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jsilva14
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Name: Jamie
Country: United States
State: California
Birthday: 12/20/1991
Gender: Male
Interests: Cooking (i cook a lot of our family's lunches), photography, Speech and Debate, and baseball
Expertise: I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles.
While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees a
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Member Since:
4/11/2006
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| Well, I was very busy these last 3 months or so, and I see that I have
not posted since before the Santa Rosa Tournament. (you know you have
been in debate and speech a long time when you organize your memories
by which tournament they happened nearest to.) I tried, for a few
excruciating moments, to recall all the Interesting Occurrences that
occurred in that time, but sadly, my brain is on strike from
OverWorkage, and hence refuses to tax itself excessively. This means
that I will skip forward a couple months to Nationals. I hope that this
alarming lack of coverage will not cause extreme dissatisfaction with
my efforts in this post: if it does, I would like to remind you that I
am not paid for this, and therefore have an amazingly slim work ethic.
Preparing
for Nationals, I expected gavin and I to hold our own against the
competition, but not necessarily to win a significant portion of the
rounds we debated. So we departed by plane to the Land of Toastiness
and Humidity, stopping by Atlanta on the way.
Does
anyone notice something strange about that? We flew an extra 300 miles
or so East, past our intended destination. I surely don't know why. If
I had known, I would have brought a parachute and requested to be let
off if/when we were over Alabama. Prolly would have been faster...
A
Fun Thing happened when we were in the Birmingham Airport, involving
those Revolving Doors you always see. Well, Tommy goes in one, and
tries to make it go the opposite direction by means of steady pressure
applied to its side. I think thats what he was trying to do... At any
rate, it stopped dead, and, with tommy stuck inside, took its time in
tentatively jerking its way around. Tommy escaped, and it appeared that
all was well. Then some people came along, and decided to use the
injured exit machinery. Bad idea. It let them in, and then stalled when
they were securely lodged within. They were understandably concerned,
and investigated the interior of their unexpected prison with
heightened curiosity and alarm, such as is seen in rabbits who have
only recently been introduced to a cage. Perhaps pitying their plight,
the doors began to move, haltingly, hesitatingly, with many jolts and
jerks of pain. As soon as they were able, the harassed set of travelers
continued on their way, with a newfound appreciation for the outside
world which is rarely found except in those who have seen their access
to it flash before their eyes.
Tommy, I, and a couple
other knowing bystanders during this time were in an interesting state
of shock, anxiety, and downright enjoyment at the spectacle before us,
pleased that our brief stay at the baggage claim had been met with such
entertainment, but also fully aware that at any moment, a TSA official
could walk up and place us swiftly onto a path leading to immediate and
prolonged incarceration at the nearest local detention facility.
In other words, it was hilarious and awesome.
So
we went to our hotel, with the unfortunate name of "Drury Inn." If you
don't understand, say it out loud, and slightly fast. To the untrained
ear, it is remarkably akin to the adjective "dreary," which is used to
describe things/places which are dank, cold, confining, uncomfortable,
and in all ways depressing. Abandoned shacks, decaying dungeons, and
victorian-era stonewalled orphanages come to mind. So when you inform
some polite inquirer that you are staying at Dreary Inn, they
immediately laugh heartily at your accommodations and mourn your bad luck.
However,
this hotel happily did not live up to its conspicuous title, but
instead gave out free soda at all hours of the day. I took full
advantage of this excellent opportunity to decay my teeth, and consumed
large quantities of root beer during our stay. Our traveling abode also
had the sort of "Totally Complimentary and Completely Free Breakfast of
Deliciousness!" thingy going that a lot of hotels seem to be picking up
on these days. The reason for the popularity among hotels for offering
free morning meals is (in my opinion) that all they have to do is bump
up the cost of the stay a bit, to pay for the meal. In return, the
guests feel that they are being treated to a convenient, free
breakfast. It feels free, you see, cause you don't have to be taking
dollars from your wallet At The Time you get your food: the cost has
been factored in beforehand, and added to your bill. Our room had these
placards in it proclaiming to its inhabitants that breakfast was "FREE!
HOT! POPULAR! COME EARLY TO AVOID LENGTHY LINES OF FRENZIED CUSTOMERS
YEARNING FOR OUR WONDERFUL EATS!" These words, complete with an
accompanying photo of two white-aproned, spatula-holding chefs standing
behind the breakfast counter, conveyed the pleasing impression that
breakfast could be expected to be the highlight of your stay.
