Come on Shake Your Body Baby do that Conga!!

You know you can't control yourself any longer.

You can feel the rhythm of the music getting stronger.

So, why don't you just come on and shake your body baby, do that conga.

I actually think I may have included some excerpts from that spicy late-80s early-90s latin pop scene in earlier moments of writing. Gloria Estefan rocks and everybody else is average ( (C) Paul Allen). I really have very little else to say on the subject of Gloria Estefan. When I got my digital cable out here in Assfalo one of the pay-per-view preview stations had a Prince concert on it, so I rocked out on that obviously, and Gloria Estefan and Sheila E both showed up to jam out on the bongos. To clarify, they were jamming out on bongo drums, not the breasts of well-endowed women. Bongos is a great word for breasts. "Check out the bongos on that honey." I tried to denote a wolf's noise after that, the howly thing that people do to imitate a wolf that is supposed to indicate that a person (usually one of the vaginal persuasion, but I suppose its been done about the masculinos, los senores qui tienen los peniserojos) is hot, foxy, sexy, ravishing, or even, dare I say, bootylicious. I am not sure how to indicate that however, so instead of shooting randomly in the dark I will let those sentences denote this noise.

So I didn't get done as much as I intended to today, but luckily its still early in the semsester and I am ahead on beaucoup de mon shit. We're reading Schmitt's Concept of the Political with Gasche, who originally thought he would be going through these texts much faster. He failed, on that front at least, since last Tuesday I believe we covered 4 pages. That is actually a bit slower than he usually goes, but you certainly can't critique his presentation of those pages. Its a really interesting book and a philosophy (if you wish to call it that) that for some reason I simply haven't heard anything about, despite the repeated assurances from everyone who has discussed it that he is coming into vogue. Its hard to come too far into vogue when about 2 of your books have been translated and one of them is 60 fucking bucks, but maybe he is on the rise.

So when I tried to type bucks in that previous sentence I accidentally included an "i" so it appeared to cost 60 Buicks. This made me imagine some sort of aboriginal society in which Buicks are the local currency, but its not like there are parts of a Buick, one Buick is the lowest denomination of currency. You wouldn't be able to drive the Buicks of course since to do so would risk devaluing the currency, but you would have to lug a couple Buicks around with you in case you needed a soda. The Buick accepters on soda machines sound like they would rock too. You would like pull an old crumpled up Buick out of the Buick container (I guess you would probably have to drive like one of those trucks that brings cars to dealerships, maybe chicks who carry big purses (or the Dobs, who used to have a bodacious man purse) would have like even bigger trucks, like aircraft carriers with trucks on them, since that is the equivalent of like having a bag with a wallet inside it, my bad, that analogy munched) and try to insert it into the Buick accepter, but it would be too folded and it would spit it back out and you would try to flatten the fender and send it back in, etc. This is a fantastic idea, I am going to find some aboriginal people and pitch this to Buick. They donate like 5-6000 Buicks to some people for the purpose of establishing a currency and then they can come back in like 5 years and make a SuperBowl commercial out of it. Its a fantasgreat idea.

Alright, Katie is demanding that we, for some brilliant reason, leave our comfy warm apartment and confront the treacherousity of the Assfalo elements so we can get ice cream with truffles in it. We do, notably, have two different varieties of iceified cream in the freezer, but whatev. I may continue later tonight or do some pre-SuperBowl bloggining manana.

Peace,

MB-K

Butterfly Update

Katie has informed me, because I am stupid, that the phrase the Butterfly Effect and likely the Simpson's use of a butterfly in that episode is related to the expression indicative of chaos theory that a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo can make it rain in San Francisco. I don't know if those are the right cities, but you have the idea, two cities that are far apart affected by small differences. I get it now.

I am a moron. El stupido. Got it now. Shut up. 'Specially you, Betty White of TV's The Golden Girls.

Peace,

MB-K

Lackadaisacalllismenicious

My schedule got all fucked up these last couple days and as a result my head is all displaced and be-googled. Joan canceled my Wednesday afternoon course and rescheduled it for Thursday afternoon evening, ie: 3:30. I mean, this isn't horrible or anything, but it means that I have literally jack, entirely fucking jack to do on Wednesday. I mean, I read some shitty that I need to read and stuff but I didn't get out of my pyjamas from Tuesday at about 6:30 until this morning when I jumped in the shower. Today, when I usually just teach, then coast through my pointless office hours (since I think I have had 10 total students drop by my office hours over the past two years) I instead had to wait at school for an extra hour after that before going to a seminar. I can handle that type of a schedule, my Tuesdays are worse than that, but twice a week it is straining. Yes, I am a complete and total wuss. I understand that. I am spoiled by this Buffalo schedule, my comfy couch, DVR, coming home to a damn fine quiche today, made by the lovely Ms. Kauf. Nonetheless, I feel like its Tuesday now and its messed up.

I don't want to just provide reports of interesting things that I experience, but I will briefly comment on two growing trends that have captured my interests. The first one is the general philosophy of time, one of the areas I was considering doing one of my orals lists on. Time has been fertile material for literature and "experimental" arts for quite a while, but most notably so since Einstein and the possibilities of time travel. Obviously then there are alot of films that deal with the concept, in more or less philosophical terms, since the medium is born about the same time as the idea. You've got a couple films that play around with in different ways a couple times a year. Right now there is the number one movie in America, for instance: Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart's "The Butterfly Effect." I haven't seen it yet so I would feel a little bad completely trashing this potential piece of atrocious-ass-shit but from what I have heard its pretty much just a bad film version of the Simpson's Halloween special where Homer turns the toaster into a time machine and goes back to fuck with the whole donuts thing. Then when he comes back it rains donuts and they don't know what they are or there are dinosaurs instead of people or whatever. You should know which one I am talking about, he crushes a buttefly in the past and it fucks el futuro. Maybe it is actually a reference to or based off that Simpson's episode, in which case it would be less fuckydickshit, but I sort of doubt it. Then again, I just made that butterfly connection right now so you never know. Why the fuck else would time travel be the "butterfly" effect. Whatev. I will come back to this film later, but back to time travel.

I finally watched Donnie Darko the whole way through, and while I was ashamed to have not seen it up until now I really fucking dug it. It starts out a little freaky, but its well done, as odd as the info description may be (something like "A troubled boy is saved from certain death by a 6 foot tall bunny rabbit") by the end it bears no relation to the horror stuff that appears early on. If you havent seen it (see it, definately, categorically, you should see it, I haven't really emphasized that it is quite well done) I don't want to spoil too much, but I would imagine you will figure out that this is involved in the whole story. You've got a bunch of Hollywood films that are similar, 12 Monkeys comes to mind, and some others like Memento which don't deal specifically with time travel but definately fuck around with time in similar ways. Anyway, the long and the short of it was that I think I need to write a paper about contemporary cinematic depictions of time travel.

I realize now that this whole entry is especially dorky because both the trendy things that I am discussing are being considered as areas (or related to areas) that I intend to write on. Tbe second is a class of literature I am not yet quite sure how to clarify. I thought it might have something to do with violence or violence and the imagination, but I am no longer sure that is the case. I know it has something to do with anti-capitalism, but its more specific than that. Bret Easton Ellis, the author of American Psycho and Glamorama, and Chuck Paliunuk, author of Fight Club, are the primary founders of this group though in some ways I find the same in a book I recently read by Kathy Acker. I am also reading Pahlaniuk's newest book, Diary, and for some reason, even though it is missing most of the thematic characteristics in Fight Club, AmPsych, Glamorama, etc. I can't help but keep it in that group. Those things may show up because there are a number of elements to this novel that aren't exactly brand spanking new. I mean, no one says "I am jack's..." in diary, but if you can't pick up its replacement in the first 10 pages you aren't reading closely enough. I have a suspicion, at exactly page 100 in the book, that it may eventually tie both of these themes together but I will wait and see.

The final thing which I hadn't thought to mention until I got into the whole Butterfly discussion, but the past two days have allowed me to see two different clips of "The Butterfly Effect" on the Ellen show featuring either Amy Smart (yesterday) or Ashton Kutcher (today) and the clips were uniformly awful, I mean terrible fucking acting. In all actuality it is probably about exactly what you would expect from Kelso's groundbreaking work as a time-traveling vigilante but still. On the bright side I have seen both of these brief exerpts on Ellen, which is definitively the second best talk show I have ever seen on television and give some time could receive some favorable comparisons to Conan. I mean, at no point during Ellen's show have I ever issued the groundshaking laughter that overtook me the first time I saw Triumph or the Masturbating Bear, but its routinely enjoyable. The woman is quite funny and people love her. I totally understand it largely because of her incredible redemption in my eyes from the night we saw the Disney Triple feature, led off by Finding Nemo. Regardless, Ellen's obsession with the Butterfly Effect really does have to end, and luckily it will, because coming soon, not next week but soon, very very soon, Britney Spears is on Ellen's show. It is going to be swe-eet. I would imagine that the episode of Sex and the City that Britney was going to make before it came to such an abrupt halt (as you could learn from watching the Crossroads DVD extras, Britney and Kim Catrall became pretty close while shooting the brief scenes that Kim appeared in as Britney's biological mother, they were going to switch off but there was no chance to do it) would have been cooler. But this will be a hella stunt.

Alright, thats all. I am going to end the run of bad Thursday television by actually paying attention to The Apprentice and then watching Without a Trace, since while it looks awful it is getting mad critical props.

Peace,

MB-K

New Humpshire, hehehehe, Hump-shire

So we are like watching like the like Gilmour Girls and basically Lorelei Gilmour, played by the lovely Lauren Graham, is aiming to set the world's record for most awful fucking hats worn in a single program. I can totally sympathize with the crowd who thinks she is getting jacked by continuously not being nominated for any comedic category. I also sympathize with the crowd who says that her show straddles the line between drama and comedy which sort of fucks her in the nominations category. I also sympathize with those people who like chocolate milkshakes, because I like chocolate milkshakes too. In fact, I most likely like chocolate milkshakes more than the people in the crowd which I sympathize with. If there were a crowd that was entirely neutral on Lauren Graham's nominations and loved chocolate milkshakes I would want to run for president of that crowd. While I love chocolate milkshakes and think that the Gilmore Girls is actually alot funnier than most people give it credit for I am certainly not the best candidate to lead or join that crowd.

So lets move on to something else, lets say Tajikistan. I have no feelings on the subject of Tajikistan.

How about the New Hampshire primaries. I actually do have something to say about that situation, since I never really liked Howard Dean anyway. As far as I am concerned you can now stick a fork in him for more reasons thatn the fact that he looks like a cooked pig. I cannot understand for the life of me why it is that people think the dude is so liberal. I mean, alright, so he sort of become the condensation point for the anti-war sentiment in this country and I guess he did get out on the anti-war trip fairly early. Just because Vermont is kind of a hippy state doesn't mean their governor is all that leftist. Dude is against gun control, for the death penalty, and no longer strictly opposed to American involvement. Yes, he thinks that we shouldn't have gone to war based on the administrations evidence. Brilliant conclusion, the left ass cheek of the new baby rhino at the San Diego zoo, whom has never seen a moment of CNN or read any American electoral history, could understand that this is the case. It was a stupid mistake based on a not-very-well-formed-or-intelligent-lie. Very impressive Howard Dean. He says we can't just withdraw, which may be correct, but is left-wing like Dominik Hasek (who is a goalie, hockey pun, sorry, had to do it). Nonetheless, somehow he got this rap as the left-wing hack for the democratic party and he ain't folks. While he may be slightly more liberal than Kerry (not much, somewhat, on some issues, but not much) he is also a fucking hell of alot more stupid than Kerry and since he sticks his foot halfway down his larynx once every 20-30 minutes the chances are pretty low he could have beaten Bush. Then again, Bush may disprove the idea that you have to say intelligent things to be elected president of this country.

Kerry has won Iowa and New Hampshire. Dean ain't gonna win much down South, he appeals very little to the old folks and the southerners. Kerry is a Kennedy dem and a fucking Vietnam vet. We could really use some decent argument as to why the democrats are not simply trying to undercut the military when we oppose the war and I am admittedly a little new to supporting the party itself I can't remember when a strong veteran was a relevant powerful democrat. Chocolate milkshakes rock. I think I will make one.

Peace,

MB-K

Golden Globes and Tater Tots

Last night was of course the amazing gala put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press. The big winners were obvioulsy the folks at Angels in America, who took best mini-series and all four acting awards possible. I have seen very little of the show, but I read the play back in my Macalester days and must concede that it is pretty fucking impressive. Its an interesting trend I think, now that all the big-shot fucking film actors want to do Broadway all the time, to take an amazing play, cast some incredible actors to do it, and then film it as like an 8 hour long mini-series. I have to watch the whole thing now obviously, but I was impressed.

I was also impressed by Mary Louise Parker (possibly more famous for her role as Amy on TV's The West Wing (which unfortunately went unrecognized last night, Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, and the show as a whole failing to win their categories) ) who won for best supporting and was wearing an incredibly gorgeous dress after having had a baby apparently 2 and a half weeks ago. She then proceeded to make the funniest joke of the evening when she said--"Janel Maloney (The West Wing's Donna Moss, assistant to Josh Lyman) said she would give me a thousand dollars if I came up here and thanked my 2 and a half week old son for making my boobs look so good in this dress." It was perfectly done I must admit.

I could go on and on further about the awards, Mystic River got the male acting props, Charlize Theron, according to most critics, cinched her win at Oscar's casa with the Best Acting by a female, and Peter Jackson finally got his personal and general props for ROTK, which I still have yet to see. I am of the opinion that the folks at the Academy are going to do the same thing and hit the last film up with collective props for the trilogy, which seems fairly legitimate for this situation.

The evening's big surprise was the BBC's hit The Office, eligible for the Golden Globes apparently only because it is being shown on BBC America. Someone else will obviously have to pick it up now that it has won both best Comedy program and best actor in a comedy. The dude who seems to be the lead actor and sort of head honcho for the whole program is admittedly hilarious. Now all I have to do is figure out when the fuck that show is on my fancy new televisual apparatus and I can DVR it. I continue to think DVR fits perfectly into the old PBR theme song, but Katie doesn't yet get it when I say "DVR me ASAP."

On an entirely different note I just finished my second fiction book of the semester, a 534 behoemeth (pronounced bo-hu-we-muth, in Steven Wright's classic Resevoir Dogs vocabularial brilliance) by Robert Coover called The Public Burning. Its basically a psuedo-historical novel about the Rosenbergs and Nixon, who was VP at the time. It has some very interesting elements and ideas, Uncle Sam for instance is a character who both plays golf with Nixon and battles the Phantom, the communist incarnation of himself. As it builds to the end it gets crazier and slightly more insane, both in style and subject. It never reaches the level of the first book we read this semester, which starts off at the level of Andy Kemp's unconscious and goes from there, if you can even imagine that. I dug this book, regardless of the fact that I attempted to read simply too much of it too quickly. Beyond that it was hilarious, since it is often narrated by Nixon as Vice-President and his commentary on the ludacris ("i've got hoes...in different area codes")-ness of the situation around him. Since the whole Rosenberg situation in general and the book in specific deal primarily with the fucked up situation of rabid-anti-communism in the fifties it has more than slight relevance for today's terrorist shiznit.

The other interesting thing, which maybe I should have known but just didn't, was that it appeared to bear some strong resemblance to the South Park: Bigger Longer Uncut film. Obviously, I know, the Rosenbergs were part of the inspiration for the whole public execution rabid violent shit anyway, but the novel has a number of themes and scenes which are explicitly put into the film that to the best of my knowledge were created by Coover and not inherent to the event itself. The book isn't as funny as "La Resistance" but I vote aff on the inclusion of this novel in the class.

Alright, its time for awesome television night part 1, as I call Mondays. We get to watch My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, followed by Average Joe 2, and then, taking advantage of both our DVR (...me ASAP) and the fact that we live close enough to Toronto to receive Canadian Television, we get to watch The O.C. two days early.

