Impromptu Speaking

If you are a reader of my blog you will know that I am doing speech team this year. Well, another tournament has come and gone, and although sock monkeys did not fair as well as I would have hoped (4th place) I have some interesting and entertaining stories from another event that I participated in. My coach signed me up for impromptu speaking, senior division (the most experienced division). I have given a total of 1 impromptu speech in my entire life, and that was on the first day of speech class. So, needless to say, I was a little nervous/concerned.

HOW IMPROMPTU WORKS:
You enter a room in which you are alone with a judge (unless there is somebody there that wants to listen to you, which is rare). The judge gives you a piece of paper with three topics on it. At this particular tournament all the topics were quotes. You have 30 seconds to read the topics, pick a topic, and think of a speech to give. You then proceed to give the paper back to the judge and deliver a 5 minute speech to the judge.

WHY MY EXPERIENCE WAS MEMORABLE AND BLOG-WORTHY
Strangely enough, there was somebody present to watch each of my impromptu speeches.

• SPEECH 1 was my worst because I had never done impromptu before. My topic was "dying on your feet is better than living on your knees". Now, avoiding the obviously sexual approach I could have taken with this quote, and not wanting to be philosophical, I went for a strict interpretation. My judge was fresh out of high school so I knew he'd appreciate it the humor. I spoke for five minutes about how shoes were more cost-effective, efficient, and stylish than knee-pads. The random guy in the room and the judge both thought it was hysterical, but the organization was terrible because I ran out of ideas really quickly. Whenever I thought of something I said it, whether or not it was organizationally correct. At one point I even got on my knees and held a mock-debate. Yeah, it wasn't pretty, the word "floundering" comes to mind. Anywho, I finished the speech and left. I didn't get my score or rank until later, but I'll show it to you now just so that you don't have to wait:
  
  
  
  Yep, that would be first place in that round. Terrible organization and frantic speaking earned me 1st place and 25 speaker points. Speaker points tell you how well you spoke, kinda obvious, but I felt like telling you anyways. Either the college guy just liked me, or everybody else was REALLY terrible at impromptu speaking. But yeah, I guess it didn't go as terribly as I thought it had.

SPEECH 2 was an actual attempt at a good impromptu speech. No trying to be funny, nothing weird, just trying to give an impromptu speech. There were three people watching this time, all friends of another of the speakers. My topic, another quote, was something like "I began just by writing poetry. I didn't know I'd grow up to be a poet". Terrible quote, not a lot to work off of, but I did my best. This speech was boring and not really part of why I wrote this blog entry, so I'll be brief. I spoke about how young children are influenced without their knowledge, and often grow up to hold professions that had something to do with what they acted like as a child. My 3 examples were athletes, firefighters, and social workers. I felt like I did well, my organization was sound and my examples all made sense, and my speaking was fluid. All in all, a boring speech but a well done speech. Here's my ballot:

• SPEECH 3 is the reason for this blog. By the time this speech rolled around I was feeling more comfortable with the whole impromptu thing. A friend of mine watched me this time. My friend was sitting on one side of the room, the judge on the other. Of the three quotes I picked a quote by Yoda: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I figured I could make this fairly fun. I started with a standard intro, about 20 seconds long, that talked about how emotions dictate peoples' lives and actions. Now it was time for my main points. Here's what I said (not word for word because I didn't actually record it, but here's a very accurate script):

Fear is an emotion that everybody has experienced and an emotion that I am experiencing right now. I've never given an impromptu speech before, this is my first tournament with impromptu, and I'm in freaking Senior Division?!?!? (yes, I said freaking) This fear, this overwhelming fear is leading me to anger. Anger, not only that I'm here, but towards my coach, because I mean COME ON! What was he thinking?! I've never done this before! It makes me want to go up to him and yell [I raise my fist to the sky and scream as loud as I can] "Mr. Curry! What is wrong with you?!?! I HATE YOU!" This hate towards my coach is derived from the anger I began with. Hate also manifests in other ways. For instance, not only do I hate my coach, but I hate you, the judge, for just sitting there and staring at me. You think you're so special, being able to rank me, but you know that you'd rather be at home eating ice cream! This hate leads me to suffering, suffering in the realization that I just told you that I hated you, and that I stereotyped you as a fat lazy judge who is bad at his job and would rather be at home eating ice cream!

This ranting and raving continued for quite a while. It was a nice release of any tension or nerves I had built up. I'd have to say though, the greatest part of all of it was that no matter what I did it always supported one of my points. Here's a list of things that I said that I used to support my main points of my speech.

