T3B85

Working on my English debate... :) I did this debate once for Worlds impromptu as Proposition and now I'm on Opposition. :) I'm really glad I get to research this resolution and find the examples which I can FINALLY understand. XP

The motion is THBT democracy is the best form of government for every nation.

Last time, as Proposition, we talked about how great democracy was, and Opposition just brought up singular examples about successful governments that weren't democracies. Our judge gave us (well, them, but for this debate, us--a different us) some good advice about actually making a case instead of just giving examples. Okay that last sentence did not make sense. What I meant to say was that the judge gave opposition good advice, so since I'm Opposition this time, it's good for Tania and I, but at the time, they were opposition so it was good for them.

Anyways. Moving on.

That debate was Erica's first debate and we faced this really, really aggressive debater. (Erica's just like that debate scarred me for life haha) They brought up good examples (which we can now use! yay! :D) but Tania and I are going to try to come up with an actual case instead of just refutation.

There were a whole bunch of awesome one-liners from the debate. So the 3 most memorable quotes were:

(This was what the quote was responding to: "Side Opposition has only given singular examples of unsuccessful democracies.") "Actually, we gave you 5. Basic counting skills." (OH SNAP)

"Assert, Assert, Assert. That might as well have been Side Proposition's caseline today." (That was scary. That was really, really scary. note: Caseline = one underlying principle that sums up your case.)

"All Side Opposition has done today is use aggressiveness to hide the fundamental flaws in their case." (OH DANG SNAPPY COMEBACK COURTESY OF MARGO)

Yeah... so the debate ended being this insult match... which is not the best for a debate... but it was funny XP I'm really looking forward to this debate. :) (Not the insults part, the actual debate part)

T3B84

Ageless debate.

T3B83

OMG PEOPLE ALWAYS MAKE JOKES ABOUT THIS BUT I FINALLY UNDERSTAND THE REFERENCE:

Also I never understood why instead of saying "mind blown" people say "mind = blown" but that might just be me.

Because mind blown is like saying "my mind is blown" but mind = blown is like saying "my mind is blown"... OH WAIT I GET IT NOW! :D

Haha for the longest time I thought it was mind equals blown (which it is) but I literally just realized that you say mind is blown not my mind equals blown.

But it does look funny. :S

T3B82

LOL I'm a hardcore PJO fan but I don't get it. :S

T3B81

We have a science test tomorrow.

I haven't studied yet.

I'm going to study now.

T3B80

Everything in my life is so ironic right now.

MSND? Ha! Dramatic irony.

Bad Blood? Ha! Verbal irony.

Irony. What a wonderful thing. (#Shakespeare, a little XP)

T3B79

I love this guy: #my favourite phrase to use in debate (obtw my favourite word to use is fundamental. Just so you know. XP)

LOL anyways, I found this on the PJO fandom and it's really funny. (Do not befriend someone who would do this to do. XP)

LOL TROLL NOPE

T3B78

It's been a week, and Taylor Swift's new Bad Blood music video has already had almost 71 million views.

Have you noticed her music videos are getting soooo intense? Same thing with Katy Perry--she once said that her paradise would have been princesses and fairies but now it's more of a power-girl thing (like Roar).

This is kind of interesting, because it's almost becoming like kind of a trend. Before, women were typically seen as the weaker, gentler gender. But now, girls seem to want to be seen as the power-woman--the one who can do anything and everything.

This reminds me both of Michelle's feminism oratorical and Emma Watson's HeForShe speech.

I haven't listened to it all the way yet, but basically it advertised equality, not one gender over the other. I think, society wants some inequality, or else why would it keep things changing yet still with power imbalance?

It might also have something to do with age. When you're a really young girl, you're all about princesses and castles. But as you grow older, a lot of girls see a more, sort of, powerful well rounded image of themselves.

I dunno. This is all very interesting. Just some trends that I notice, despite my very limited music-listening.

T3B77

LOL SOMEONE MUST HAVE BEEN SO BORED WHEN THEY MADE THIS:

http://www.boredbutton.com

It took me to FreeRice, and I remember we did that in grade 7. Basically, whenever we went to the computer lab and we didn't want to do work (XP lol) we went to the FreeRice site. It's for a really good cause, though--for every question you get right they donate 10 grains of rice to someone in need. Play it for an hour and you'll have made someone's day a lot better. (I did the calculation. approx 3 seconds per question, give or take a few seconds depending on your internet speed :P which makes 20 questions per minute, times 60 is 1200 times 10 grains is 12000 grains of rice. According to the FreeRice website, 19000 grains is enough to feed one person for a day, but that's based just on rice. So you can make a little difference through your little acts. :))

http://freerice.com

OBTW I also found this: (#queenofbadpuns)

T3B76

We should use this for guidance for English. :) Performance on Wednesday and I'm so nervous!

