Family business

Menick says he has some sort of family business this weekend, but he did manage to squeeze out a new episode (audio / pdfio) Whatever. The sooner he catches up with us the better. As it is, the Mite is in a state of permanent depression over this whole journalist-moves-next-store-to-Palin business to write a biography of her. According to the Nostrumite, a good biographer ought to be able to live across the street, or even in another neighborhood entirely. He's told me point blank that when I go all Boswell on him, if I try to move next door to him and his kids he'll build a fence the size of Cleveland and out me to the media on a daily basis. Much like Palin, actually. I know that I, for one, have no intention of moving next door to Palin or the Mite or, for that matter, anyone else I don't want to see as President. There's too many of them out there for that.

Maybe it's time for a new narrator...

Thanks to Menick's vacation, we were on hiatus for a couple of weeks, which just doesn't seem right. I mean, we're the ones who do all the work. All he does is read them aloud, and not even all that well. James Earl Jones he ain't! And if that weren't enough, the Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over the whole CatNats topics brouhaha. He's going to be in Omaha judging PuFo, and as far as he's concerned, the topic is about as biased as a Pope in a nunnery. Lucky him. I'm going along with him and the Tennessee Williams High School team to cover their LD entry (am I a mensch or what?), and I'm going to have to listen to a bunch of yabbos explain why non-citizens should be allowed to vote. Oy. I mean, I'm a non-citizen of France. Is there some good reason why I should be able to vote in French elections?

Welcome to the Bahamas.

Anyhow, we seem to be back in business, and episode 16 is now available (lovely written version / despicable spoken version). We'll try to get Menick (who's not going to Omaha because of a family event he can't get out of) to catch up over the weekend and maybe get back on track. It's one thing to take the summer off. It's another thing entirely to go on vacation in the middle of the school year. Hell, just the thought of it is giving me a little permanent depression myself.

Apparently the natives are getting restless

I, for one, do not understand it. Whole bunches of Menick's kids (translated into purer math, that would be 2) have complained that the debate world is not infested with vampires. Which debate world are they living in? Vampires, werewolves, zombies, Unitarians—you can't swing a cat without hitting one or the other of them. Needless to say, this has put the Nostrumite into a state of permanent depression over the lack of the ability of the youth of America to appreciate metaphor. "If something as simple as this trips them up," he moans, "what happens if we use syllogism or litotes or, even worse, double negatives?" The Mite, of course, is also prone to double positives, but that's another story altogether.

Speaking of stories, Menick jumped the gun last night and put out another episode. He's getting pretty close to clearing out the warehouse if you ask us, but we won't stop him, at least not yet. If you've got your glasses, you can read it, and if you've got your ear trumpet, you can listen. It's entirely up to you. Same price, either way.

See you in the funny papers.

That's the worst New Hampshire accent ever!

Why we let Menick narrate this stuff is beyond me. I mean, Dude Firmguns is supposed to sound like a New Englander. If that's New England, my name is Uriah Heep!

Obviously we're in a Dickens of a mood this week, as a knowledgeable listen / read of the latest episode will demonstrate. The Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over Menick's leaving town. "He isn't much but he's all we got," the lad moans (although it's really hard to moan the phrase, "He isn't much but he's all we got"; try it, if you don't believe me). "And he's heading off to parts unknown and the Nostrum Nation must wait, unsatisfied, until he moseys back again. Feh!"

Yeah. Feh.

At least we're going on hiatus with a bang. This episode is twice as boring as usual supersized, running half again as long as normal. Enjoy it. Savor it. If you're listening to it, run it at half speed to make it last. If you're reading it, close one eye.

See you at the end of the month.

Referential overload

I have to admit it. This week's episode (in the ear / in the eye) has got too many subtextual references for its own good. Making it worse, the Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over all the time he spent in preparation finding a decent rendition of "When the foeman bares his steel" on YouTube. "Subtitles?" he complained. "Who needs subtitles for Gilbert and Sullivan? Who's on this YouTube thing anyhow? Damned furriners?" He got so upset he was seriously thinking of moving to Arizona, where they know how to handle damned furriners, but his wife and kids looked at him with that look that they save for whenever he starts ranting about stuff like subtitles for Gilbert and Sullivan on YouTube, and that was the end of that.

Meanwhile, don't forget to follow us on Twitter via @NostrumNation. Going over the old correspondence, I'm now in the part where the Mite was working at the meatpacking plant, where the volume of sausages coming out was 10% higher than the volume of mystery meat going in. Those were good times back then. Good times...

Cue the circus music!

Episode 12: Deep in the Liver of Texas, is posted (ears version / eyes version).

I have to admit that I'm enjoying digging up the old Nostrumiana and posting it all on Twitter @NostrumNation. This may be because the Nostrumite has been no help whatsoever lately with N2. He's in a state of permanent depression over the whole Icelandic earthquake business and its effect on international air traffic. The thing is, he has never trusted Icelanders, not a single one of them. "Devious little worms" is the expression he's usually used to describe them. According to him, it's just like those SOBs to send a cloud of schmutz into the air to screw everybody up. When the country went bankrupt, he was the only person I know clapping his hands in glee, but then they banned what he calls exotic dancers, which perplexed him because he didn't know whether he was for or against.

He's a tough guy to read, let me tell you.

La Nostalgie

Quelle une drag, as the Frenchies say, or not, as the case may be. I seriously wanted to get down to Lakeland last weekend to judge a few rounds and meet up with Menick and Cruz and set them straight on some Nostrum business (for instance, Menick needs to work on his voices because everybody sounds alike, and Cruz needs to understand that nothing, not nohow, no part of Nostrum, is about him, the Bronx or, in many ways, the state of New York, except, maybe, for one or two things that are not the things you think they are). But I couldn't get away because at the last minute the Nostrumite went into a state of permanent depression over the existence of Justin Bieber, a condition (realizing Justin Bieber's existence, not the permanent depression) for which there is no known cure. I had to make him go cold turkey on the internet completely, so we went into the Nostrumian attic and did some spring cleaning and, lo and behold, we uncovered the old archive of epistles from St. Jules to the Forensicians. These are the letters I used to send to the LD-listserver announcing that week's Nostrum episode. For the next couple of hours, over the odd pousse-cafe, we reminisced about the good old days (there were Debaters back then, with a capital D), and then we decided to start the @NostrumNation feed on Twitter. I'm not quite sure how we got to here from there, but you know how the Mite is when he gets wound up. We decided to mix all manner of N1 and N2 trivia on the site, so it's for serious fans, not just the occasional piker. Check it out.

Oh, and yeah, we do have a new episode this week (audio visual), beginning the trek down to the Monteverdi in Texas. I, for one, swear that Obomash and Rand-Walsh sound alike, but Menick swears that one is a British accent and the other one isn't. Yeah, right. You can judge it for yourself. (By the way, if you read the pdf, you probably won't hear the different accents. I just thought I'd point that out.)