See you in New Haven

It turns out that both the Mite and I will be in New Haven this weekend. He'll be shepherding his team of Tennessee Williams people—they're registered in every activity known to man—and he's asked me to come along and help keep track of the little darlings. I did ask Menick to add me in for mutual judge preferencing in LD, but I'm not sure if he did or not. Then again, how many strikes can one poor old ex-debater suffer through? Maybe he put me into JV instead. Whatever. Say hello if you run into me there. I'll do the same if I run into me there.

Of course, the new forensics season notwithstanding, the Mite is in a state of permanent depression over the whole Japan business. "I mean," he opines, "first they won't let Steve Jobs out because of a few ninja murder weapons, and now they won't let Paris Hilton in because of a few drug convictions." As usual, he is stalking around in anger as he makes this pronouncement. "They're vicious, those Nipponers," he says. "They want to keep Jobs in the country so they can turn Apple into a Japanese corporation and make the country a dominant tech power again, and at the same time they're smart enough to keep Paris Hilton out of the country because her very presence would threaten their economy and their sanity both. And anyone who's ever watched Japanese television knows that that's saying quite a mouthful."

Whatever. Speaking of mouthfuls, you can hear the latest episode, or read it, in the usual places, the usual way. If you like what you hear/read, shower us with money when you run into us this weekend.

Your hopes and dreams are all shattered. We're back.

It looked for a while as if the Mite would never return from the Gulf, what with the oil well proving especially pesky, not to mention all those hurricanes and volcanoes and earthquakes and generally inclement weather making things difficult. But as promised, he capped the well and has returned to his day job teaching at Tennessee Williams High School. I wish I had had such an exciting summer. I did get promoted to Assistant Manager in charge of the Miley Cyrus collection at the book store, but no one in Cambridge has ever bought a book about Miley Cyrus, so this is sort of an empty honor. Oh well, at least they didn't ask me to take a cut in pay.

Anyhow, as you can imagine, the Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over the whole Tea Party candidate business. It's not that he believes that everyone in Congress shouldn't be tarred and feathered—far from it, he'd like to do them, SCOTUS and the Executive Branch to boot—but he is extremely intolerant of intolerance. "There's too many people in this country complaining about too many of the people in this country not being the right kind of people," is how he puts it. As far as the Mite is concerned, the only right kind of people are the ones who think exactly like the Mite, and since those are limited to exactly one, and no man is an island, nor even a peninsula—nor, in some cases, a monadnock—he understands that other people need to be around too, if for no other reason than to answer the phone when he has a help desk question. So, he says, live and let live, and while you're at it, shut up. Better advice was never given.

Needless to say, we haven't returned to the fray of life in 21st Century America without bearing gifts, namely, both the yakkety-yak and the eyeball-burner versions of Episode 23. Ain't life great?