After Regis, there’s not much going on until the new year, now that the Parsippany Ritz Institute has been cancelled. Too bad. I know the kids who were going were psyched to do something debatish over the holidays. Nothing worse than just hanging out with the family, you know? There’s no one to argue with, or at least no one to argue with who’s ever going to win the argument. (“There’s no talking to you. Everything’s a debate!” “Yes, Mother.”) The hiatus will give me time to learn to operate my new camera, which is only slightly more complicated than a Boeing 757 (although I gather you can operate one of them and surf the internet at the same time). Mostly I bought it to take pictures without a lot of hoo-ha, that is, fully manual, but it takes a while to get there. My last SLR had literally no automatic functions at all aside from the meter. You probably weren’t even born yet when I bought that one. For that matter, you probably weren’t born when I got tired of lugging it around (it weighed about as much as Pip the Wondercat after a full can of chopped yak). This one is quite light, although the same size and shape. The nicest thing is that you can learn how to use it without wasting film! Instant results!

And I’ve been watching The Beatles Anthology DVDs, which is why all the Beatles stuff lately. The Walrus was Jim.