Reality,
with its depressingly reliable Facts, proved otherwise. The scrambled
egg was an insipid, soggy affair; the sausage was uninspiring and
greasy, and the french toast was dry and inedible. I kept my
consumption to a minimum, and was thankful for the spiffing food my
mother had brought along.
So we stopped
at the facility the first day, and it was nice, I guess, although
somewhat confusing: each room had like six various entrances to it,
each with its own separate little corridor. Therefore, there were a lot
of corridors and pathways n stuff. There was also a gym, in which we
played basketball and football. My shot was off in basketball, and I
only had one good game, but in football I did a bit better.
About
our rounds: they were nearly all tough and hard-fought ones, with lots
of fun. The teams were nice, so it was an awesome experience. Except
for the fifth round, in which the room was filled with toxic
gray dust from the non-functioning air conditioner. Several spectators
experienced unexpected lung failure, and had to be carted out of the
room during prep time. Because of the disturbing lack of breeze, the
temperature rose to (as a conservative estimate) 116 degrees, but it
felt more like 130 with our suits on. Purely by chance, I'm sure, the
judge only remembered to let us take off our suit jackets After my 2NC,
which was by far my worst speech of the tournament. I do not function
properly in Sahara-like conditions.
In spite of setbacks like these, we broke, and quietly lost the first
outround, thus ending our year. It was a great one, and i enjoyed it
immensely.
So, that was Nationals. Now I spend my summer days sleeping, eating, and playing ping-pong. Its great fun.
Now for the Closing Thoughts:
- Its really smoky
- I like drawing diagrams, perhaps too much
- I'm reading Moby Dick over the summer
- I will never be good at Halo
- Ping-pong requires good reflexes
- Coldplay is skilled
- I'm teaching latin
- I still haven't thrown out my debate evidence
- We had lightning & thunder a couple days ago
- It was surprising
- Summer is awesome
Jamie
| | |
| After San Diego, we settled down for what we thought would be like
almost two months without tournaments, Concordia being the next one in
state. But we came up with this awesome plan to go to two out of state
tournaments in a row, namely, Virginia and Colorado. We stayed with
relatives in Maryland. It was crazily windy there, and cold. I think it
was generally around 25 or 30 degrees, with gusty and cold winds. What
leaves were left on the trees rattled in a brisk manner, noisily
awaiting their respective turns to travel. Those leaves which had
already fallen were immediately whisked away, no match for the stiff
breeze. It was a common occurrence to see little swirls of leaves being
rushed down the road. And it wasn't just leaves that got blown around:
bits of trash, papers, bins, and small children could often be
observed, helplessly being relocated.
We liked to see how far down we could lean into the wind without falling. We could go relatively far actually...
In
spite of the frigid conditions, no snow fell. It was a letdown. I mean,
as long as we are getting frozen to bits, we might as well get some
snow...
So then we went to Virginia. On the
way, there was this bridge that turned into a tunnel and went
underwater. It was pretty cool. I'm not sure how many other people do
this, but some of us enjoy holding our breaths under tunnels. Its a
nice little pastime, and isn't generally that hard. Except this tunnel
was like 2 minutes. I took two breaths the first time, and then on the
way back got it in one. Gavin, being a swimmer person, did it pretty
easily. I was jealous.
At Virginia, there was the tournament. I was doing Extemp and OO.
Now,
I had done pretty good in Extemp up until this tournament. All the
speeches I had done had articles, were 7 minutes, and were ok in
general. All 4 of them. I was pretty optimistic about it, even though
this is my first year in extemp. Normally I am not.
The
first round was ok, the second was bad, and the third was abysmal. No
articles, and worse, no knowledge of the topic. It was sad. I forget
what the topic was, but it was something crazily obscure.
OO
should have been a lot like that: I had just written it the few days
before we came. Mommy had been saying for a while that we were going to
have to write speeches, but we didn't really get started until she said
she had signed us up for OO in Virginia and Colorado.
Then
we got busy. The clickety-tap of the keyboards became a constant
background to the tournament preparations. Our lives became like those
of squirrels that procrastinated too much, and now skitter around and
gather up millions of nuts for the coming winter.
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Jamie waxes eloquent, pouring forth flowing streams of incredible
prose. The result is several lines of such blinding genius that anyone
looking directly at it would experience severe eye damage. For your
safety, this paragraph has been removed. We now return to Jamie's
safer, more normalized writing style.