1. [after I slur my speech and mess up a bunch of words] I am angry that I messed up my words, leading to the suffering knowing that I will be marked down for it!
2. [after realizing that I skipped straight from anger to suffering, forgetting hate] And now I am afraid of what you will do to me because I have forgotten what the quote actually was. That fear leads me through this vicious cycle again!

I'm doing pretty well at this point, my friend is about to wet himself he's laughing so hard and the judge just keeps shaking his head laughing. I was about ready to roll into my conclusion when, to my horror, the judge held up two fingers. I had two minutes left to speak! I'd already said everything, and I was just rambling going back through all my points again and again. So, what did I do? "It is absolutely impossible to describe the suffering I am going through right now, because you just had to hold two fingers up and make me realize that I have nothing else to say, so I'm just going to rehash everything over again! Just so that YOU can share in on the suffering!" Cue gasp of air taken by my friend amid fits of laughter. So, yeah, I rehashed all my points and eventually made it to the end. I finished off my speech and just kinda stood there. I turned to pick up the paper I had the quote on and handed it back to the judge without actually looking at him. I just left the room in shock. I got outside, so did my friend, the door closed behind us, and then I freaked. OMG! What did I just DO!?!?? I'm insane! Friend laughs. OMG! Friend laughs. Other speakers waiting in the hall kinda just look at me, one asks if I'm all right. OMG! I just kinda started laughing nervously, explained that I'd just spent the last five minutes yelling and telling the judge he was fat and stupid, and that I had to go now. We left, I was still kinda numb. Here's the ballot from THAT speech:

Yes, that's right, I got FIRST FREAKING PLACE!!!!! Full speaker points, 1st place! If you look at the bottom left corner of the ballot you can see where the judge wrote down the topic of my speech, just so you know that I'm not lying to ya! WOOT! I was very excited about this ballot, but remember, I didn't see this until the tournament was over. Until then, I had no idea how well I did.

That was the end of impromptuing in normal competition. After three speeches they announce the people who broke into finals. To my amazement, after two crazy speeches and 1 normal speech, I had actually made it to finals! I grabbed somebody from my school to come watch my finals performance so that in case I did anything crazy again I would have a witness.

• FINALS SPEECH was also an interesting experience. By this time I had realized that being a goofball paid off. I went into my final round and this time there were 3 judges and my one friend. The judges require some description. One appeared to be a college guy, looked cool enough, I knew I could get a few jokes out there and that he would appreciate them. Another was a middle-aged woman, I knew she'd be kinda hard to please, but not too bad. The third was, to be honest, a hard-a**. I went he never looked up when I went in, he was very strict about timing and topics, and he spoke down to me. He, I could tell, was going to be VERY hard to please. So, the mindset I put myself into was I'm only going to be able to please the college guy, the other two are kinda lost causes. I'm not going to win with one vote, so I might as just pull another Yoda and go down having fun! I got my topic, which was "Sometimes it is safer for a man to lie than to be honest". Cue hilarity. I spoke about ex-wives, bosses, and in-laws. My ex-wife story was, in a nutshell:

You've just gone through a nasty divorce settlement, and you WON! You took her house, her car, her clothes, her shoes, her BABIES, and everything! Now, she lives in a cardboard house in NE Salem begging for garbage. The next week, to add insult to injury, you walk by her on the street with your hot new blond girlfriend. Your ex-wife staggers up to you, begging for a popcan, and notices the blond bombshell. "Who is she?" your ex asks. Now, this is when you kindly tell your wife that this poor women was lost and you were just helping her find the UGM. If you don't say this, your ex will probably shank you, stab you with a piece of glass, you with whatever other CRAP (yes, I said crap) she has in that grocery cart next to her cardboard house. No, lying is safer.

This is pretty much how the rest of the speech was like. The boss part of the speech was about getting caught smoking pot in the lounge and the inlaws one was about not telling your inlaws that you have wild-animal sex with their daughter (yes, I said wild-animal sex). Again, I finished this speech up and was just stunned. What had I done?!?!? I had said crap, shank, pot, wild-animal sex, was I insane? The only reassurance I had was that my friend gave me a thumbs up, and that all the judges (including the one with the stick up his butt) had laughed or smiled through the entire speech. There were a couple of raised eye-brows, but that's to be expected. Anyways, I finished, and then sat and listened to the other speakers. When everybody had finished I left. I only ended up with two of the ballots from the final round so I don't know how I did on the third. I've only put one of the ballots on this blog (unless you count the picture of all the ballots, it's on there). Here. . . is that ballot:

FIRST PLACE!!!! Woot!1! If you read closely you'll see a line concerning my wild-animal sex line. Yes, I was telling the truth. Now, my final score for the entire tournament is based off of all three judges, so if this judge is the only one that liked me then I could still come in last place. Want to know what happened at the awards ceremony?

