How to be a debater

If I had to outline certain defining characteristics for being an LD debater, this is probably how I would prioritize my list (which has, as it turns out, exactly one item).

#1. Debate. Debate, that is, as a verb, imperative. I attribute it to the lack of good TV on Tuesday nights, but I have never had a team with so many people showing up for meetings, and never debating. For some reason, of course, they nonetheless consider themselves adequate to judge others. Last night, having a tutti meeting, aka a tutti fruitti, we had people hanging off the rafters. 4 years worth of them. Half of them haven't debated in this calendar year, and show little interest in changing the status quo. Two of them volunteered to judge at Regis.

So I guess my next rule is, no judging unless you're: 1. a senior whose survived three years of me; or 2. an active debater. You prove yourself to be an active debater by having debated since 9/1/04. Inactive debaters will not be solicited as judges.

Inactive debaters, in my estimation, fill a much needed gap. I certainly don't need them at the "lecture" meetings, where I talk endlessly and amaze myself with my garrulousness. I can't imagine why they would want to listen to the 88th lecture on the definition of rights, or the 195th browbeat on signups. And I don't need their input at chezes, because there's only room for real players at the chez, not fellow travelers. I guess there is a place for freebooters at the brainstorms. The brainstorms are, theoretically, beneficial to all of us as we explore the deep background of topics. It's educational. That's about the only place the debateless are welcome.

I'll start acting accordingly next week. Meanwhile, no one identified the Zardoz quote. I only put it there because I'm tired of everything being too easy. Henceforth, whenever I blog, I'll do a new wave, and vice versa.

Ac-cent-tchu-ate the negative

Last night's chez was an illuminating affair. The topic has resolved itself into very simple brackets: should a society value higher the claims of self-determinism or social welfare. Sort of like Debate 101. Or maybe Debate 1. Not that cases will all be so elegant—Justin warned us of the feminist negs, for instance, thin slices of the pie used as full pie plates, a word for which is had by your local pomos—but at least the underlying goals aren't whacked out. Which makes it so easy to work with the novices.

Speaking of which, we lost a few of them this week, but maybe not. There has been much tsimmes over the lack of an announcement of the second meeting. (There is no greater joy than a non-event fomenting revolution. Even the cavalry known as the former Javelin charged in.) In any case, the Novice Coordinators will go shrimping over the next few days, collecting their catch at a Monday afterschool meeting. We are still encouraging raw recruits to fall in. And we will almost definitely be folding a couple of Middle-Schoolers into the group. I'll have to talk to Kaz about that, as she also has had Middlers in NFA's program. Whatever's fair, we'll do. Should be interesting.

For the record, I am exceeding dubious about a certain young woman's ability to identify wave files. Unless there's a list somewhere that I don't know about, the new one should do the trick. For that matter, I am exceeding dubious about a certain young woman's familiarity with Big Blue Bear, or whatever the hell it is. Can she also identify each of the Teletubbies? Read a book, consarn it!

And finally, is it really true that Captain Ben has gone over to the dark side?

The thunder down below

So I just sat in this meeting for an hour during which my stomach rumbled incessantly, and at high volume. People look at you when this happens, wondering what it was you ate for lunch in the cafeteria, hoping that they didn't have the same thing. It's nice to be back in my office again.

Debate team meeting number two is tonight. Two novices have actually signed up for the team, so I'll remember their names, plus there's Perry, which gives us two Perrys, and no poker player worth his salt would forget that, especially if he's holding three of a kind. There were some other folks too, who I'll know when I see them, if they return. One of my novices, it turns out, is a junior, so we'll fast-track him. Maturity is something of an advantage in this game, and an unfair one. A stiff learning curve for the junior then, but he strikes me as up for the challenge.

Meanwhile, I've switched to the Prince of Persia. Neither Ursula nor that thing in Montro's belly were responding to my attacks and it was getting tiresome. And the clicker that tells you how many hours you've wasted on a given game was running out of digit space. Of course, the new game has all the controls in a different place, and I gather that mastery of the medium requires mastery of the idiom. So be it. Until I get so frustrated that another disk goes flying out the window.

Tomorrow night, a chez moi for topic discussion. Justin seems to have a nice fix on the neg that should pin things down for everyone. And so to Yale...