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
So. Um, yeah. That was cool.
We memorized the speeches in the couple days before, and
even at the tournament we were still a bit unready. As a result, we
educated many, many trees.
But I was able to break. 
Of course, not to finals, but still. it was cool.
A
note about the campus: it was pretty massive, and seemed like it was
carved out of one huge brick. There weren't a ton of buildings, but
they were spaced about half a mile apart from each other. There was
golf-cart service sometimes, but not others. I got a ride once, to the
farthest away building. While on the cart, we passed many students, who
did not have carts to ride in. They would shake their fists at us as
best they could, weighed down by their debate binders, tents, extra
shoes, and rations for the trip. It really was quite a long walk.
In
debate, we debated a lot of awesome teams, and almost pulled out with a
qualifying slot. But we didn't because we didn't have high enough
speaker points. Of course, it was a bit disappointing, but phil and
stefan qualified, so that was nice.
I think the reason
we lost the last round (or one of them) is that I basically hadn't
eaten anything except some toast that day, so I was really hungry, and
consequently, didn't have much energy. I was about as energetic as an
underfed beetle.
So we went back to MD, slept, got up, and left for Colorado. At least it seemed that fast.
My
Extemp woes continued full force: I had no articles for the first 2
rounds. And it wasn't (much) the fault of the box. I got asked about a
recent natural disaster in Mozambique. There were a couple problems.
First, I didn't know what natural disasters had happened. Second, I
didn't know mozambique existed before that round.
And that was the easiest of the three questions.
Gavin
was smart. He got the same questions, and after finding that we had no
articles, he put his sore throat to good use, and didn't do that round.
I would have discovered a sore throat or something too, but I didn't
know that skipping out was an option.
While there, me n some friends came up with another Great Business Idea. We call it "rent-a-friend."
The
purpose of this service would be as follows: say there was this mom and
her kid who were visiting somewhere that the kid didn't know anybody.
All they would have to do is call the local "rent-a-friend", and they
will send over a bunch of amiable little kids to a designated area.
Then the little traveler will have lots of fun. As an added bonus, the
customer could outline a couple of his/her kid's interests, say,
football and star wars. Then kids with the same interests could be sent
over. (If they didn't have the same ones, then they could get a 1 hour
crash course on whatever was needed).
So anyway. we debated a bunch of awesome people, and we qualified. It was pretty crazy.
Now I'm making Gavin cookies, cause thats what you have to do when you n your partner qualify.
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Jamie gets bored of wasting his time on a post, and goes away to waste
his time on a bunch of other things. During this time, three more
tournaments occur, and the next real debate tournament is nationals.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This year has gone by rather quickly.
Heres something interesting about tournaments. A big theme throughout
is how the trophies don't matter a whit, and how it is all about great
friends and preparing for Greater Things in Life. now, I quite agree
and all that, but it is sort of funny how it all plays out. Like, there
is always a speech on it near the end, right before all the awards are
handed out. It goes like this.
(Speaker): Sure, these awards may mean a lot to you now, but soon the
excitement will wear off, and they will be about as meaningful to you
as so many dirt clods. If you get an award, then you can be sure that
by noon tomorrow you will regard it as a mere paperweight or
pencil-container, and a pretty shabby one at that. By evening you will
be packing it away in an old cardboard box to hide away in the darkest,
dustiest corner of your attic, so that when you grow up, you can bring
it down again to triumphantly prove to any that are interested that
awards really are stupid and meaningless.
(the audience nods and murmurs polite assent)
(Speaker): Alright, now! what you've all been waiting for! its time for AWARDS!!!!!!!!!!
(the audience claps enthusiastically, and pays very close attention to the remainder of the ceremony)
It is humorous.
being as how I have a headache and school to do, I will close, as usual, with random observations.
-Charles Dickens was pretty clever
-I need dinner
-Biscotti is great
-So are blueberry preserves
-I should think about something else
-Summer is no longer an eternity away
-But school still seems to stretch on for like infinity
-Facebook is a major timesuck
-No, I don't spend a ton of time on it
-The internet as a whole is a major timesuck
-I prolly spend too much time on that
-Playing basketball ROCKS
-Playing basketball makes me SORE
-And, as usual, life is good.
now go be happy.
-Jamie | | |
| So. Here’s what’s been happening lately.
1. My Birthday happened.
This was extremely fun. To begin with, I got to skip my
latin class! Score! Cause of course they can’t make me do school on my
birthday.
