The question keeps nagging at me. Why aren't I playing Trivia?

Granted, there are a lot of things I'm not doing tonight — and probably that reflects poorly on me as a person — but my near-total lack of interest in this year's Great Midwest Trivia Contest is the asocial act I keep coming back to.

It's not like I can't find explanations for my behavior. I can think of probably a dozen reasons why I'm not playing this year, I'm sorry to say. And I wear one of my Lawrence Trivia XL t-shirts as I write that.

Still, there's no reason why all these "reasons," all of which I was well aware of weeks ago, should suddenly seem so overwhelming, so much so that I'd rather sit around reading than so much as tune in. In reality there's probably only one reason and the rest are just keeping it company. Unfortunately, the accusing parlor is in a bit of a state right now and I don't feel comfortable pinpointing the real reason without it.

In any case, good luck to the Nerds, still the best team on campus (we're talking intangibles) even without the Politician and the Twins. I expect to make a full recovery from my Trivia-related ennui in time to help with the Super Garuda this Sunday night.

On a more serious note, I wonder if the webcast-only format of this year's contest will put our "world's oldest college-based radio trivia contest" title in jeapordy.

Right now there's some doubt as to whether Williams College or LU started its contest first. I'd favor Lawrence, given the puzzling inability of Williams College to fix the month and day of its first contest — presumably this info is in some campus newspaper archive: now there's a good Garruda idea — but does our record still count if our broadcast isn't on the radio?

It's up for debate, but my take is that yes, it does. We're talking "oldest," not "longest-running."

There are actually some minor problems with our "world's longest-running trivia contest" status (trust the guy who constructed our news and contests archives — though unlike Williams we never missed a year). However, barring the invention of time travel and/or some new documentation from Williams, it's a fair bet we started first and that's not going to change.