A rare Saturday Morning Post

Ah, Saturday. This being a glorious morning, and since I don't have to go to an MHL or something, I cleaned the inside of my car, something I do once every year whether it needs it or not. I uncovered, among other things, schematics from last year's Big Bronx (which O'C will be sorry to hear I threw away), a pint of blueberries, Altoids, an extension cord, thirty-five cents, a Tiger Wood how-to cassette (golf, that is), and a freshman Speecho-American that I had wondered what had ever happened to him. He was none the worse for wear and I let him loose in the woods behind my house.

Meanwhile, the discussion about the names of the events at Big Bronx continues. In the comments someone pointed out that Student Congress is referred to as Legislative Debate. (Thank God they don't use the US Congress as a model, in which case it would be called Stick Your Finger Up Your You-Know-What Debate.) I stand marginally corrected, since O'C, in one of the 836 messages he's already sent about the upcoming tournament, refers to it as Legislative Debate parentheses Congressional Debate. In any case, I can't speak too knowledgeably about the activity no matter what you call it, having only sat in once or twice for a mere few minutes. My general impression was of a lot of people waving fingers and a lot of judges taking naps, but I could be wrong about this.

On top of that, Oral Interpretation Debate will, apparently, be called Prose & Poetry Debate. I've always felt that e.e. cummings would be a great disad against Keats, and God knows that the Walt Whitman kritik is pretty much unbeatable unless the neg pulls a Dickinson RVI out of his hat.

If I'm not mistaken, once upon a time I wrote a piece of humorous intent about O'C naming every round. The humor must not have clicked, because I hear that this year he actually is naming every round. (It's all because of the bloody Emory key.) Maybe I should do that at Bump, except instead of naming the rounds after people, I'll name them after failed Vice Presidential candidates. The Muskie Tutorial. The Palin Malaprop. The Eagleton Shock Treatment. We'll see. Anyhow, Bobby Darin, Stokely Carmichael, Miss Hong Kong 2007, Robert Moog, John Cryer and Herb Stempel all really did attend Bronx Science. Any one of them would make a fine name for a round. Who wouldn't want to win their Bobby Darin round? How could you hold your head high if you lost your Miss Hong Kong 2007 round? I don't envy O'C the challenge of coming up with the right round names.

Of course, I shouldn't joke about Big Bronx. O'C treats this event more solemnly than Pope Benedict treats Catholicism. Last year he put on hired guards to make sure I didn't sneak any jokes into the schematics, like referring to double octos as SexyEskimos or something, which if you ask me makes as much sense as what he calls it. He's a stickler for tradition, but I don't see him using his own LD topic, which is what they used to do in the not so distant past. Not that I recommend that he do so. It would be some damned Star Wars Trek thing that only he understood, or else it would be a resolution named after some really famous Bronx Science person who's done a lot of resolving in their day. We can live without that.