Next, the dinner was crazily amazing. And the dessert. Just
to make y’all jealous: the dessert was Butterscotch
Cream Pie. Homemade!!!
Finally, the New Stuff was great! The highlight was a new
camera: those of you at San Diego
probably got a little glimpse of this, teehee. It’s a Canon A560, 7.1 MP, 4x zoom,
and 100% awesomeness factor. I love it.
2. Christmas happened.
This was cool as well. I made cookies, lots of cookies. We had a couple relatives over and basically
chilled. Nothing else really happened, which was nice. We needed the rest.
3. San Diego
happened.
This section might be a bit longer.
*flexes fingers*
In order to start at the appropriate starting place, I’ll
start where it all started, with the Preparation. Right before the tournament
we had this Big Day at our club, where all these people did their best to rip other
people’s cases to shreds and stamp the remains into fine powder. All for the
best, of course, but its darn disheartening. Its like watching a favorite pet
that you have nurtured from childhood suddenly get snatched from your caring,
kind hands and subjected to a harsh and rigorous examination that leaves it
badly injured and gasping for air, with its self-confidence and self-esteem
completely smashed. Its very hard to watch.
So anyway, that happened to us and it was very sad.
Now, I said “us” up there, but that’s not quite correct. It
was just, only, and solely me. Gavin, my partner, was not there. “Where”, you
might ask, “was Gavin?”
The simple answer is “skiing”. Yes. Whilst I and our case
were getting grilled to bits, he was hitting the slopes, in total ecstasy and
happiness.
Of course, he needed his vacation and all that, I guess. But
I missed him.
Oh, and he got this awesome black eye. Apparently his 360
execution isn’t all it should be, teehee. He got needled about it so much at San Diego: “Hey gavin, I
hear cross examination has been getting a bit rough!” “Has Jamie been beating
you up again?”
Ha. Very humorous, but it got old in a hurry. I’m sure he
got tons of extra speaks as a result though. And it worked perfectly for his
duo! He’s playing this tough criminal dude, and it fits right in. Everyone
watch that duo, cause its darn good.
So in short, we were not able meet before point loma, but we
were still reasonably prepared-ish.
So we went to san
diego and had lots of fun. I did extemp for the first
time, and that was pretty cool. It was hard though, and very nerve-wracking. It
was really neat, cause I predicted something that was proven right the very
next day! I said that Obama would beat Clinton
in Iowa, and
I was correct. Its not normal that your predictions get tested so soon, though,
so this is pretty special.
Debate was awesome as well, and we all had a good time. Gav
and I broke, won an outround, then lost to connor and jorgen. Kind of sad to
have to debate your partner’s brother. It shouldn’t happen.
But on the upside, T & J qualified! Yay! Not that we
didn’t know it would happen, but still! Its always nice. Congrats to them.
One of the best things about the tournament was not
something that happened, but something that did Not happen: it was supposed to
rain a Ton on the last two days and make everyone miserable, but it didn’t! It
just rained a bit, and then it was just mostly-ghostly with all a bunch of fog
n stuff, but that was no problem at all.
After the tournament, we got to go to the Weisman’s house to
hang out n stuff! It was so fun! But before I get into that, I’d like to tell
you a bit about the Big Ordeal of getting there.
First, the hotel keys expired. Apparently the hotel makes
them not work after 10 o’clock at night. What a silly practice! We didn’t know
this at first, and our room was on the 3rd floor, so we went to
great lengths to get in. First we went up to our room and didn’t have a key, so
joey went down to the car, got one, and came back up. It didn’t work. We
assumed it was just malfunctioning, so then I went down to the car and got my
key and tried it. No good. So we went down and got more keys and used those. We
were pretty tired after all that up-and-down stuff. That’s when the elevator
started messing up.
Now, I didn’t know that elevators did that, except in a
scary movie or something. Of course, I might have expected it with this
elevator. It goes crazily slow to begin with, and the day before a friend of
ours had smashed a soccer ball against it. We think that may have been the
cause of its sluggish pace. If I ever invent an elevator, it will go 20 mph up
and 30 mph down. The walls will be made of glass so that people can see how
fast they go. Sometimes, as a Fun Prank, the elevator will sway from side to
side while zipping downwards, and a small crack will begin to open up in the
floor. Also, the doors will be able to
be operated from a small room opposite the elevator, and they can be made to
shut on people and lift them partway off the ground, just for a little thrill.