AWARDS CEREMONY

So, for awards, all the people in my impromptu round went on stage. There were 6 of us. They announced the 3 people that didn't place. I wasn't one of them, so I knew that I had gotten at least 3rd place and there were 20 people that had originally set out to compete. They called third place. It wasn't me. They called second place. It wasn't me. They called first place. It was me! I accepted it graciously, and just kept thinking "wow, insane"

END

So that's the story. I've never done impromptu, made a fool of myself, had a ton of fun, and got 1st place in senior division. My coach couldn't stop laughing! He said that I could insult him in every speech I gave from now on. It was a good experience. I recommend impromptu speaking, but only if you have fun. Here's one final picture of my ballots, including the one I didn't show from the final round. Thanks for reading, I know it was wrong, but I hope it was entertaining!!1!1 If there is any doubt to any of this, remember, there were witnesses in each round, and witnesses that go to my school in my two crazy rounds, so I can produce people to vouch for me!

Great Game on the Internet

I am totally addicted to a game I found on the internet. It's a massively multiplayer online role playing game. I know what you're thinking, only computer nerds that like dungeon and dragons play those types of things. Actually, I agree. But, this game is completely different! It's called UrbanDead (http://www.urbandead.com). Here's the setting, a huge city named Malton has been overrun with zombies. It's the survivors of the zombie apocalypse that now have to vanquish the zombies. You start the game as either a zombie or one of 3 types of survivor (civilian, military, scientist). The game is completely text based, save for a small grid that shows you where in the city you are located. During the game you wander around, either looking for zombies and humans to attack/kill. Or, perhaps you'd rather spend your time healing people that have been injured, it's completely up to you. So, let me give you an example. My character is named Ed Base and started as a civilian Fire Fighter. That means he started with an axe and a skill that made him better with his axe (by the way, a lot of people are scared of the word "skill" because it implies tons of confusing charts and percentages. This game only has 17 skills for survivors and 14 skills for zombies. This means that it's not confusing, believe me). So, I decided that my goal in this game would be to slaughter zombies. This is a good time to mention points. There are three types of points (again, this isn't really confusing, so don't be intimidated) called Action Points, Experience Points, and Hit Points (AP, XP, HP). Action points let you do stuff, whether it's move, talk, attack, go into buildings, leave buildings, anything. Doing something costs an AP. The only way to get AP is to wait, you automatically get an AP every half an hour for a maximum of 50 (this prevents wackos from playing this game for 24 hours a day). XP is what you get for healing people, attacking people, and generally doing important stuff in the game. Once you get 100 XP you get to buy another skill. HP is how much life you have before you die. You start with 50, and if you get down to 0 you die and wake up again later as a zombie. So, back to my character Ed Base. He wanders around and finds lone zombies, attacks them with his axe, and then hides in a barricaded building. Unfortunately for me, I get a little excited and sometimes run out of AP before I can get back into a building. That means I'm completely vulnerable for at least a half hour. Yeah, well, I normally end up dying during this period of innactivity and consequently I have ended up being a zombie several times. Luckily, there is a cure. Some people spend there time reviving zombies that want to be survivors again. So, anywho, now I've bought a total of 7 skills out of 17. Another great thing about this game is that there are no computer players. Everybody you see on the streets of Malton are actual people that are playing the game. Since the game is completely text-based even people with dial-up (like me) can play! Here's a screenshot (http://urbandead.com/screenshot.html) What's going on now in the game is a huge war known as Mall Tour '06. A huge horde of zombies (several thousand) are going from mall to mall attacking them and taking control of them. It is now coming to a climax at a mall known as Caiger Mall. I am one of 1,000 survivors in Caiger, all working together to defend it against the zombies. The game is as shallow and easy or as complicated and in-depth as you want to make it. It's possible to play and do great without getting really in depth because you can only play for about 15 minutes a day (AP). Now, for possibly the greatest part. There's this thing called the UrbanDead Wiki (http://wiki.urbandead.com). This is a huge encyclopedia of how to play the game, different organized groups, different skills, nifty tools, maps, and everything you need to play the game. The wor Wiki means that it can be edited by anyone, including you! So, now that I've told you about UrbanDead, I highly encourage you to go try it out. Even if you don't like it, just wander around and use up the 50 AP you start with and if you don't like it just end up out on the street. You'll die, end up a dead body, and just lay there, no need to ever return to the game. I highly encourage you to try it, maybe even come on over to Caiger Mall (but be sure to have free running. Don't know what that is? Check the Wiki!). Right, so that's my sales pitch, please please please try it! I'm going to go attack zombies now, bye!

