Oh Man, You Guys. Oh Man.

So:
I participate in this tangentially scholastic activity called Lincoln-Douglass Debate. It's named after the debates between Lincoln and Douglass for, you know, president. That was how they rolled, back in the mid-19th century.
My coach really wants us to win, a lot. Gee, does he want us to win. In the pursuit of a shiny plastic trophy to grace his cold and empty mantle, my school-chums and I have been slaving away at his child labor-law-violating Potomac Debate Institute, practicing tactics for the year's resolutions.
There's a list of ten possible resolutions, of which five have been or will be selected.
This is one of them--
Resolved: Governments ought to make economic reparations for their countries' historical injustices.
I dare you to tell me this isn't a blatant Bruce Robbins.
Good God, I could have so much fun with this thing. I can dress as Bruce, and instead of actually delivering my speech (which of course will be composed wholly and solely of quotations from Lama Robbins, as I have taken to calling him), I can just skim it in front of everybody, summarize select paragraphs, and then pause to criticize the bald lack of logical reasoning ability displayed throughout. Best of all, during cross-examination (in the course of which your bumbling and incompetent opponent attempts to articulate a question in comprehensible English as you stand awkwardly by, tracing the bottom of the podium with your toe and admiring your own minty-fresh breath-- thank you Doublemint Gum-- spit out into a wastebasket before the round commenced, of course-- or surreptitiously stuck to the underbelly of a cold metal desk-- there's a whole universe of chewing gum underneath desks in college and high school classrooms if you'd only bother to look, pocks and crests like a lunar surface), I can snarkily brush aside all my opponents' questions. "You're very clever. Very clever, but very wrong." The judges will love that. And when my opponent asks me for the credentials of my evidentiary source?

"Some say he was born the son of a nuclear bomb and the complete works of Martin Heidegger--"

What more could you ask for in an academic? Or, for that matter, in a man?

Sorry I've been more or less incommunicado for the past 3 weeks; in addition to debate I've had to set some other affairs in order. Wow, sounds like I'm dying.

I'm not.

I'd like to write about how thrilled I am by the Larry Craig Scandal, but I have summer reading to do, so that's a topic for another day.

The former Senator and I send you our illicit, steamy, airport-bathroom love and affection from the nation's capital.