I am atwitter...

... over the prospect of tonight's first meeting. I am so atwitter that I've opened up the wave file db again. The new one is an easy voice (if you're an old fart) but a tough film.

By the way, never actually say the word atwitter out loud. Nothing good will come of it.

Let us pray

Saturday was the CFL directors' meeting. And a splendid time was had by all. To begin with, Marcia discovered square bagels. These are not to be confused with Manchester's albino bagels, but they did set a comparably goyische tone for the proceedings. There was lots of juggling of dates and locales, perhaps the most important being the creation of one Grand Grand rather than two separate Grands, this in response to some conflict with an NFL thingie. The debaters amongst us ironed out most of the debate dates. Lakeland is now in February, with Scarsdale filling the open slot. This leaves an October weekend perhaps permanently open. The MHLs have landed, and Bergenfield's been cleared up. Not much left to do but show up.

More discussion of the use of old OOs in Dec than, literally, any other item. Who knew how tender a topic this was? The National CFL wants to allow it, and that will probably ensue. Nats is in Milwaukee next year, for those who are interested. Not a bad venue; if you fly that Midwest Air or whatever it is, they serve homemade cookies. Now that's aviation!

O'Cruz says he's now looking at March again. Ah, the Wandering Tournament. I remember reading about that in the Bible. He could also conceivably take the open October weekend, but that would be a stretch planningwise. Speaking of planning, the Bump invite is now done, including the pdf. Has anyone ordered the food yet?

Meat and potatoes

We seemed to agree easily on the aff Tuesday night. Privacy in support of a variety of ends. Why privacy is important enough to be worth it in the first place. Folks have various ideas about what its worth is, but that's the gist of it. And it is an easy topic to research, insofar as there's about a bazillion articles and books out there. As we always say, read the articles for their positions, not for their quotes. Still, the neg is a little foggy, at least in my mind. It's that bright line connecting the pieces that I'm missing.

The Hunk looked loaded for bear. I'll tell you, one day you're an Ewok, the next you're the VBI Hunk of the Day. Where do you go from there? Of course, Ewok is the best nickname since Wheaties, and I can't even take credit for it.

Saturday is the CFL meeting. I have to say, I have an awful lot of conflicting schedule information. When is Lakeland?When are the Bergenfields? The MHLs? Regionals? Lots of stuff to be ironed out.

I gather that the Nov-Dec resolution ("Using guides in videogames is morally corrupt") will have special meaning to some of us. There is a feature when I save KH that shows me the number of hours I've spent (AKA wasted) on this thing. Who are those hearty souls that play these games without help? I think I'm sort of tiring of this one, and have a few others cued up. Different universes and all that. Too bad I don't know anything about sports. Those games look really good. But just when I'm about to throw Donald and Goofy to the wolves, I make a breakthrough and run through a new hour of cutscenes (thank you, IGN). We'll see.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Filling up the empty hours

Since the inaugural meeting is next week and not this week, I had oodles of time to upload the pdf of the speech judging rules from the CFL. Oodles turned out to be less than sufficient. I can see the thing when I open it straight, but it keeps getting "damaged" when I ftp it. So, if anyone wants it, I'll mail it to them. It's way too long to print multiple copies.

I've coordinated my thoughts on privacy for a, well, private meeting with the Yale folks Tuesday. But they do need to get started. I still haven't sorted out how I'll separate oldbies from newbies in the meetingage at the school versus the chez, but I'll figure it out eventually. They all do need to be together a little bit at the start so that the newbies will recognize their elders, if there's ever a lineup or anything.

In a rash act of forensic violence, I ripped Holy Cross from the sked and added Villiger. In either case it's a pay-as-you-go for Speechifiers, but Villiger remains strong and HC has gone to hell in a handbasket, or so I am told. No point in not spending your parents' money on the good stuff.

If any sophomores are actually interested in volunteering for scut-work team positions, btw, now is the time to let me know. And if one more person tells me it's Spock on the wave file... Of course it's Spock, you ninny! You should give me a crappy prize for that one. It's a nice way to ease the newbies into the site, n'est-ce pas? Vulcan utilitarianism.

