I'm going to guess that it isn't hard for people to connect the dots of a revival of Nostrum and my leaving the Sailors as being marginally related. That should make it clear that it's been on my mind for a while.
I always enjoyed the real debate life on its own merits, don't get me wrong, but I also appreciated it as a source of the fictional universe I was creating. Let's face it: I'm a frustrated writer. I've had a couple of successes, but the vision I had of myself feverishing polishing my Nobel Prize speech on the flight over to Oslo never came to pass. Oh, well.
Anyhow, we continue presenting the cast of TOS. I noticed on my Nostrum website that I seemed to have intended a combined DP of both TOS and TNG, but it never happened. Maybe someday in the future, now that my time has been freed up a bit.
And, oh yeah, I hope to get the book finished and out this weekend.
Goldbaum,
Griot
Nighten
Day’s smartest student, a senior who’s already racked up perfect 800s on his
SATs. He is short and chubby, with curly black hair sticking up from the top of
his head like a tangle of holly bushes. A long mandarin mustache gives him an
air of oriental mystery, in keeping with his being the only full-blooded Inuit
not only in Nighten Day High School, but in the town, the county, and perhaps
even the state (with the exception, of course, of his immediate family). Griot
is something of a mystic, and the number-one schematic interpreter on the
circuit.
Hannah
and Hughes
Hebrides
High School’s leading Duo team.
Hand,
William
Originally
half of the blond, blue-eyed Duo team of Hand and Brillig, William has recently
come out as gay. (Welcome to the Bahamas!) As an aside, William can listen to
the soundtrack of “Rent” twenty-four hours a day.
Hyphen-Emdash,
Tilde
Star
debater from the Algren-on-the-Beach, Massachusetts, team. She is a tall,
dark-haired girl, in appearance somewhat resembling Morticia Addams, only
slightly more funereal.
Jutmoll,
Tarnish
The Nighten
Day coach. A small man, barely five feet tall, with a white goatee below a wild
range of similarly white hair on his little skull. One long white eyebrow
stretches the entire ridge above his dark, probing eyes. He inevitably seems to
have just come indoors from a windstorm, and one might mistake him for a tiny
wizard or a large elf if one is partial to fantasy universes. His main anchor
to reality is his bow-leggedness, his knees seemingly far enough apart to allow
the passage between them of a pair of Siamese twin toddlers clutching black
market Sleep-and-Snore Ernie dolls. There is mystery in Jutmoll’s past: the
accident, Myra Moon ... Jutmoll teaches Social Studies, plus a half credit debate
class. He has no family.
Juvaswami,
Kumar
Nighten
Day’s Humorous Interper, who always seems to be in a world of his own. A
senior.
King
Ivy
The big Ivy
League tournament in February.
Levi
al-Chaim, Sister
Sister Levi
is the forensics doyenne of Hebrides High School. She has been in the nun
business for fifty years now.
Lewton,
Val
The
principal of Bisonette with a leering aspect that Amnea Nutmilk finds suspect.
Lloyd,
Harold
Monsignor
Lloyd is the principal of Veil of Ignorance.
Manhattan
Lodestone
A magnet
school. Home of the OriginalVaganza Tournament (all other Tournaments are
Extra), which includes a notorious LD Round Robin.
Coach: Mr. Lo Pat; Erstwhile asst, Lisa Torte
Debaters: Kalima Milak
Marcellus,
Jon
Aka Binko,
a motorcyclist with a severe five o’clock shadow, although five o’clock of
which day is probably up for grabs. He could be seventeen, twenty-two or
twenty-seven. A cigarette smoker, he someday wants to get a major-paying job
for some heartless corporation, but first he has to graduate high school and go
to college, and his bet is that “having debate on my resume will not be a bad
idea.”
Maru,
Camelia
Shy younger
sister of Jasmine Maru, and a potential Master of the Debate Universe from
Nighten Day.
Maru,
Jasmine
At five
foot one and ninety-one pounds, she is tiny and dark and as Japanese as the
Emperor. A Nighten Day LDer, serious like her younger sister Camelia, perhaps a
bit too romantic for her own good.
Melvish
A novice
LDer from Quilty Prep, rather unpopular with the team seniors.
Messerschmitt
The
Messerschmitt Mess O’ Forensics is the first major high school tournament of
the school year, encompassing every forensic event. Messerschmitt College is in
Miami, Florida.
Milak,
Kalima
From
Manhattan Lodestone, the toughest girl on the circuit, both in debating ability
and life experience. She commutes over two hours on a variety of buses, subways
and Conestoga wagons to get to her school every day from a foster home at the
furthest reaches of Staten Island. Rumor has it that she is armed at all times,
and she apparently wears a human ear as a necklace.
Moon,
Myra
It will be
a while before we’re ready to tell this story....
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