No seatbelts or seats will be provided. In short, this elevator would be only
for the Brave and Fearless.
Where was I.
Oh yes. So we got into this elevator, and pressed Floor 3,
since this was where our room was. It brought us up to floor 2 and stopped. No
movement for about 10 seconds.
Spoooooooooky!
So we started pressing the Other Floor Buttons, and finally
it went back down to floor 1, whence we had started. We jumped out, thankful to
be alive, and went to the Weisman’s house.
We watched “Live Free or Die Hard” there, which was a really
cool movie! It contained four key elements of movie-awesomeness:
1. Explosions
2. Hi-tech stuff
3. Action
4. More explosions
We enjoyed it, and we stayed up until 3 A.M. watching it and
talking. I was thinking “wow, we stayed up darn late! Probably everyone at the
hotel has been sleeping for hours now.”
Apparently they stayed up til 3 or so too! And they probably
didn’t have such an awesome movie to watch! Plus, the hotel fire alarm went off! At 4 A.M.! And it kept going for at least 10
minutes, ruining everyone’s night’s sleep. Except mine and T & J’s , cause
we weren’t there! HA! And then it kept on going off multiple times as the rest
of the night wore away, cause they were testing it or something.
Oh, and by the way, there was no fire. At all.
In compensation, they gave everybody in the hotel that night
for free. So there was an upside.
My elevator woes were not over, cause I went in it again the
next day right before we left. Now, having experienced such trauma the night
before, perhaps this was not the best idea. But I was very tired and worn out,
and was therefore operating under the Intellectual Capacity of a Walnut. (be it
understood that Walnuts are not known to have a large intellectual capacity).
So I went in it again and this time it stayed on floor 2 for
like 60 seconds. It was scary. Finally it let me off at floor 1, and I used the
stairs for the rest of the time.
The last thing that has happened is:
4. Sickness happened.
For those of you who think otherwise, I would like to state
that this is (SURPRISE!) not fun! All this koffing and dizziness n stuff. I got
sick the day after we got home from San
Diego, so I’m pleased that I wasn’t sick During the
tournament.
But its been pretty bad. If gathered together and stacked in our front
yard, all the mustard plasters, pills, kleenexes and assorted medicines I have
used would be high enough to let everyone passing by know that someone in the
house has a darn bad cold.
Its been getting a bit better today, which is nice.
Finally, the Random Notes:
-Latin is back
-Politicians are strange
-My camera rocks
-Speaker awards are fun
-Chicken soup is good
-My current temperature is down to 99.2. Celsius. not.
-I need more sleep | | |
| Decomber 19th...
Due to the tremendous outpouring of support I have received,
I will gift y’all with another post. However, Facebook is apparently taking
over the posting-stuff-online-world, so, rather than miss out, I will join its
army. In practical terms, this means that I will be putting all my posts on
Facebook as well.
So. Debate has continued, with all its awesomeness. We just
had the last round robin of the year, and it was a lot of fun. We debated some
cool teams, and I, surprisingly enough, was not very nervous. I know its just a
practice tournament, but always before I’ve been all tense n’ stuff, so it was
nice to be all relaxed. I’m not sure why that was the case, and due to the
circumstances it would seem that it would be more stress-ish.
Let me explain.
To begin with, we weren’t super prepared: I had just written
some stuff into our 1ac the night before, and it was all first-draft-style. I
just popped in a whole bunch of background stuff and deleted things from the
mandates and left it like it was. So it wasn’t very polished. Plus, on
negative, we still haven’t gone over all the negative evidence and made sure we
knew it all…
Next, there were difficulties getting to the tournament.
See, it was held at Redwood
Christian School.
So I put “Redwood
Christian School”
into the Mapquest search. It came up with one result, and it seemed to be in
the general direction of where we wanted to go. So we went there, and there it
was, but there were no debaters. No signs. It was just this big building with a
couple trucks in front. There were also a few bewildered parents of debaters
driving around looking for any sort of clue as to what was going on.
In short, we were forced to get directions from my Dad’s
blackberry that his company Just gave him like the day before. Without we would
basically have been “sunk”, as it were.
Just out of curiosity, how many other people had that problem? Do you
guys know?
So anyway, we got the directions, and it turned out the
Other Redwood Christian School was only about 15 minutes away, which, although
it could have been worse, was still far enough away to make us get there Just
Barely in time for the first round. I mean, it was very close. My dad pulled
up, let us out, and we zipped into our respective rounds. That was where I
found out that I had forgotten my water bottle, which is a major problem for
me. I need water in rounds, badly.