Slouching toward Montrose

So we've set the inaugural meeting for Wednesday at 7:00. That's always a fun event, seeing the eager faces of all the prospective newbies. We also get to see the eager faces of the returning oldbies. One wonders who won't be showing up this time out. I've got a few guesses, but I'll keep them to myself. I've alerted the capitans and hardware engineers to set things up for the library.
Polished up the invite some more. I think it's ready to pdf. Hell, we've already got an entry, some guy from Arizona. If registration continues at this pace, we'll be filled up by Yom Kippur.

Finding myself desperate for distraction, or distracted for desperation, I visited the VB site. Jeesh. I noticed there was a loosely inaccurate version of our invite, for one thing. I was afraid that maybe Bent or Matt might have taken over Hunk of the Day from Ewok, but young Insler's place in debate legend seems secure. I was seriously amused, or amusedly serious, over the discussion of elitism in debate. Let's think about this for a second. A few dozen schools in the country can afford to send kids on airplanes to faraway hotels with hired judges for a selected group of tournaments. Most school systems can barely afford books. How many parents can or are willing to pay the bucks themselves? Elitism? Not deliberately. Social Darwinism. Mais sur, mon ami.

It does seem like VB is the website to be if you're a debater with an enormous amount of time on your hands, in any case. One longs for the days of the LD-L, when the baloney was delivered straight to your mailbox. I'm not quite sure why I go out of my way to annoy myself with anything relating to "the national circuit."

George Soros rules!

Bump invitation

So I updated the invitation this weekend, online and hardcopy. Still need to proofread it, but you can check out the online version if you're interested. I am assuming that we'll have more space thanks to the construction. I'm also assuming that we can run final rounds this year, if people want them. My thing has always been not stretching past 12 hours (which already seems ridiculous, but it is coin of the realm). We ought to be able to do it, given our tab rooms, if we continue to break to quarters in policy. And keep the judges' bloviating to a minimum in all the divisions. And if we actually have the judging available. Anyhow, I'll polish it all up over the next few days, and then we're ready.

I also moved the wav file so that I'll have access to it from anywhere. This means I can update it more regularly, which means that I can start offloading more of the crappy prizes in my closet.

We should have a Yale deadline shortly. After that...

The word of the day...

... is morganatic. This is a great word. Unfortunately, one hardly ever gets to use it in everyday speech. (Reminds me a little of the discussion of the beautiful word carminative in "Point Counterpoint," if I remember correctly. Carminative is a word that you *prefer* not to use in everyday speech.)

Pip has been very listless lately. Considering that he's usually quite listful, I'm not quite sure where this lacksadaisicality comes from. I trust he will be his old eager self in time for the new season. I mention this because I am figuring, on the assumption that there will be another boatload of newbies, that we will have more breakout sessions of varsity at the old chezmoi, and they aren't the same without PTW. And also, we never finished up the demo rounds last year, for one reason or another. We probably should.

You've noticed that the S-O topic says claims on both sides. No mention of rights whatsoever.

The days dwindle down

School starts real soon now. I'm thinking we'll probably do a newbie event on 9/8 or 9/9. Everything's so late I'd hate to lose a week. I'll confab with MF after the wedding, which I would imagine is concentrating her mind at the moment.

I've been marching the new topic through my brain on off hours. There is a 600-pound gorilla, which is that there is no worthy argument against abridging RTP when boarding a plane. I ask interested parties to consider this. I've got ideas, of course, not for arguing the above, but for the topic overall. I'll put them down shortly, but they stem from that gorilla. (If you think I'm wrong and you can argue the gorilla, remind me not to fly with you any time soon.)

It's been a bit of an old-home week. Had a lovely lunch with CLG and K2. Katie is on her way to Italy for a semester, which I hate her for. I want to go to Italy for a semester. I could study something. Food? It's a great thought. CLG has already signed up to judge Manchester and Harvard (and Bump, if she knows what's good for her). Also heard from the Nostrumite again. He's in a state of permanent depression over the Olympics. It's not so much the doping or bad judging (sounds like LD) or even the fact that every time he turns the TV on he has to look at Bob Costas. "There need to be more synchronized events," he says. He loved synchronized diving, and is a well-known collector of tapes of historical synchronized swimming competitions; he's never gotten over the end of MGM's run of Esther Williams movies, or so he claims. But why are all synchronized sports wet? "You could have synchronized everything," he says. "Synchronized shot putting, synchronized pole vaulting, synchronized marathon racing. For that matter, the running events could even be three-legged, like field day when you're a kid. A three-legged twenty-six mile race would be a real test of teamwork." Perhaps. My favorite field day event was always potato racing, which unfortunately is no longer an Olympic event. Synchronized potato races would be a real crowd pleaser, if you ask me.