Peace,

MB-K

DVR--DVR--DVR!!!

So check this out. Katie and I get back, we have a little bit of cash burning a hole in our bank account, and we get this thing in the mail which is describing Adelphia's new service programs. I should first note, while risking that my internet service will get cut off while I type, that Adelphia sucks a nut. I mean, for the most part I haven't had big problems with the service. Our cable and cable modem seem to work just fine 99.9 percent of the time. When I do have problems the people are actually pretty good at aiding us with them over the phone. They do have this ridiculous problem pulling up my account because my only phone number has an area code which isn't in Buffalo. I don't understand why they can't fucking get their computer to recognize a phone number which has a different area code, but whatev. I have a couple beefs with them:

-they are fucking expensivo, I mean, I know I get alot of fucking services, we have cable internet and digital cable, and now HBO and DVR, but still, its way too fucking much, I am getting dangerously close to investigating satellite, which means alot, because the last time I was with someone who used satellite it sucked

-they don't fucking have the on-demand shit yet-I know you can get this stuff, I mean all of Time-Warner has it, other cable companies have it, it just pisses me off, I should not have to worry about this-Time Warner has fucking food newtork on demand for the love of fuck, why don't I get a piece of that loving

That said, we decided that since our cost was going up anyway, we should jack it up a little further with HBO and the DV fucking R. It rocks having HBO first of all, I get to watch high quality movies and some decent sitcoms every day. I don't really watch any sitcoms anymore because most of the ones on broadcast TV are totally overshadowed by the counter-running one-hour dramas or reality shows. But Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arliss and some other things are totally sweet. There are seven fucking channels of HBO now, so there is really always something on which doesn't suck a nut completely. I mean, digital cable did that too, but this is even more so.

On top of this we have DVR. I mean, I don't know how to explain to you how fucking awesome this shit is. I know many of you have beaten me to the TIVO revolution, but now that I can afford it I can tell you that this might be the sweetest shit in the entire world. We can record the programs we need to record, alright, no surprise there, technically my VCR could do the same. We can record two programs at the same time if we are both not home (lets say a wednesday night, Angel and the West Wing) we have an automatic picutre in picture (admittedly, my tv is too small for PIP, but either way) we can pause and rewind and shit live fucking TV. When good movies are repeated at 4 in the morning, I can watch those motherfuckers the next day.

Here is what DVR has done to my televisual life. Lets say that it was a 7.6 before. It jumps up to a 8.0 with HBO and then a 328089732897497862098388.97 with DVR. Oh my god this thing is so fucking cool. I cannot explain it to you. Lets say I want to watch a movie right now, okay. Well, there is the stuff that is on TV, HBO, etc. Ehh, Saturday afternoon is not good TV. So I could watch a DVD, but I have seen most of those. Plus, I don't want to get off the fucking couch. So I will just hit the "list" button. Oh, looky-looky at my cooky. I could watch The Ring, or Lord of the Ring, or Half Baked, or The House of Yes, or 8 Mile, or Sling Blade. This rocks so fucking hard. I could also watch the new episode of South Park or Chappelle's Show or CSI. I can fastforward, rewind, I can pause, instant replay. I cannot handle how awesome it is.

I will not continue any further. I could go on all day and I am fairly certain that there will be better stuff later on. At the moment however, I am oot. Rock!

Peace,

MB-K

So I Bonered This Shit

We got home from fucking Minneapolis, then we started school, then we fucking went to a debate tournament in Columbus fucking Ohio, then we got home and my computer didn't work, so I took it to CompUSA and just got it fixed and shit back today. Fundamentally that is the confluence of events which resulted in my not updating my journal thingamabober until this point. Look, I recognize that this is my bad and I will pick it up. If you don't get off my back I will grab you by the tongue and spin you like a cat who had an orgy with a rhinocerous and then woke up without his or her dentures.