But in spite of this, I wasn’t very nervous. I hope that
continues for San Diego…
In other news, I am doing Extemporaneous Speaking this year.
This is mainly just so I get to go to the speech tournaments, but its still
fun. I made up the awesomest slogan for Extemp: “Its Xciting! Its Xtreme! Its
Xtemp!”. For short, you can call it “the X trifecta” or something like that. I
plan on writing that motto on a bunch of pieces of paper in cool fonts, and
then bringing them to the San Diego
tournament and taping them onto various things: door rooms, debate bags,
people’s suits. That should be cool.
Also: I went to a sharks game! Yay! I went with a good
friend of mine, and our seats were just spiffing: right behind one of the
goals, maybe 15 rows up. We were Right There. A number of cool things happened
at that game, but the Sharks Winning was not one of them. snif. The other team
(Anaheim) had
just gotten back their star defender, and it showed. The Sharks just couldn’t
get many passes strung together, and barely ever had a chance for a good shot.
About the cool parts of the game: I got to take home a Real
Practice Puck, actually used by the Sharks right before the game! See, after
the players were done practicing, the maintenance people came and cleared all
the pucks off the ice. We were right where they came off the ice, so we yelled
or something, and they tossed a puck up to us. It was all icy and wet and worn
down a bit from all the practicing.
They also had these little contest-thingies all through the
game, and we almost got a pizza thrown to us. It went just over my head and to
the people next to us. If I had been a bit taller I woulda caught it. I guess I
need to grow a bit. Short people probably miss out on 20 or so Things Thrown in
Stadiums over the course of their lives. Next time I’ll just bring a stool.
Also, I saw the tv announcer person right below us getting
filmed live! If anyone, perchance (ooh, good word), was watching the game, and
saw Drew Remenda talk from right behind the goal, then that was what I saw too.
It was a little like Extemp: he had his little paper (like a 3x5 card), and he
practiced a bit before he went live (like extempers do in prep time), and then
he straightened his suit and tie (extempers do that too), a red light went on
on the camera (like the timer starting), and he started talking (like, um,
extempers talking). He looked so pro. It was like, first he was this guy in a
suit. Then the camera started rolling, and he adopted the Commentator Manner
that commentators have, which was way different than his normal manner. First
he was looking kind of hungry, a little cold, and he was just chatting with the
camera-person all friendly like. Then he looked and talked like a tv announcer:
concerned yet informative, critical yet hopeful, with complete confidence and
enthusiasm.
It was pretty cool.
Oh, and one other incident. After the first period, I went
out to get a drink, cause I forgot to bring one. I expected, and was met with
exorbitant prices, but hey, its all part of the experience. (If anyone who
arranges prices at Big Events reads this, he will probably laugh evilly,
exchange high-fives with his exuberant co-workers, and raise the prices a
couple more dollars.) So anyway, a 40 ounce cup of soda was $3.25. Also, you
could buy a soda in a Commemorative Sharks Cup of Plasticity, which cost $5.50.
I didn’t really pay much attention to that but simply walked up and asked for a
sierra mist, with no mention of their pricier option. The cashier must have
been well trained. She, with one swift movement, deftly whipped out a
Commemorative Cup, filled it with sierra mist, slammed a lid on, shoved it over
to me, and demanded $5.50. It was pretty smooth.
Now, I didn’t really recognize what had happened, and
assumed there was maybe a 1.2% chance I had just read the price wrong. Besides,
even if I was paying too much, she had already gone to all that trouble to fill
it up with flat soda…so I couldn’t hand it back…
Those were my thoughts at the time. But, looking back, I
probably could have handed it back. I donno.
Historically, I have had a hard time correcting
misunderstandings with people who want to sell me something. Once in Maryland, I was walking
by this Food Stand outside of a store during this townwide Massive Sale, and
the lady behind it asked me if I wanted a soda. I thought “hey cool, I didn’t
know they actually gave out free stuff!” Out loud I said sure, I would like a
one. She obligingly handed me one of those 12 ounce mini-cans, and I started to
walk away. She called me back, requesting a buck fifty. Seething, and seeing as
how she had already opened it, I paid.
