The Cat’s Pajamas was our Toastmaster today.  And yes, the meeting was easier than herding cats.

Biscuits was in charge of Table Topics, digging way deep in toastmaster history to pull some repeat questions given to other groups and other speakers.  Biscuits chose the Emperor, the Tarot Reader, and the Goat Whisperer as victims.  The Goat Whisperer didn’t win the ribbon but had some very funny whisperer moments (some would say stroker).  The Tarot Reader drew the right card with the topic of why men are the superior gender, making it clear that the weaker gender has long since thrown in the towel and accepted reality.

Bradleybones ate too much halloween candy and talked about having self control, or the lack thereof.  He preached to the choir on how to improve this aspect of life and essentially precommit to the right option.  The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment showed how children reacted to the temptation of eating a marshmallow versus withholding instant gratification for a larger marshmallow payout.  Many years later, the same children were revisited, showing that the children capable of delayed gratification were more successful and scored higher on standardized tests.  There were some analogies of precommitting to the right option – such as getting an alarm clock without a snooze function if snooze is your problem.  There was a reference to Odysseus and some sirens – I’ll have to pull out my anthology of literature book to figure that one out.  Oh, but that’s not possible, I burned that book when I was done with it.  Long live non English Lit majors!

Melonhead gave a seminar in photography, distilling it down to three easy steps: The art of the “L” and the 1/3rd rule, get off your feet, and fill the foreground.  The 1/3rd gives balance and uses empty space, and the L was demonstrated with a photograph of a violinist – a remarkably calm photograph given the hectic marketplace that our transplanted Texan took.

Muscles gave a technical presentation on backups with convincing reasons to back ‘up them ‘thair data – with amazing tornado footage (you’ve probably seen the footage as well and just didn’t know it was from Muscles).  This is the first installment of a multipart speech, so if you’re not yet convinced of the virtues of appropriate backups, the next video will likely feature a flood or someone using the CD Rom tray as a coffee holder.  Golly.

Samy and Mr. Burns tied for best evaluator.

Biscuits had the best usage of the word of the day, homophone, loose wrist and all.

Ribbon Winners:

  • Best Table Topics – Matching Drapes
  • Best Speaker – Scooter
  • Best Evaluator – Mr. Burns and Samy
  • Most Enthusiastic – The Cat’s Pajamas
  • Best Use of Humor – Matching Drapes