We're back and we're mad

pation.

Okay, we're not that mad. But we did miss an episode, which makes neither of us happy. And we almost didn't make it again this week, either. The Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over yesterday's designation by our nation's most famous group of inactivists as National Speech and Debate Education Day. "Yeah," he mutters. "Congress really cares about speech, debate or education. And for that matter, if they had a vote on whether we should acknowledge the existence of days they would probably disagree about that along party lines, as they do with everything else." That's not his real beef though. "We've been doing Nostrum since the Eisenhower administration," he says. "Where's National Nostrum Day? What's wrong with these people?"

If there ever is a National Nostrum Day, you'll find us out celebrating at the nearest gin mill, a la Tab Ularasa, who is featured once again in our latest episode. (That is a bad sentence. It makes it sound like he was already featured once before in our latest episode, but I can't see any way of making it clearer. Maybe "back once again" would do it, but featured is more of an action word, and Sister Patricia, before she quit the nun business to take up dry cleaning, always told us to use action words, and I wouldn't want to let her down now.)

Meanwhile, Menick hasn't gotten around to doing the audio yet, the lazy #*&^$$!)@. With luck, he'll have it done before you click on the link. Or not. Which may be even luckier, as far as you're concerned.