To continue with the whole Minneapolis situation let me give a couple brief numbers:

Poker Winnings-$47.50

I only lost on two nights, the night we played a no limit hold-em tourney at my place and I way overplayed a hand against Andy, who for some reason had a fairly strong chiplead on me, and one night where I had 6 long islands and a shot of Crown at the Billabong. We played at Willking's and I thought I was playing fairly tight, but you can never really tell when you are that fucking intoxicated. I was actually too drunk to play Crazy Taxi and I think that should be a clue that you have simply had too much to drink. Besides that I was generally rocking pretty hard. I nailed a Queen high spade straight flush one of the last nights we played and it was a threeway pot all the way down. Thor kepNumt reraising me with the Ace of spades and I can't say I really blamed him, but the flop was 8-9-10 spades and the turn was the jack. Anyway, I already had the straight on the flop, since I had Q of spades and J of clubs in the hole, but regardless. Poker went well. While some of the ladyfolk got pretty sick of our playing poker every fucking night, it was a good break from the sitting in Buffalo wishing I was playing poker.

Number of Moms at Christmas-3

Technically I only had one mom there, since I have only one. Nonetheless, our christmas celebration included Katie and I, my bro, my sis, Karly (Katie's sis), my rents, and both their girlfriends, Deb and Paula. I had never met Paula before, but I hung out with her and argued with my dad about DC's representational status in the Congress. Paula is from D.C. and apparently she and my dad have often discussed this question, since he thinks it ridiculous. While I by no means give any sort of a fuck about the situation of the people in DC, I do think they should be given representation in the legislature. Not to mention that I wouldn't be bothered by the fact that they would pretty much tip the senate to the dems if they got senators. Anyway, I started drinking my caucasians early enough on that morning to erase any semblance of uneasiness and toking briefly in the garage certainly didn't hurt anything. Regardless, everyone besides me seemed to think it was uncomfortable. It certainly was a little weird, but you deal with that shit. I personally know of few better ways to deal with awkwardness than political arguments, alcohol, and drugs.

Wedding Things accomplished - 855 billion

In all honesty we didn't even really get going headlong on the wedding arrangement shiznit until about the week after Christmas but when we decided to roll we did so like ass ramming Uncle Fuckers. We were like florist-chure, cake-chure, dress-chure, tux-chure. Everything we saw we just rolled. I can understand perfectly how someone could spend like a year planning a wedding, but I can also see how you could just put your fucking nose to the proverbial assdick and pound that shit out in a week. On the subject of wedding planning let me briefly comment that tasting wedding cakes is the biggest scam on the planet. Basically, if you like cake and want some really awesome free cake, here is what you should do. Call up Wuollet's bakery and make an appointment to go in for a cake tasting. We did this early one morning. It doesn't matter when you do it though. Go in and tell them why you are there. They will give you some coffee and tell you to go sit down. Then the manager lady (we actually dealt with Sarah Wuollet, daughter of the original Wuollet) will come and tell you about the cakes while you drink your coffee. Then she will tell you to write down all the different cakes you want to try. By that I mean you write down which combinations of which frostings and cakes and icings you want and then they go in the back and whip them up. It fucking rocked. So she brings us this little plate with like 8 different pieces of cake on it. We eat them. She gives us a sheet with the prices on it, and we leave. That is the end of the fucking story, no other work involved. This shit was free. Ass-free. Its like having dessert at a restaurant, except that it is free. We pulled a similar, but not quite as awesome, deal at two other bakeries that day. While I highly recommend Wuollets for this process, anyone who makes wedding cakes will do the trick. I think we will end up ordering our nuptual pastry from the homies on Grand anyway, so they did the right thing.

Good times enjoyed by all- Too many to count.

Overall I give our winter vacation an "A" for "awesome." While I don't feel like recounting any other specific stories at this time, I am sure that I will remember some incident when Andy was drunk which desperately needs my attention.

I do, however, have some awesome news which I cannot wait to share, but I really need more typing energy to do it, so it will likely wait until manana. Maybe later tonight, but I really have to get juiced up to accurately represent to you the cool thing that recently happened to me.

Always leave 'em wanting more, thats what PT Barnum said to me. Mike, he said, always leave them wanting more. More, alwaysl, wanting, leave 'em. 'Em, wanting leave more. Leave more 'em wanting. Want'emmoreleaving.

