That's one—1, count 'em, 1—State

Well, State is coming. O’C makes us all call it State, singular, to distinguish it from States, plural. If you accidentally misname it, you get an angry email, even if it means he has to stop watching Dallas for the minute it takes him to correct you.

This is what my life has come down to.

Assembling States State is rather bizarre, for some reason. It’s as if all the people who want to come waited until the registration deadline, then thought, Hmmmm, maybe I’ll mosey over and register for this little dogie. It will be a fine tournament, but O’C has been scrambling like crazy to add in the latecomers. My favorite latecomer, in fact, isn’t coming, late or otherwise. “Oh, I didn’t know about that. Oh, well, my team has better things to do that weekend.” Really? They’re going to spend all day resetting their clocks for Daylight Savings Time? They’re prepping for the First Timers’ Tournament next year? Jeesh. It takes all kinds, as the saying goes. At least the Sailors, such as are attending, are all atwitter. I got an email yesterday from George Whose Name is Robert telling me, in effect, that I hadn’t posted the transportation information yet, and as a result I barely deserved the name of coach. Feisty devils, these plebes. I don’t know where they get it from.

According to my countdown widget, it’s 527 days to DisAd14. [Sigh.]

I’ve decided to roll out the updated jimmenick.com pages. They’re hardly revolutionary, but I think they are better organized. I haven’t checked all the links yet, so it’s fortunate that it’s late in the season and not many people will be poking around in there (not that they ever do, come to think of it). I’ll sort it all out over the next few whatevers. I’ll also update what needs to be updated. Some of these suckers are older than some very old thing [fill in your own metaphor, you lazy #%^&%], and it’s not so much that they’ve grown a beard but that occasionally they’ve become inaccurate. Easy enough to fix, but one must in fact do so. I’m on it.

I didn’t meet with the Speecho-Americans last night, due to illness. Theirs, not mine. Nothing seems to be more likely to be taken ill than the 21st Century American teenager. It may just be me, but I’ve never encountered a sicker lot in my life. They’re like the collected characters in a Solzhenitsyn novel, infected with everything from croup to consumption to the creeping crud. If you throw a tournament nowadays, you can predict about a 20% fall-off on registration day from the Debate Reaper. Come on, people. Eat more vegetables! Get some exercise! Don’t touch anything! When I was a kid, nobody ever got sick, and the ones who did had the good sense to die immediately to prove that they weren’t malingerers. Kids now, they don’t know what we had to go through, climbing all those hills in the snow in both directions, taking care to keep off the lawns of our honored elders, etc., etc. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore!