Those gym teachers were just too rough, even for us.

"Analy Debate - So what if we failed PE?"


"Analy Debate - We're probably better than you."


"Analy Debate - We can go for almost an hour. And we'll do it in a chair, standing up, or from behind a podium.
This is funny because it's about sex."

That bitch. bad joke, bad joke.

My stats professor is kind of a boss, very Sicilian (talks with his hands), and fond of making halfhearted jokes and then quickly muttering "bad joke, bad joke."
Most of the time, he's super lighthearted and jovial. Today, while on one of his frequent tangents...

"What about marriage status? That's right, that would be a 'nominal' use of numbers. Of course, some people might say that being married is better than being single, so that would be 'ordinal,' but...'better,' haha. At least at first, right?

"Bad joke, bad joke...

"Isn't it funny how you get married, and you're a great person, and then suddenly you've always been an ass? Huh."

Owlblink.
Um, bitter much? Don't mind if we all listen to you vent, sir. You go right ahead.

Um. Checkmate.

Part of my job as President of the Debate Team is to come up with a slogan for our sweatshirt. I think I'll post ideas periodically.
Here's one:
"Analy Debate - although we might not be attractive, or popular, or fun, or attractive..."

One %$@#ing word. And who doesn't know Patrick Stewart?!

On a recent saturday, I was at a small gathering of friends to eat homemade curry, vegetables, and chicken tikka masala. Following the meal, we played a rousting hour of "The Name Game," where players team up in groups of two, each player writes the names of some famous people on scraps of paper and deposits them in the hat, and teams take turns having 1 person draw a paper and say one word by way of a clue while the other person has one chance to guess the name.

Some gems:

"Traitor."

"Uh...Napoleon Bonaparte!" [how they managed to get that one still baffles me. I would have said 'cannons' or 'overcompensation.'] 

"MILF."

"Madonna."

"Picard."

"Uh...Ok, Star Trek. Captain Kirk. Damn, who is that actor? He's in a bunch of commercials. Give up."

"Dude...not Kirk. Picard. Patrick Stewart!"

"Who the hell is that?"

Owlblink.

The three girls at the party were all of the giggly variety, so we gave them every possible advantage in a futile attempt to keep the game moving. For instance...

"Ok, take the laptop. If you don't know who somebody is, you can google it." [I know. To be fair, they needed it.]

"Ok, you three are a team. One person draws, and then decides if she wants the third player to help her give the clue or to help the second player guess."

"Whatever. If the clue is hyphenated, just go ahead. Please, hurry up."

Kaela had some trouble understanding the (mind-numbingly simple) rules.

K: "Wait, ok. So I can only give them one word as a clue?"

G: "Yes, Kaela."

K: "Haha ok I get it. But what if it's part of a title? Like, 'word, blank.'"

G: "That's fine. I mean, you can't be like 'PRIDE hmm hm-hm-hmm' but yeah, whatever."

K: "Ok. So just one word, right?"

G: [Groan.] "Yes Kaela."

K: "Ok. Uh...shit. Uh...HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL!"

Owlblink.

K: "Oh wait! Shit!"

Sometimes I feel like parlor games were invented to identify slower individuals for ridicule. Then I think, "Eh. They probably just didn't have slower individuals back then. That's why parlor games worked." Then I feel like slamming my head in a door jamb.

The Odyssey, Frat Edition

As I prepare to go back to school, I've been spending a series of late nights trying to finish my AP Lit summer homework. I remember sitting down with The Odyssey last night and getting a lot of work done, and I remember stumbling to bed at 4:30 a.m., but when I woke up this morning, I was utterly surprised to find that I had written a 27-page document of quotes and analysis. As I read this document, I was even more surprised to discover that the further I read (and the later at night I wrote), the angrier my analysis became.

Here are a some samples of the progression:

"Odysseus to Seareach when Seareach says the reason he’s not competing is probably because he sucks at everything."

"Odysseus is fighting, tricking, running, swimming, lying, flattering, and fucking his way back home. In fact, if we don’t count his ten-year stint in Ilion, Odysseus’s penis is without a doubt the most active member of his Odyssey [haha, "member" of his Odyssey]. Plus he was into Kalypso and Kirkê. What a dick."

"Ok, Hêlios is just being a little bitch about this. But I guess he’s the fucking sun, so Zeus has to get off his butt and intervene. But even then, Zeus is such a lazy motherfucker that he keeps chilling and just shoots a thunder bolt down at the ship. If Zeus were a teenager, he'd be the guy who hasn't been out of his room in a zillion years."

"Ok, first of all, these guys are too poor to be this generous. And it would be super cool if they were really being this nice to Odysseus, but they’re not. They’re just going to fucking cost-shift all this shit onto their tenants and peasant subjects. Motherfuckers."

"Poseidon’s whining about how Odysseus is already on his way home. Zeus is like, 'man, I’ve got my own shit to deal with. You’re a big boy, pwn some mortals f00.' "

"When Odysseus stunned the hall with his performance with the bow, that was the climax, at which point the story became massively epic. This is the point at which the story continues to be massively epic. “You yellow dogs…Your last hour has come. You die in blood.” This guy is such a boss."

Owlblink.
I am so unbelievably exhausted.

peace

New England, Je T'aime

In mid-July, I flew to the east coast to visit colleges and family. My infallibly patient aunt Margot drove me to Yale, Harvard and Brown (all of which I loved and are now at the top of my list) and yet somehow made sure I had the time to kayak in the Atlantic Ocean with my cousin Christopher, hang out with my cousin Meredith and her awesome girlfriend Jess, go to a Red Sox game, and have a series of increasingly hilarious conversations with my uncle Bubba.

While at the beach house, I was treated to a thorough history of the neighborhood dating back to its origin as a whaling town. Bubba then went on to describe the whaling process in detail (a fascinating subject - read further) and expressed with surprise and no small amount of smugness that the house we were in was one of the few houses not to have been destroyed by hurricanes at some point during the 20th century.

Seizing my opportunity, I scoffed and replied demurely: "Oh Bob, there's no way you get hurricanes in Massachusetts. It's much too far north."

B: Don't get hurricanes? I beg your pardon, of course we do!

G: Ha! All the way up here? Who told you that?

At this, Bubba frowned and stumped over to the bookshelf, returning with a large manilla folder full of news clippings, pictures, and web articles, and laying it in front of me, spread his evidence across the table. Meredith and my aunt looked over, giggling.

B: Au contraire! We actually had a sizeable hurricane not too long ago, as you can see in this article.

G: Oh Bob. You know what they're doing, they're just trying to scare you so you'll buy their stuff. I bet he's employed by a contracting agency that builds foundations for old houses - it's just fearmongering. [Meredith and Margot giggled again]

B: Not at all! This author is actually an expert on the subject.

G: Bob, you know they just buy experts nowadays. Don't believe their corporate lies! There definitely aren't any hurricanes here.

B: Here, see for yourself. These pictures are from the most recent hurricane, and here are the ones before that. All those houses over there were rebuilt after the hurricane destroyed them.

G: That's definitely photoshopped. Yeah, those pictures are totally fake.

B: Photo shop? Like, they did them on the computer? No, in fact you can see the houses out the window. See the ones that look newer?

G: You know they probably just refurbish a couple houses in the neighborhood to get gullible homeowners to buy property insurance or new foundations. It's just a big scam - you don't get hurricanes here, no way. Definitely no hurricanes. Not here.

B: I just...you are incorrect, mister.

At this point Margot was leaning on the counter and Meredith was doubled over, gasping and howling. Bubba looked over, and then back to me, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

B: Hmph. Anybody can see the evidence, I...

G: Whatever Bob. You can believe this scam if you want to.

Owlblink.

At dinner, Bubba was decidedly cranky. After a number of lighthearted jabs in my direction, Meredith sighed and said, "Bubba, you know he was joking. We all believe you.

G: I don't know, Bob. Everybody knows you don't get hurricanes up here. It's just...everybody knows it!

B: I'm not...I don't like it when people put things over me. Like you, mister.

M: He's just teasing you, Bubba. It's ok.

B: Hmph.

Man, I want to go to school here. Here's to family, right?

Christopher, Me, Meredith

Fs and Bs and F-Bs

Stylish and intrepid

Kayaking!

Rantings of a Bitter Debate Kid

Something that anyone who knows me will tell you is that I'm a debater. I have been since day 1 of freshman year when I realized that this was an activity in which I could get rewarded for doing the things that until then had a) gotten me yelled at, and b) lost me friends.

However, there is a tendency in movies and television to glamorize the world of forensics.

I'm not saying that debate can't be elegant and insightful - some of my best breakthroughs and ideas have come either in preparation or during rounds. The problem is, as local debate has become more and more mainstream, it has been flooded with kids who aren't interested in doing research or understanding what it means to make an argument, and are only in the activity because at one point they developed an opinion of themselves as "eloquent" or "good bullshitters" when really, all they're good at is bickering. This is also due in part to the creation of different events in debate, the newer of which cater to the ill-informed and anti-intellectual.

Right now, there are basically two worlds in the debate community. Local circuit, described above, involves day-tournaments at local schools with parent judges who may or may not speak fluent English. Kids go, debate four rounds, get a plastic trophy, and go home. National circuit is judged almost exclusively by former debaters, employs very technical argumentation spoken at upwards of 250 words a minute, and is commonly referred to as "soul-crushing." I have competed in both styles, and am continually surprised at the variation within the activity.

At a national circuit tournament my sophomore year against a much superior opponent, the judge admitted that my lack of technical skill had "functionally excluded me from the round." On the other end of the spectrum, I faced a team last year in a round so lopsided in my favor that our opponents, and even their mothers (both of whom had watched the round), admitted to my partner and I that we had clearly won, and that they were "just glad that our sons got a chance to compete against people like you." However, the judge in that round fell asleep for 30 minutes during the debate, but woke up during the last speech and signed the ballot against us, without so much as a by-your-leave-don't-mind-if-I-fuck-you-over-because-I'm-epically-retarded.

Of these two instances, I think the second was more infuriating because at least on the national circuit, it's completely within my control to change the outcome of my weaker performances. But with a judge like the second guy, I feel so hopeless that I can't help but develop a cynical view of the activity.

If this is what it's like in the debate community, what the hell can I expect in real life?

Whatever. Maybe I'll just hole myself up in Academia for the rest of my life.

Gimme some Tim Roth. All up in there.

So my girlfriend Roxy has been in Southeast Asia with her family all summer. During one of the infrequent occasions in which we're awake, with internet, at the same time...

R: So what's new?

Me: I just watched another episode of Lie To Me.

R: Man I cannot wait to get in your pants.

It's surprising how much of the relationship can be conveyed through this exchange.