Sock Monkey Status

Ok, so, yes, it's been forever since I've posted, so sue me. Here's my update on my sock monkey speech. I have officially given it at two tournaments with impressive results. Pacific Invitational is a huge 2 day tournament that had 30 people giving my type of speech. I made it to finals and ended up getting second place overall. Not bad for my first tournament ever! Ok, my second tournament was just last week and only had about 20 people doing my type of speech. Although the numbers were smaller, the competition was stiffer. I ended up getting third overall, losing to a speech about punctuation and one about the SAT's. So, sock monkeys are holding their own, getting tons of laughs, and will continue to play a prominent roll in the Oregon speech circuit. Wish me luck!

Standardized Testing

AN EXCITING DAY OF SAT'S!!!!!

Well, today is Saturday, and being an aspiring college entrant I partook in the fabled SAT's. Yes, I devoted 6 hours of my Saturday filling in small bubbles and listening to peoples' stomachs make weird noises in a small AP US History classroom. But, along with the SAT's come interesting stories and tales of my adventuresome life. I have decided to share these tales with you, but sadly I have signed a contract not to share any exact details about the test I took. Therefore, any information about the actual test will be censored in this blog until after I get my results, at which point it will be inserted. Enjoy and happy reading!

• I arrived at the location for the SATs at 7:30 AM. The test started at 8:00 so I waited around with a friend of mine. We talked about band, go figure. I realized that I needed to go see what room my test was in, but I didn't want to leave my friend waiting so I told her that I'd be right back. I ran over really quick to check my room and saw 211. I ran back and we continued our conversation. Then, the head lady stood on one of the tables and started yelling room numbers for people to go to. To my surprise, she was saying a LETTER before each number. I just listened and heard "R through S, room B211". Perfect, I thought, I'll go there. Last name range and number were both right. We were dismissed to go to our rooms and I started my search. I got very lost and ended up finding my way to my room. To my utter disgust I saw the words "Maintenance Closet" above the B211. "Well", I thought, "That can't be right!". I ran back down to the commons and checked my room number. . . . . . . D211. DANGIT! I ran around trying to find D211 and by the time I found it (it was hidden on the second floor) I was almost late. So, I was nice and out of breath for the beginning of my test. Lovely, eh!?!?

The SAT's concluded, I survived. Apart from the little mishap everything went well. I ended up with a 2030 on the SAT's and this blog entry is now over. I hope you enjoyed my horrible sense of hearing and direction. Ciao!

Clarinets!

So. . . this is cool. Clarinet players in marching band taking "to the box" to a whole new level. Like, wow, this picture is so awesome. We had to do something like this in a symphony I was in last year. During one section of a song we were told to raise our bells above the stands and play like in this picture. It was insane, much more understandable in this marching setting. Yeah, that's all for this entry, just a cool looking picture. 

That Calculator Post Update

Ok, remember the post that had the graphing calculator on it. . .the one with me complaining about not being able to use calculators on a test. Well, after being certain that I probably failed it, I got it back and, amazingly, I ended up setting the curve for it. How? Who the F### knows?!?!?!? We were allowed to use our calculators to "check" our work but we had to write all of our steps on the test. I couldn't do the steps, so I just did all of the stuff on the calculator, understanding that I would get half of my points taken away for not showing my work. Well, apparently, my teacher didn't grade the work, so I didn't lose hardly any points. I only missed points on the questions that I didn't answer. Also, I've decided that I'm tired of my math class and should just stop doing homework all the way and turn in partially done assignments. . .that strategy appears to be paying off. I'm still getting 100% on all of them. For crying out loud, I'm almost trying to get a bad grade in that class and my grade keeps going UP! I'm at a 99.65% with only half my assignments turned in and doing terribly on tests! I don't know what's going on, but I like it!

Rubik's Cube

If you haven't read the entry below this one, read it first. Once you've done that, this is a picture from that story. This is a picture of me on the cruise ship solving the cube. It's a little blurry because of the strobe lights, but it's still viewable. Pretty neat, huh! 

Rubik's Cube!