Peace,

MB-K

Return of the Mack

So we went back to the Twin Cities for about a month. Pretty much exactly a month actually, and we are finally home. It has its plusses, it has its minuses, you know how all that shitty goes. We will get to all of that and allow you to determine for yourselves the significance of the whole time. I mean, if you figure out some great significance to the occassion you should let us know, since it wasn't all that interesting to either Katie or I. I mean, we liked seeing nosotros amigos and shit, but there were very few life changing dramatics. Maybe that is because Andy didn't have a chica with him. Anyway.

We got home on a Tuesday, we spent a couple nights hanging out with Karly (Katie's sister) Tom (Katie's dad) and the whole in town crew (pretty much the Kev-hold, Reuter, Andy J, and Maroney). On Friday we had made plans to have lunch with mi madre and her girlfriend, whose name is Deb. I wasn't especially nervous, though Katie seemed to imagine it would be awkward. Deb is about my mother's age, I would say, though her kids are apparently younger than myself and the sibs. She looks like a Minnesota mother too, for the most part. We had lunch at Chang O'Haras, my choice since I hadn't been for a while and knew my mom would be paying. I had a couple Summits and they got there late, since they were coming from Deb's place in St. Cloud. Anyway, we talked about random stuff, nothing especially interesting, but she certainly seemed nice. We would end up seeing Deb several more times, but we will get to that in at some point soon.

We left Chang O'Hara's and headed towards Roseville High School, where we were juding at the combined Southern-Central NFL district tournaments. Blake managed to qualify, which was hella sweet, though I thought they weren't going to make it after a big loss to Edina. I judged alot of high quality high school rounds, some good Edina teams, Mankato West like 4 times, Wayzata, Rosemount, etc. I didn't see the Eagan team that was supposedly good, though their second team was not awful. I voted against Mankato West to Edina's top team in round 5 or 6 on topicality, not surprisingly. I'm fundamentally a T hack anyway, but it seemed that no one at the tournament had even prepped for them. I know they haven't had a great season or anything but come on, the judge pool at this tournament was the most liberal in Minnesota this year. You should recognize that adding Katie, Klemz, Dave Cram-Helwich, and myself into a pool makes the K slightly more viable as an argument than with Dean Eyler and the K-Sarff.

Regardless, after Edina and Blake have qualified, a debate-back occurs between Man West and Wayzata. I have been told that both of these teams are pretty good and had seen Mankato West debate somewhat silly arguments fairly well most of the weekend. The panel ends up being myself, Dave, and Chris Stinson. Wayzata's strategy is really really bad. Pretty much just procedural arguments and an attempt to "PIC" out of the transversal dissent part of the aff. That didn't work so well for them, since they didn't answer the only serious argument that was made by the 1ar. Anyway, the decision ends up being a 2-1, Dave's and my decisions were virtually identical and Mr. Stinson disagreed on one fairly minor point which made absolutely no sense to me. Anyway, the women from Wayzata went ballistic. It would have been much easier if Stinson would have just voted aff so they would have had no basis (instead of an extremely small basis) to yell about. But they did, for a long time too. We were pretty patient, I thought, and explained to them why we voted how we did. Stinson had to back us up on all points except one as well, so it was mostly just Ehsan (coaches at Wayzata, debated there with the Faulty-sack a couple years back) Sarah, and Katelyn yelling. The even funnier events have occurred afterwards, when apparently Wayzata started telling people that they won't be returning to the NFL tournament, since they don't have a chance to qualify anyway. I have had a number of conversations with different coaches about this nonsense and thought it was pretty funny. Look, no one is biased against you. You qualified a team to Nationals maybe 7 years ago. You missed going this year in the debate back. This is the best fucking district in the country, last year all three teams in it finished in the top fucking ten at nats.

I want, of course, to extend some mad props to all the qualifiers and all the competitors. Though a little controversy was generated by the round, it was solid debating. Good luck to all who were involved.

The Blake tournament occurred the following weekend, but there are no real debate stories to be told about it, just random good times and funny shit. I will continue with that either tonight or tomorrow. Good to be home, welcome back to my electronic apartment.

Peace,

MB-K