from the mouths of dweebs

If I didn't spend most of my social life shepherding students to debate tournaments, I'd probably... well... blog more. (I've never had much of a social life; when I was in high school, I was the one being shepherded.) This past and present weekends have been spent at the University of Puget Sound, surrounded by adolescent nerd angst and nerd angst denial--teenage debaters, and their slightly older college peers.

Today, for about two hours, I watched Student Congress, and there were enough moments of stultifying ignorance to fill an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. A few favorites:

• The kid who said that we ought to outlaw gay adoptions because "those children who are diagnosed with homophobia won't be able to handle not knowing which is the mommy and which is the daddy."
• "And in the Kashmiri town of Maflablalala Flaballa... whatever..."
• The argument that teenagers shouldn't vote because they're not eligible for the draft. Just like women... hey... maybe they shouldn't vote either...

More tomorrow, I'm sure.

Update: Perhaps because I was parliamentarian and didn't have to actually listen to speeches, Saturday didn't contain nearly as much idiocy. Except for one gem: "If we put an embargo on India, we'll inevitably have another World War II... um... I guess that would be World War III."