Part 5 in an 8-part series regressing through the Stanford 2002 APDA tournament.

Last week: Round 5 (re: Native American Reparations)

Today’s round features one of the best cases I ever hit in my tenure on APDA, run by a future National Champion and his wacky then-partner.

The case was one of the few “infinite opp-choice” style cases that were generally reserved for final rounds. While not technically infinite, the round involves picking something out of a list so long that it might as well be infinite, then having Gov pick another side. Or, as in the 42-way opp-choice on the seven deadly sins that Jeff “Crack” Nelson and I ran in Fairfield finals, having Opp pick both sides.

These cases can be deceptive, however, because they don’t necessarily require a Gov team to prep an infinite number of possibilities, just two (a first choice and a backup). And in this particular round, we didn’t grab their first choice (Lenin), but came close by picking Stalin. The question was who the Man of the Century should be in terms of influence, leaving out moral or perceptual considerations.

So heat up some canned borscht and potatoes and enjoy the round:

Stanford 2002 APDA Round 4 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

In October 2002, back in the relatively early days of Introspection, I first came up with the idea of altering the whole theme of the blog site to celebrate Halloween. In 2004, after two years of just changing the color scheme, I actually overhauled the graphic header as well. The rest has been history. As you can see (if you can’t see, hit refresh!), it’s another October season today.

The rains have been sweeping through, often hightailing it on the back of even stronger winds. Today is the first really chilly seeming day and I can already envision the crispness of my breath emerging as the barracks become even more depressing and the walls seem even thinner. Already I’m starting to wonder when we should start moving stuff away from the heater so we can be prepared.

And yet there’s the anticipation of October that seems even more exciting on the East Coast, what with the promise of leaves changing and falling and eventual snow. This is what I’ve missed so dearly, the real seasonal change that is present in most of the world but sorely lacking in the Bay Area. A change in the surroundings that matches the internal perceptual change of the time. People do better with external confirmations of their internal understanding.

Which, I guess, is why I revel in the visualization present on the page. So there you go.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Days like this, I miss having Introspection. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed and uninspired and like I have thousands of things to catch people up on. Just like 2.5 weeks ago, it’s time for bullet points:

• I spent most of the weekend (36 hours from midday Friday till the end of Saturday) at the Swarthmore Novice tournament.  I had a blast, we had 3 teams go 3-2, I gave a workshop (which was filmed and may be visible at some point on the web), LO’ed the demo round, and judged through finals.
• On the way back from the tourney, we had an epic time, including me accidentally entering the Penn Turnpike via an EZ Pass lane (and later talking my way out of a $23.75 lost ticket fee at the exit), endless joking with three novices and one of the team’s juniors, and a torrential downpour throughout.
• Em’s birthday and accompanying party were yesterday, and both went very well.  Emily is now thirty and thanks everyone for making her birthday such a great time.  We had cake, ice cream, enough snacks to sink a ship, and board games at the end with the loyal folks who stayed a long time.
• Next hosted celebration:  October 24th pumpkin carving.  Evite to come soon.
• Em and I watched “The Notebook” last night, which both of us had somehow missed seeing.  Though predictable at times, it was pretty amazing overall.
• For some reason, I’ve just been feeling uninspired on Duck & Cover lately.  I don’t know if it’s feeling disconnected from politics, having disconnected from cable, or not finding much to be funny these days.  I’m hoping to get over that soon.
• I haven’t written fiction in three days either, though the events of the weekend are responsible for that, not some lack of inspiration.  The fact that three days feels like a major drought is a good sign.
• I can’t believe it’s not October yet.  That’s also a good sign, that time is going slowly and is thus full, rather than flying by and seeming empty.  Keep an eye out for the annual theme change ’round here soon.

September still has a week to go, but the stats are looking pretty good for work on American Dream On. While work on various other projects, including three short stories and a quiz, has slowed substantially, this has been the output 24 days into this first full month of work on the novel:

31,294 words (~125 pp) in 15 chapters

Suffice it to say that I’m pretty ecstatic about this. That’s just over 1300 words (~5+ pp) a day, every day, which includes several days that I’m not able to write, such as when I’m overnight at a debate tournament (second one coming up tomorrow). Now obviously the quality has yet to be evaluated fully (editing takes some time), but actually slogging out the execution is the real bulk of writing work, both in terms of time and energy.

As far as the experiment of working on this as a full-time schedule vs. trying to integrate it with a day job, it’s worth noting that I only wrote about 19,000 words (~76 pp) of the book from June 2002 through July 2009. So, uh, 76 pages in 85 months vs. 125 pages in 24 days. I think we can close the book on any experimental wonderings about what allows me to do my best work.

Not that this is a surprise, of course – this whole life is based on trying to take the summer of 2001 and apply it to a year-long or even multi-year scale. But I’m almost starting to wonder whether three books in a year is a – gulp – conservative estimate of what I can do when I get rolling. The major question on that front will revolve around how much down-time (if any) I need between books and on whether I can keep this roaring pace going for months on end. Certainly deadlines create incentives, though their value may be diminished when I’m on a pace to beat them by almost a month. We’ll see how well I’m still chugging along come Thanksgiving.

If there’s a message that’s more widely applicable from all this, it’s probably a familiar one: you have no idea what you might be capable of without the bonds of a daily obligation to school or work.

I just hope the book’s good. I’m certainly enjoying writing it, but the proof will be in everyone else’s opinion. Of course, no previews are available since I very much try to avoid others’ opinions impacting the actual process as I’m working on the piece. But at this rate, Christmas might be coming early for those of you intrigued.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

While we’re waiting to see if I have the inclination to post my journal from last year’s India/Nepal trip, I figured I could trot out the rest of the Stanford 2002 filmed rounds as a recurring set of content for this page for the next couple weeks. You may recall that I posted Finals, Semifinals, and Quarterfinals early this summer before moving cross-country and getting a bit distracted.

Today’s round continues our regression through the tournament, featuring round five which, interestingly, was against the same team that faced us in Quarters. This was the debut of the case that Emily and I ran about giving $1,000,000 in reparations to every Native American born on a reservation. This case is about as open (easily debatable, beatable) as they come, and yet went on to win a bubble round at Nationals (Tirrell & I overcoming MIT-A in round 6 at UMBC Nats ‘02) and Quarters at BU ‘06 (sadly beating my Brandeis teammates, Samburg & Collins) when Emily & I went back to defend the honor of dinos against modern whippersnappers. (Incidentally, that round was also recorded, though on audio, and can be found here.)

Like my Lottery case, this one gets much of its power from being something that I fervently believe. But you don’t have to take my contemporary word for it – see how Emily and I sounded seven and a half years ago:

Stanford 2002 APDA Round 5 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

It was a weekend to examine youth.

Em and I have been watching the Up Series, a continuum of documentaries about 14 British children who turned 7 in 1964. In the first film, they are shown expressing their hopes and dreams for the future, answering a variety of standard questions about the human condition and giving a full range of kids-say-the-darndest-things responses. In subsequent films, their lives are shown to follow or deviate from the prescribed path. While the series was ostensibly made about Britain’s class structure and how opportunities are truly unequal, the films end up being much more about the similarity of people’s lives and, frankly, their simplicity.

Given that Netflix, to which we have recently subscribed, offers most of this series for free and immediate streaming download, Em and I have torn through 7, 14, 21, 28, and 35 in less than a week. Crossing the threshold from 28 to 35 gave pause, as we went from watching people younger than we to older in the span of a scant two hours. And while in many ways this transition was the least overtly noticeable, the aging and especially the confrontation of parental mortality were sobering.

More than anything, the impact of this series has been to further invigorate my excitement about where I am at this particular juncture of my life, knowing it may be the first threshold of those offered in the films that my 7-year-old self would have been proud to see me on. I cannot say enough times how much the pain of crossing 30 is dulled by finally embarking on the steps that I have longed to take since I was very young. Watching these 7-year increments in quick succession is a ruthless reduction of the lives of others and reminds any conscious viewer how much waste and irrelevance compiles into a standard human (especially first-world) life. My nightly writing efforts are my only real antidote, though I am drawing much satisfaction from the debate coaching as well.

Much of the weekend was spent conducting the first-ever Novice Retreat for the Rutgers team. For many hours on Friday and Saturday, we (the Rutgers elders and I) drilled and trained the novii in each speech position and general debate strategy. Friday especially gave me a good taste for what high-school teaching might have been like, as I gave three consecutive 45-minute sessions on how to deliver the first speech for the Opposition. Of course the classes were smaller, everyone wanted to be there, it was three sessions instead of seven, and it was one of my favorite subjects of all-time. But, y’know, close enough.

On Saturday, we were able to conduct practice rounds as well as finish up the training, and I think the novii will be about as prepared for this coming weekend’s novice tournament as any I’ve seen on APDA. With any luck, I’m hoping Rutgers’ drought of reaching the elimination (”break”) rounds will be over by this time next week.

Though the Retreat ran very long on Saturday, costing me the chance to help celebrate Greg’s birthday, it failed to spill into Sunday. Thus we were able to attend the Weakerthans show in Philadelphia as scheduled, after a brief tour of Fish’s house (Em hadn’t seen it) and a lengthy Mexican meal in an authentic dive. The show was great, perhaps the best aggregate setlist for the interests of myself, Emily, and Fish. (Madeleine was there as well, but is less familiar with these Canadians.) But the crowning moment was that John K. Samson finally delivered on my perennial shouted request for “Sounds Familiar”, the greatest Weakerthans song of all-time. Our acquisition of his handwritten setlist (actually the drummer’s, but I presume it’s John K.’s handwriting) revealed that the request had nothing to do with it and it was planned all along, but I’ll take “Sounds Familiar” any way I can get it.

Samson was sick and has put on a bit of weight, but his shiny resilience and abundant joy at performing was still present. We were about three rows back on the floor of the remarkably small World Cafe Live club and were old enough to have parented some of our surrounding attendees. John K. talked a lot and joked with the crowd about requests and seemed genuinely pleased with how nice most of the crowd was. And played a pretty long set considering his condition. Even more than the average show, this Weakerthans set came across as wearied and humble, but resilient, which seems quite reflective of the overall mood in general. The whole world is sick and tired, but we’re not dead yet. And, with luck, we still have something to say.

Night Windows
Tournament of Hearts
Our Retired Explorer
Benediction
Reconstruction Site
Aside
Relative Surplus Value
One Great City! (John K. Samson solo)
Sounds Familiar (John K. Samson solo)
Bigfoot!
Plea from a Cat Named Virtute
The Reasons
Sun in an Empty Room
Left and Leaving
Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist
Manifest
—
Utilities
Civil Twilight
Everything Must Go!
Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure

As promised, we procured an original setlist. Please note that the encore was changed from “Pamphleteer” to the two closing songs listed above. No other changes seem to have been made on the fly…

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

When I lived in Oregon and wasn’t attending sixth grade, somewhere between my acting life and my speech and debate life, I opened a play directed by a friend of my parents with a recitation of “Sea-Fever” by John Masefield.

The poem is brief (briefer than I remember), but conveys powerful imagery of the pull of the ocean and its eternal hold on those who sail upon it. I was adorned in a cap not unlike what I’d worn as Oliver Twist (but newer and nicer) and some sort of scarf that the director had determined sufficiently aquatic. Despite these elements of costuming and the placement of a stage beneath my feet, I think this may have been the birth of my understanding of the power of spoken words. Not the magic of theater, in full regalia, which I’d long known and loved, but the actual power and presence of mere strings of syntax, dramatically spoken.

Of course, there was my third grade talent show rendition of the Gettysburg Address, which I remembered made a couple teachers cry. But I’d been disappointed with my performance there, forgetting some words and feeling immense pressure. I had not felt the command over that performance that I did in the practiced rhythms of Masefield’s cadence.

It is somehow fitting to remember that preface on a night back from introducing members of the Rutgers class of 2013 to the basic tenets of parliamentary debate. Just as every word written makes for better writing next time, so every word spoken has led me to this point in my life. And perhaps I can forgive myself for sacrificing tonight’s writing efforts (unless I can start after completing this post) to the twin duties of education and navigation.

This last is the true inspiration for tonight’s title, for a navigation bar has been introduced to The Blue Pyramid for the first time ever. Over the course of the next few weeks, the navigation system will filter out through the rest of the website. The focal points of this bar also come with an acknowledgment that several projects have been archived, most permanently lost at sea.

I would like to say that this move will usher in a new era of updated content at the site, with quizzes and new projects abounding as long planned. I have learned enough over my millions of spoken words, of course, to know that such promises are of no worth. Either I shall make good, which will speak for itself, or I shan’t, which will undermine the promises’ purpose.

So I present what is done and will call it a night. Perhaps to write briefly before sailing for sunrise.

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Part 16 in a 16-part stately series pictorially documenting the Sojourn.

Thursday: Pennsylvania

We missed the entry sign for Jersey amidst construction. However, this is almost as good – the other half of the sign (not pictured) says The World Takes:

Our crooked rusty corner sign:

The Prius made it in good shape:

Tiny House!

Inside Tiny House – it’s tiny:

I had not intended to grow facial hair on the trip, but my razor broke on the second day. This is thus a follicle chronicle of our journey:

Em was tired, but had time to come up with the brilliant idea of pool floats as mattresses while we waited for our stuff (and did a puzzle):

That’s it for the Summer Sojourn – hope you’ve enjoyed this pictorial odyssey. Next up will probably be some rendition of the India & Nepal 2008 Trip, which I was doing a decent job of posting about right after it ended, then was unable to keep up during new day job obligations at Glide. The daily content/series thing is fun, though I wonder how relevant it will feel almost two years after that trip. That, at least, has words and pictures together, since I kept an extensive journal on that trip (which didn’t exactly materialize in this year’s domestic venture).

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

I spent the weekend at my first APDA tournament since Nationals 2007. In my new role as coach of the Rutgers team, I was ensuring that the team could get there (they have significant transportation challenges) and getting an early gauge on the lay of the land.

Returning to a regular APDA tournament (Nats just feels different, especially if one is in the tab room as I was in ‘07) was pretty surreal, though I adjusted fairly quickly. I was surprised at how many people I did know and recognize, most of them freshly minted dinos who are many years my junior. Of course, there were also a slew of people who became three-dimensional for the first time – people I knew pretty well from APDA Forum Werewolf games that I’d never met or seen in person.

The tourney was at Hopkins and I had a chance to see Freez and his (relatively) new place, which is pretty swanky. The original 1904 hardwood flooring definitely being the highlight there. The entire weekend featured buckets of rain, including visibility-limiting sheets on the drive down, which probably aided our getting lost and almost mistakenly heading to Washington DC. Though after this summer’s cross-country trip and some more recent events, I’m seriously starting to doubt the quality and veracity of Internet driving directions.

Surreality aside, I really love APDA and being back in the thick of the community. I enjoy judging, though close calls give me a sensation approximating what I imagine an ulcer feels like. I enjoy the quality of the discourse and the intellectual caliber of the people, something rarely assembled so consistently and thoroughly in any other environment. I’m not going to go so far as to say that APDA is wasted on the young (I certainly appreciated it at the time, as do many of its participants), but maybe it’s more to say that APDA ages incredibly well. Even after college, it’s time well spent. It horrifies me even now to think how close I was to not joining when at Brandeis and how fervently my high school advisers told me there were better things for debaters to do in college than debate.

The Rutgers team did well, going 3-2 with losses only to break teams, and speaking impressively. It’s an auspicious start to what looks to be a breakthrough year. We have no fewer than four (4) meetings this week, serving as an intense week of novice training to prepare for the Swarthmore Novice Tournament in two weeks, so the intensity will not ramp down for some time.

Last night, I had a classic school anxiety dream, mostly about going into my senior year at Brandeis. I had my own place that was nicer and larger than I had reason to think it should be and a slightly different course schedule than made sense. But I spent a lot of time thinking about how not to waste the year, how to appreciate it, and how to make sure to get my diploma.

I woke up, quickly realizing where I was in real chronological time. More importantly, I realized that these dreams will be back in force for the next two years.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.