Shrinkage

So I threaded my way through the various monsoons last Friday to Eagle, among other places. Had a lovely chat with the powers that trophy. In a nutshell, the acrylics cost about what everything else costs, and there wasn't a lot of point to changing things. Using more smaller ones was an option, however, and I will do that. We'll save a few bucks, anyhow. I'm especially concerned about the cost of Districts, since I went way out of pocket last year. Shrinking them should help even things up. I'll continue to get mugs for the lesser Bump awards, but I'll upgrade them a little, and get them from Eagle instead of the source I used last time. One-stop shopping and all that.

They had some nice stuff there, but mostly inappropriate. People do give out lots of trophies to themselves to mark their passage through life. There were some new ones that struck me as tres Franklin Mint, metallic things with figures on them busily hitting tennis balls or gazing into outer space (both of which are, apparently, trophiable). If there were one of these just jabbering, we could call it debate and be done with it. Expect to see them soon at least somewhere. Maybe we can get O'Cruz to use them. He can upgrade from the Croix de Po'keepsie and the French cheek kisses. (Although, to be honest, they really don't do the cheek kisses. Or French kisses. They just hand people the medals and look embarrassed as if they should have kissed them. Think of the germs!)

Why did I know this would happen?

It didn't take long for the Nostrumite to get in touch with me after that interview in O'Cruz World. Nothing would be guaranteed to put the lad in a state of permanent depression more than yet another spalpeen claiming that the Mite and Jules don't exist. Tell that to the Moldovans (Moldovites? Moldwegians?), the Mite exclaims. That's where Jules is now, working as a Peace Corps volunteer. Apparently he's helping the Moldwegians set up small internet businesses. Not that the Mite claims to know much about Moldava, and I can't say as I had ever even heard of it. Oh, well. The Nostrumite is doing quite well on his own, these days, thanks for asking. He's working on his novel, which he claims is coming along swimmingly. He is not happy about losing Nicky after her recent trip to the altar, however, if a Vegas wedding chapel can be said to have an altar. The Mite has always had high hopes about marrying money, and now his only hope as far as the Hiltons are concerned is Nicky's older sister. "I'm praying that she's mine one day," the Mite reports. "I'm even going to church regularly. Paris is worth a mass, if you know what I mean."

He also points out that a quick Google search did not come up with anyone else attempting that lame joke. I don't believe him for a minute.

Another reason to love Melville

"It is better to fail at originality than to succeed at imitation." That's a Melville quote. Of course, I got it secondhand, through Legal Affairs magazine, my latest favorite journal, or at least my latest favorite journal in a dead heat with Gourmet. (If you're not interested in chevre avec habitants there's always the David Foster Wallace article on killing lobsters.) Is it time to read Moby Dick again? Some of us are constantly asking that question, although since my ETA on finishing Caro is 2006, I'm not too atip at the prospect yet.

How to drive to work: Listen to the unabridged Bergdorf Blondes. I'm sorry, but it's funny. Who knew?

What more could you ask for?

"Individual claims of privacy ought to be valued above competing claims of societal welfare." So reads the Sept-Oct topic, and by George W., it's a winner. Mixing standard philosophy with current events. Handmade for novices. And a great get-back-into-it for everyone else. As soon as I find out when school opens, and when the first meeting should be, I'll dip my brain into it.

I'm getting more misinformation on next year's sked than I would have thought possible. Lakeland has become the Flying Dutchman of Forensics, now appearing on every weekend possible, with the exception of Christmas. At least Newark and Emory have settled down. The new sked I've posted is pretty good, but it still can't accommodate O'Cruz's flight of fancy until one knows where all the other chips are falling.

The good news is, no one has signed up for Yale yet. We'll probably shut down registration before school opens. Oh well, if on one wants to go, I can't force them. The Rothsteins will have the place to themselves.