T3B69 - 75

Ugh. Sorry I haven't blogged in a week. :(

I've been caught up in a lot of stuff... I've been really busy this month. Speech provincials, then junior nationals, then residential... I'm really excited for this weekend because it's the first weekend I'll actually get to do work. I'm actually kind of glad I don't have speech nats because I'll get to rest a little.

(And do work, obvs. XP)

LOL I saw this once and this is kind of like the slippery slope thing for debate, where you can take any situation and make it nuclear war.

I should actually do that... I've never done that in a debate before... }:) MWAHAHAHA okay.

OBTW WE'RE HAVING A SECOND ROUND OF DEBATES IN ENGLISH <3 <3 <3 SO HAPPY

Something totally random XP:

:( I heard Fred Weasely too.

T3B68

This is what we're doing for our year-end sci-fest booth.

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/gold-pennies

SCIENCE!

T3B67

Okay! Junior Nationals!

OMG. It was SOOO awesome. Although it wasn't as hard as I thought, but that might have been because we didn't really go against really good teams (which would have meant we were bad...?) Maybe we just have a really strong region, so we're used to harder teams than usual.

The first two teams we met were okay. They weren't bad, but they weren't as sophisticated debaters as I was used to. Maybe that's also because we face a lot of grade 10s in our region, and they're most likely better than the grade 9's. Maybe that's because I got better. Maybe that's because I was expecting too much. :S

Anyways, the rounds were pretty good, and I learned some new strategies for impromptu prep, plus some new language and organizing strategies for a case. I definitely learned a lot, and I'm really glad I went. :)

AND THE TABS CAME OUT AND I DIDN'T COME IN LAST AND I'M SOOOO EXCITED! AND HAPPY! EVEN THOUGH WE HAD SUCH A LOW NUMBER OF WINS AND OUR TEAM WIN-LOSS RECORD IS PRETTY BAD OUR SCORES ARE HIGH SO YAAAAAH!

:D Sooooo happy.

T3B66

ALL OF THEM <3

T3B61, 62, 63, 64, 65

I'm having a crappy day today.

So it only seems reasonable that I post this image.

:(

1. the nice person 2. the optimist 3. the environmentalist
4. the chef 5. the jester 6. the businessperson

^This guy UNDERSTANDS me

I really appreciate all these cheesy and random when life gives you lemons variations.

Oh. Haha. I meant, "lemony."

Okay that was actually the worst pun in the history of puns, that didn't even make sense. NEVER MIND I SAID NOTHING XP

Anyway, I know I haven't posted for a long time, but that's because I was at Junior Nationals, I'll blog about that tomorrow... when I'm hopefully having a less crappy day...

Ironically (or maybe unironically) someone got this quote at Speech Provincials (impromptu): "Smile though your heart is breaking." And it was pretty cool the direction she took it in--she started by observing that it was completely contrary to what modern-day society tells us, yet she used a personal story to explain how she agreed with the quote after a while. It's pretty amazing how many directions you can take a topic in.

T3B60

Working on my resolution... *cough cough*

In actuality: browsing the PJ fandom

#FANGIRL

OMG the Stoll brothers are legitly so awesome. (Yes, autocorrect, I know that's not a word!)

OMG LOLOLOLOL #DEBATE

T3B59

OMG, the speech provincials were just AMAZING.

I learned so much. I felt kind of like this weekend was wasted, though, because I didn't do my best--but one person mentioned at our celebratory lunch that you learn a lot.... unless you do well. So I guess this wasn't wasted--because I learned a lot. XP That was kinda complicated.

We had lik 8 rounds, which is A LOT for a tournament. I could have done better in my debate rounds, I think I was just tired that day and I didn't do as well as I could have.

For interpretive reading, I think those were my best rounds--Mr. Hauck recommended me to read, "This is Water", an essay by David Foster Wallace, and it was really good. I found this speech (shortened) version of this, and I used that with a few edits, because it was still too long.

For persuasive speaking, I don't think my topic was "big" enough. A lot of the best speakers tackled really big topics, like drugs and poverty, whereas I talked about dropping math scores across Canada. I think my topic could have been bigger and more exploratory, which would have made it better. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

For impromptu, oh my goodness, it was legitly awful. It was (take a deep breath) calamitous, deplorable, lousy, pitiful, sad, unfortunate, unsatisfactory, woeful, terrible, made me want to cry of how bad it was, etc.