Probably those seller-people notice when young,
easily-taken-advantage-of children walk buy just so they can do things like
that. Maybe I can file a class-action suit against them. Anyone want to go in
on that with me? (you can, for only* $10.00)
So anyway, I was ripped off. Oh well. Things like that
happen to people.
They just happen way more often to people like me…
Anyway, the game rocked. Thanks to my grandpa, who gave me
the tickets
Random Notes:
- Its cold
- Christmas Music, albeit awesome, is crazily overplayed
- I still haven’t had any eggnog
- And I haven’t made Christmas Cookies
- I always rock at white elephant parties
- Latin Exams are a form of Purgatory
- Candy Canes dissolved in hot chocolate are awesome
- Johnathan Swift is pretty much brilliant
- So is Milton, but he’s harder to read
- Debate is cool
- Christmas is coming up on Tuesday
- My birthday is coming up tomorrow
Since this is around Christmas, there is this big craze
about Spreading Christmas Cheer. I will join in on that, by telling y’all to
BE CHEERY!!!
Later!
Jamie
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Hey all. I figured I'd put up another update...
So, lets see, when did I last post. I think it was, oh, about a month ago. hm
Well. Is the browser ready? Is the keyboard? How about the readers? Ok, (smiles genially) lets begin.
"By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it in unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece."
According to G K Chesterton, sometime between 1874 and 1936
This
quotation clearly sums up my stance on this post: if you don't like it,
that probably means that you are shallow and unappreciative of a great
and amazing masterpiece, thus clearly illustrating the need for you to
read this with an open mind, and leave lots of happy comments.
Having
said this, I'd like to just go down the list of Things that have
Happened Lately, and really just be showing how I'm doing, whats going
on, and the rest of it all. I will be addressing these in the order
they happened to me, unless I get muddled.
But first I'd like
to basically boil this post down to three main topics that I consider
to be the Most Important, those being debate, school, and
miscellaneous, and i'll basically relating all my points to those
topics. And I'd like you to be considering these points through the
"lens", as it were, of "would you ever like to see me ever post any
more?" I think this is what you should be considering because I spend a
lot of time one these posts, and I wish for some comments and feedback,
etc. So when looking over this post and wondering whether or not you
should comment, I would like you to keep what I mentioned in mind.
Lets start off with the first topic, that of "debate."
As
you might be able to tell from the beginning of this post, I am the 1A
on my team, and often have to go through a lot of issues in a short
amount of time. Its fun, yet challenging.
Since the last post, I went to 2 debate tournaments, santa rosa and clash (yay).
At
Santa Rosa, we went 2-2, which was pretty good. Its rather funny: I
have this philosophy--"the less you expect, the more you get." This
translates into an Especially good philosophy in debate, where, despite
the judge always being right, it is often found that rightness can take
very unexpected shapes. So when walking out of a round, I think "hey,
although we debated ok (maaaaaaayybee), there is basically no way we
won. No chance. Their arguments, while bogus, had a convincing ring to
them, and the judge didn't like our speaking style or something: I
think she wanted to hurl her pen at me, spear-like, during my last
speech, and thats no surprise." So by the end of the tournament I
generally am telling myself that we have set several new records for
Terribleness at Tournaments. Then, if we don't do well/break, I am
resigned and composed. If we do, then that makes the happiness all the
more happy. So I like the system. Deep down, though, I usually think
that we Must have done well. But I try to quash the thought. And it
usually works pretty good.
So anyway, about santa rosa: I was
going along, debating, and persuading both the judges AND me that we
were not fit to have a winning record. I was a bit sad, cause I wanted
to be in that final round. Then, as the final round drew near, I
realized that the team in the final round would have to reveal their
case to a whole horde of fast-flowing, hard-researching, insightful
debaters and coaches. In short, the case could get cut down before it
even had a chance to raise its head a bit.
So: I didn't want to be
in the final round. Then, I felt this nagging worry: what if I Was in
it?!? Oh no! It could happen! Then, as if by magic, my opinions about
the rounds began to change...suddenly, it seemed that we were prime
candidates for being the top seed: after all, we had spoken pretty
well, and judges Must have been impressed by my nice new tie! And just
like that, I was thinking that we were guaranteed to be in the final
round, and then our year would collapse right there.
Boy, have
I trained myself well. I was sooo pleased that I wasn't in the final.
Many people would be sad, but not me. I was psychologically prepared.
yay.
So anyway, the tournament rocked, except for the fact
that no one brought basketballs so we couldn't use the gym much. But
other than that, it was nice.