Is there any way the new name for Ewok isn't Hunk?

And I think I'll block the wave file for a little while. Enjoy the latest obvious selection. Try not to talk back to it.

How important are Gummi ship upgrades?

My day is getting odd. First, there's three miles on the treadmill watching part of an old Enterprise episode. Then there's work, editing our version of the next Fannie Flagg book and promising not to reveal the contents of the Godfather sequel, et al. Then there's messages from Claire only slightly longer than the contents of the Godfather sequel, and trying to find J.C. Glendinning's home address to send her a Duo tape, and some bezoot from Edgemont trying to get info from me on the Georgetown Day tournament. A nice quiet dinner that usually requires stopping off at Turco's—but I love stopping off at Turco's. There's fish in the air tonight, so to speak. What kind depends. Then there's hitting the old Yamaha for a while. Then a marginal moment of guilt for not having sorted the Family Night pix yet (or the Scandinavian pix, or the World's Fair pix). Then a little TV (a West Wing rerun, in honor of it being Wednesday and WW being pretty much the only regular show Liz ever watches, new or old), then I'll look at those damned instructions for building Gummi ships. At least I'm pretty much done with phase one of the game, and am apparently about to visit Agrabah (although there's still the issue of the bell and the gizmo shop that I haven't sorted out yet.) And finally, a little time with the Caro Robert Moses biography which I've just started. Caro is the nuts, as literate poker players might say.

My understanding is that Kant lived a similar life.

Crappy prizes

We're moving our offices at the Digest, which means true bounty in the c.p. area as people start casting off the bric-a-brac. I think I've already found next year's topper: a 15-disk unabridged audiobook bio of Jim Morrison. Altogether now: "Mr. Mojo risin'."

I visit Eagle next Saturday to negotiate down the trophy costs, presumably by negotiating down the trophy quality. Oh, these are troubled times!

And I hear there's a new principal. This will be my 48th. I hope he's into forensics. Shanker was an old congress hand himself, so he was a presold supporter.

Back from Scandinavia

And there's a bunch of messages about debate in the old in-boxes. There's the MHLs to sort out, and O'Cruz is moving his shindig around, and I have much conflicting information about Emory... It'll get organized soon enough.

This is the month when I get the odds and ends done. We do need to negotiate new trophies, both for Bump and NFL. We're spending all our (or in the case of NFL, my) money on acrylic. I hate to reduce the level of tin distribution, but we are only in this for the money.

Bronx, of course, is now totally bereft of TOC bids. And Columbia has one at finals. So there's a net stasis in the northeast, as far as I can tell. But I'm betting that Columbia will conflict with Newark (it always does), and there's no way I'm supporting a college above a high school. I may be the only person in the universe who thinks that this high school activfity should, when there's benefits to accrue (e.g., revenues from tournaments), benefit high schools. And while I have no first-hand knowledge of Columbia, as a rule the college tournaments aren't all that great. Yale has too few prelims for the numbers, Harvard has the triple octos judges from hell, Princeton has the worst pool of home-grown judges imaginable... AND most of these folks charge a premium, not to mention that they don't feed, they don't house—you get the picture. Every time the TOC decides to promote a college tournament and demote a high school tournament, I think they do so in (perhaps willful) ignorance of the impact on the high school community.

Am I beginning to sound more and more like someone who just thinks the TOC is more trouble than it's worth?

I admit it

I've been burying myself in Kingdom Hearts.
Soon, vacation, to Scandinavia. Fortunately I already speak fluent Scandinavian.
For those who care, the Sept-Oct topic will hit the charts around 8/15. If anyone is interested in Wake, you'll have to arrange it yourself, and you might want to start thinking about it early. Other than that, there's Yale, and I'll start official browbeating in early August. Parents will be required in great numbers.

Nobody reads anymore

The statistics published in the Times yesterday were seriously depressing. According to the numbers, more than half of you never read anything. Ever. Except, of course, the wonderful books on our required reading list. Since summer is just beginning, you needn't worry about that yet. Read something else. Today's pick is Chabon's SUMMERLAND. It's not the world's greatest, not as good as Cavalier and Klay, but it's got its moments. And after all, he did work on the S-M2 story.