Rubik's Cube! I was thinking today. . .How could I not have made a rubik's cube blog yet? There was a period of time in my life where I was absolutely obsessed with rubik's cubes. I can still solve them, but not with the amount of speed and finess that I used to be able to do it with. I think my record is 25 seconds. . .but my average (without having practiced in a long time) is about a minute and a half. With some warming up and a good cube I can get it under a minute pretty regularly. I'm even a renowned Rubik's Cube Celebrity! On a cruise to Mexico I solved several Rubik's Cubes on stage in front of a packed, standing room only, audience of 2500 people. There were strobe lights, fast music, and lots of screaming and yelling, it was pretty intense! Anyway, this is a picture of the 25th anniversary cube that I'm buying today, I just thought I'd show it off. It has a silver side instead of a white side, pretty spiffy. Let me know if you want to know more about rubik's cubes or how to solve them, I'll help you out. 

Math Frustration!

Today I had a Pre-Calc test. Pre-calc is easy, I like Pre-calc (except for my teacher, but we'll get to that). Anyway, today was our test. I was all ready for it, ready to set the curve and everything, but that was before we got the test. We got the test and I saw my entire world crash down before me. Most people say things like this, but this was an actual "Oh my Gosh, I'm so screwed, what the HECK do I do?" moment. At the top, scribbled in messy handwriting was "No grpahing calculators allowed". Alright, so, basically this sucks. I love my graphing calculator, I use it religiously, I'm the only kid I know that can actually use every single function on it. I could ace this test with it, but the DAY OF THE TEST they tell use we can't use it. Nevermind that for all of the homework we could use it. So, this is unfair. The other classes knew they weren't going to get to use them, but we had a sub last time and they neglected to tell us, so we were surprised. Therefore, because of all of this, I am quite certain that I may have failed. Parabolas are much harder to graph without calculators than with, and domains and ranges are also a little trickier without calculators. So, basically, I'm really angry because I just got taken advantage of and completely raped by a math test. GRRRRRRRR! Oh, and I hate my teacher. The End. 

Things not to do

An event occurred at the last home varsity football game of the season, which was this last Friday (11/4/05). Despite being one of the funniest things in the entire universe, it's not something I recommend doing, because people will be laughing at you, not with you.

I am, in case you didn't already know, a member of the marching band. It's our job to provide the peppy music for the games. It's also our job to, if necessary, provide national anthem music. In the last three years, maybe longer, we have never had to perform the national anthem at a football game, but this year was different. For this last football game they let a band-ite play the national anthem on his alto sax. Now, I'm not mentioning names, but this is a pretty roundly disliked band-ite. I, more so than others, dislike him immensely (he doesn't have a very high moral character). Several of us band peoples were wondering how he even got picked to do it, but that didn't matter so much.

Game time, we're waiting for the national anthem. ________ has left for the press box. The announcement comes on "Now for the national anthem, performed on the alto sax by ________." He starts playing, doesn't sound so great over the microphone, plus, every time he took a breath it was really audible because he was right by the microphone. He made it through the first half, then he took a big ol' breath to start "And the rockets red glare" and totally fracked the first note. This is where the "Things not to do" title of this blog should be applied. Exasperated, he stops playing, takes a big breath, and says "Oh shit" right into the microphone.

REACTIONS

• BAND KIDS: Maniacal laughter caused by absolute shock and vengeful gratification. I, for one just covered my mouth and started laughing hysterically. I looked over at my friend and he looked like he was about to die laughing, he kept saying "What!?!? What!?!? What?!?!? OMG, What?!?!?"
• STUDENT SECTION: Similar to band kid section, only louder and more widespread (there being more students than band kids). Student section was slightly more entertained because they dislike him more than the band kids do.
• PARENTS: Wow, parent reactions were exactly as one might expect. Less laughter, a lot more "What a disrespectful kid". Parents were more angry, students were entertained at the fact that parents were going to be angry and completely rip apart ________.
• FOOTBALL TEAM: Similar to student section, only more so even. They laughed so hard that I think they might have hurt themselves.

AFTERMATH:

• _______ was taken by his father into the band room after his performance and given the reprimand of his life. The reason (other than the obvious) for such a reprimand? _______'s entire family was present for his solo anthem. His godparents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, in all about 10 people, and they all heard his golden tones echo across the stadium.
• Well, let's think about this a little bit. As I said, it was the LAST home game, and it was during our NATION'S SONG that he swore. You think there might be a little anger on the part of, I don't know, everybody listening?
• EVERY SINGLE BAND KID now has ammunition against him. If he ever insults any of us, all we have to say is "At least we didn't cuss during the national anthem". There, we win, no contest.

ALL IN ALL:

So many of us have been waiting years for something like this to happen to _________. Now many of us are thrilled, because we thought we would have to prompt it in some way, but he did it all by himself! Yay! Ah, public ridicule and embarrassment, it's a glorious thing.