There's a Shadow Just Behind Me, Shouting Every Step I Take, Making Every Promise Empty, Pointing Every Finger at Butt

I have not had a great weekend, to be honest, and the debate that I am watching this morning is not making it any better. There is nothing wrong with the two teams I am watching, but for some reason they are embracing bad form for the sake of bad form, since they are both making arguments that are incredibly capable of being articulated in a more “traditional” debate sense. I fundamentally don’t give a shit how people choose to organize their debates or what they choose to do, I just don’t get bagging on “flow-centrism” and then running Agamben.

Holy fuck. You have got to be kidding me. I am literally, going to blow up the room in which this debate is occurring, because the 1NC just concluded with silence. Yep, silence. I would say that silence is the worst argument in the history of the world, but IT IS NOT A FUCKING ARGUMENT, IT IS, BY DEFINITION, THE LACK OF ANYTHING EVEN BORDERING ON ARGUMENTATION. I’m not pretending that discussions of silence, or even the real world function of silence, is not important. There is about a 5 page discussion of the concept of silence in psychoanalysis in my dissertation, but I (I think wisely) did not include 200 blank pages after that discussion to perform the value of silence. There was only just over a minute left in the 1NC when d00d stopped talking, otherwise I would have gone in search of diet soda.

Enough debate rants. I say that, but of course, I have no other rants to go on or anything else really to comment on. We are attempting to catch up on all the TV that we have not watched because of the ricockulous amount of debate work and such that we have been doing, but have not been entirely successful. If we could only afford (NO, NO, SERIOUSLY, THE 2AC IS NOW BEING SILENT. NOT ONLY IS THAT HIDEOUS, BUT I COULDN’T EVEN TELL IF SHE WAS BEING SILENT OR IF SHE JUST LOST HER TRAIN OF THOUGHT. MY BRAIN IS CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF A TURF WAR BETWEEN STUPID IS AND STUPID DOES) DirectTV, a Slingbox, and 1-2 more tivos, I think we would be golden. That does not appear to be around any corners of which I am immediately aware. My favorite Survivor was booted last week, so at least I had only had 2 weeks to grow fond of CeCe. It would have sucked if she would have continued to be so cute and charming for 12 weeks before she was brutally assaulted by Ozzy and his hair-a-palooza of wad-ish-ness.

My van on the way down to Ithaca had an intense conversation about the potential distinction between Gwen Stefani’s “Holla Back Girl” and Fergie’s “London Bridge.” I personally like both of those songs, but maybe its just my love of foot-stamping rhythms for pop music. A love that dare not speak its name, I know, but a love nonetheless. I can fathom not liking either of these songs, prolly cuz you are an elitist snob who can’t ever enjoy the finer things in life and takes even more pleasure than most in the continual (THREE MINUTES OF THE 2NC ARE SILENT. THREE. MOTHER. FUCKING. MINUTES. I AM WRITING AN ALTERNATIVE TO SILENCE CALLED “VAGINA” WHERE WE JUST SAY “VAGINA “FOR THIRTY SOLID SECONDS, THEN ARGUE THAT AT LEAST SOMEONE REPEATING “VAGINA” IS FUNNY. EACH SECOND OF THAT TIMER IS A MOMENT OF MY LIFE THAT THIS DEBATE HAS STOLEN FROM ME.) ability of popular culture to fail to live up to your lofty and arbitrarily contrary standards. Regardless, its music so I get that your taste might not line up with mine. What makes zero sense to me is enjoying one of these tracks and loathing the other. The reason I like them both is that they are the same freaking song. Substitute the spelling of fruits with the reference to children’s rhyme-y things and you have a winner. Also correlatively decided in the van ride: whichever record producer or label was bold enough to sign off on a major lyrical moment in a multi-million dollar single being simply the repetition of a word which would be laughed out of a 2nd grade spelling bee.

Silence going on in the 2nr, btw. Katie brought me a Diet Coke before the 1AR, and clearly that has calmed me down, cuz I would be caps-lockin-and-loading like a horny toad on jimson weed if I was still thirsty. It makes me feel like perhaps I am not actually cranky in debate rounds, but rather that I have just been thirsty for a bit over a decade. (I thought I had mono for an entire year once, turns out I was just really bored.”) Anyway, the post round discussion was far better than the actual debate, and I don’t want to give the impression that I was mad at the debaters themselves. I think its primarily just that I really hate to see arguments not make it to their full potential and become so bogged down in the question of what we should debate about that we never actually engage in that debate. All the people in this round agreed that alternative forms of argument (i.e. parables or stories, not silence) were worthwhile, so lets have at it, not race to see who is the most tolerant of alternate arguments.

I’m missin my Hippo right now, but she is psyched that we will actually get to watch the Packers together this Monday night. She is excited to have a party with cream and nip while we are gone, but still, her philosophy is that football is always better with a lap to purr in. Sometimes, I can hear her softly purring the Monday Night Football theme song when that long Monday afternoon really gets to her (she has a small case of Garfield syndrome). And with the rampant discrimination against kitties practiced by the bars in Rochester, it is hard for her to join us in a booth at the Distillery for the NFL Sunday ticket. Anyway, hopefully I will be home for some Sunday Night pigskin as well, I can hear Hippo leap from her tower in happiness.

Peace,

MB-K