Okay, no it wasn't that bad, but it sure seemed like it at the time.

So, you notice that the really good speakers are creative and can make any topic into a deep, worldly problem, arguable topic.

This one guy got something like, "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." a quote by William James.

AND HE SOMEHOW MANAGED TO TURN IT INTO NEGLECTING THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES BY FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES

AND I WAS LIKE WHAT THE HECK HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE WHY IS HE SO GOOD

LIKE WHAT WHAT WHAT

And I got like, "You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give."

And I didn't take it anywhere, I just talked about a contrast between a billionaire named John and a single parent named Mary. (I know, I have the best names. XP) AND I JUST TALKED ABOUT MONEY NOT BEING THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE AND I COULD HAVE JUST KICKED MYSELF

AAAAAGHHHH

Actually I just listened to it now, and it's not as bad as I thought. Maybe I banana-sundaes it better than I thought. XP At least, I sound more confident than I was.

My second round was... well, in some ways better, and in some ways worse.

The advice that Mr. Hauck gave me was to be creative--because they're not looking for the amazingly polished arguments set out in the persuasiveness, they're looking for your ability to take something ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary. My second topic was "Milk". (LIKE, MILK. WHAT ON EARTH??? WHERE DO THEY EVEN COME UP WITH THESE THINGS???) But then I thought about milk going sour (because my family's terrible at finishing milk. We don't like milk XP) and then I thought about friendships going sour. BOOM. MY AWFUL MILK/FRIENDSHIP ANALOGY WAS BORN.

I talked about how it takes a long time for you to meet friends (waiting to be picked up as milk), and sometimes it goes sour (same) but something good might come out of it--you could meet someone new (yogurt/cheese. I <3 yogurt, by the way, but that's beside the point.)

Anyways. It was kind of awkward.

Still, I learned a lot, and I'm super excited for the next speech tournament. :)

• star

T3B58

AWER8YI LAFKSJDN ;AKLSJDF;ALSJD;FLKJASD;FKJ  CAN WE JUST NOT OMG OMGGGG

AAAAAHHHHHH I'M SO SCARED NOW

Yesterday there was this huuuuuge wasp. Someone was like "Don't kill it, bees are dying" and I was like YAAAAAAS FINALLY SOMETHING I ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT but then I looked a bit more closely and I think it was a wasp. For one, it wasn't cute and fluffy like a bee, it was a lot darker and a lot bigger.

I think it was a wasp.

I think. (I hope.)

Because someone rolled his notebook up and smacked it so pro-ly it was just amazing.

Scenario:

Competitor 1: "OMG it's a bee." (Like, she said it really, really calmly.)

Competitor 2: "What do we do?"

Competitor 3: "KILL IT!"

Competitor 4 and me: "DON'T KILL IT BEES ARE DYING!"

Me: "Wait no that's not a bee, it's too big, that's a wasp. KILL IT!"

Competitor 5: *deftly takes out and rolls notebook, eyes target, slowly moves toward target*

Competitor 5: *SMACK* *one dead wasp, one smushed window, one clean notebook*

HOW PRO WAS THAT

IT WAS SO PRO I WISHED I'D RECORDED IT

It was so pro.

I know we're supposed to protect nature, and I agree, but wasps do absolutely nothing to society.




OH WAIT I TAKE THAT BACK--I just did a google search (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftQ6A3DKKeg) and apparently wasps can a. pollinate, and b. eat pests.

Huh.

I'm sorry, wasp. Most of the time you still are a pest.

T3B55, 56, and 57

LE SPEECHES ARE FINALLY OVER

YES

#AWESOME

#LESSSTRESS

#FREE

I'll blog some more about the strategies and observations tomorrow. :)

Meanwhile I'll just cram like 3 posts worth of photos in here :)

IS THIS NOT THE CUTEST PHOTO EVER OMG

I love it when normal characters are put into really cute costumes/drawing styles :)

Plus it fits them so well! Leo = fiery = Charmander (fire type Pokemon)

Jason = electric = Pikachu (electric type Pokemon)

Percy = water = Squirtle (water type Pokemon)

Frank = animal transformer = Ditto (this Pokemon that transforms into other Pokemon)

I never watched the TV shows/animes/movies and never played the video or card game, but I have an embarrassingly impressive collection of Pokemon books. XP