Then, Clash came. The 2007 round
robin, that is. And it was good too. Once again, I knew things were
going awfully. And this time there was no nagging belief that it wasn't
true. None. It was funny, because I talked to my mom at lunch, and she
was a ballot-stuffer so she knew my record (it was 2-0 at the time),
and I was telling her about how sad the rounds were going, and she just
nodded and looked concerned, and I just chomped my shrimp sandwich, unaware
that, with a couple of words, she could have upped my confidence about 600%. I guess ballot-stuffers are bound by a secret
oath or something not say anything about what they discover. Oh well.
In
short, we went 3-2 with 12th place. So that was cool, especially since
I just had NO idea that there was a chance of us getting one.
My
partner Gavin and I got almost Exactly the same speaks at both
tournaments: the first one there was a difference of three, the next we
were tied. We appear to be well-matched.
The second topic is School: this should be shorter, cause its NOT AS IMPORTANT! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Anyway.
I'm still doing latin, as I will be this Whole Year. We are up to about
50 lines of Virgil per week now. Its hard. The class is pretty good
though, for an online one. Everyone is very un-silly and relatively
clever, so it goes pretty well. This is in stark contrast to some of
the other online classes we are taking, in which students show an
alarming penchant for straying far, far off topic, being silly, and
other such things. It can get annoying. I mean, I would not mind if
they just made erroneous points (cause I am a prime contributor of
those), but they insist on getting off-topic n stuff.
In English
Lit, we have been on a Shakespeare binge lately: first we read Macbeth,
then Richard the 3rd, and now As you Like it.
Macbeth was spooky,
but sort of cool. Richard was not quite as enjoyable. Its a neat
contrast: Macbeth is very unsure: he is like a nice, noble man turned
bad. Richard, on the other hand! He basically says that (surprise!)
he's as evil as evil can be, and he wants to
kill everyone he can. So he does. And thats pretty much the whole play.
At the end, as it fitting, he dies too, along with his whole army and a
bunch of other people. Quite blah, if you ask me. Ole Bill tried to
liven it up a bit with
bits of drama n tragedy n poetry n such, but it gets rather old after a
while. I bet he started writing this play, and he thought "man, I have
waaaay too many characters. Lets see: that guy has a funny name, he
should get killed. That one is, um, well, he just annoys me. I can have
him executed early." I also imagine
that all those people who went to see it back when he was writing them
didn't understand a thing that went on, they just went cause it was a
novelty and the actors had cool costumes. I mean, they couldn't even
read
along with the program or anything cause they didn't have them then.
But I digress. school is cool. (ish)
Final section: Miscellaneous ( I did spell that right, so ha)
First, I now only have to wear brace elastics half the time! yay! but I still can't get the braces off until april.
Yesterday I went to the orthodontist, and they gave me this very interesting document. Let me explain.
It
was a form that informed me I was now in my orthodontist's Kids Klub!
How exciting! In this klub, you can earn points by doing special
things, and once you got a bunch of points then you got to pick out a
gift card to some restaurant!
"Sounds great" you say, "but what were the special things?"
Let me tell you what those were.
If
I show up on time, then I get 1 point. This is not much, cause I would
need like 20 or so to get something. Plus, this is supposed to be a
"patient motivator" program. However, I am not in control over whether
I get here on time! I cannot drive! So that is silly.
I get 3
points if I buy a shirt with my orthodontist's name on it and then wear
it to the appointment. So it is considered 3 times more important to
wear the shirt than show up on time. But it gets better.
For having clean teeth and no broken brackets? 2 points. Once again, not as important as wearing the shirt.
For obeying his commands with regards to wearing the elastics? 2 points. I guess that must not be very important.
But heres the zinger. If I refer another patient to him, I get ----------10 POINTS-----------
you
read right, ten points. So I could show up late with three broken
brackets, dirty teeth, and not having worn my elastics one bit. BUT! if
I refer a patient, i get twice as many points as i would have gotten if
I had done the hygiene stuff. Shows where the priorities are, I guess.
I plan to to ask him about that in my next appointment.
In other news, we got a mac mini. After roughly 5 years of pleading by
joey, we got one. Its kinna cool, but he's the only one who knows how
to use all its sweet stuff, so we will have to be taking classes from
him or something. He can tell you a bit more about it in his next post.
Ok, well, I think that covers everything. So for all these reasons, and many more, I would strongly urge you to comment.
Thank you.
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