In which we ramble

I’ve fallen behind in just about everything, or as we put it while we’re eating the haggis, it’s all ganged agley. I blame it on the DJ. I’ve essentially doubled my workload without doubling the hours in the day. Something’s got to give, and the extracurricular stuff in debate (albeit not the core stuff) suffers, things like updating my how-to docs and the like. Oh, well. The ship of Hud sails on, but the Menickean dinghies are not being launched with their usual rapidity.

CP copped to the finals problem at Jake. He was tinkering with something over here, and while he wasn’t looking something over there squeezed out of the tube. Or something like that. Good. Better him than me.

We had a practice round last night for our new novices. Always entertaining to see how people get started. Of course, that’s why we have events solely for starting novices. If stomachs are going to heave and brains implode as the adrenaline erupts, at least everyone else is in the same boat. But the plebes did quite well, and they don’t have to worry about embarrassing themselves this weekend.

This year at the first-timers MHL, because it is first timers, it made sense that they not debate the Oct topic on 10/25, which would mean exactly one shot for them at that topic and then a switch. Normally they’d get two shots at Sept-Oct, but this year the calendar didn’t like that. So they’re debating Nov's GMFs. Which means that at this tournament, f-t PF is Nov topic, non f-t pf is Sept-Oct topic, novice LD is modest novice, jv LD is Sept-Oct LD, and policy is the 1862 Abolish the Whig party topic. Can you say Yikes? I’ve been getting a steady stream of questions about this, but realistically, in terms of who’s debating what, it makes sense. In terms of running a tournament, it’s absolutely nuts. Oh, well. It will all be over on Sunday, and it won’t be the first time we’ve run a nutty tournament.

Not much movement on the Bump front, meanwhile. There’s been the tiniest bit of attrition, but not enough to matter. People are still potentially debating in the janitor’s closet, the water closet and the Great Pit of Carkoon, which is not so wonderful a situation. The tiny number of available judges for hire, which I broadcast today, may sweep out some of the hoi and the polloi. We’ll see. We still have three weeks. (Three weeks? Great googly moogly!)