yaaaar
So we get to York hella early, and wander around til registration begins. They let us name our team, instead of just "Peterborough Collegiate." Our first thought was "Thornhill A," but then changed that to "Leonard Nimoy," and then finally settled on "The Cheat is not Dead."
Then Molle showed up, and we headed over to the food court for dinner. Ethan and Neo and the rest of the Thornhill crew showed up, and then Adrienne from Northern. We all went back for the debater's briefing/show round, and hung out with the T.Hill Crew.
We were government on our first debate against some newbies from Northern. We owned them with "This house would endorse corporate sponsorship in schools." Next up was us opp'ing a debate about salary caps in sports. Yes, the shitty resolution from the Provincial Seminar. M@ slaughtered them with his obscene amount of specific knowledge garnered from watching too much sports, and I laid down the beats with first principles. I also made my "Mom, I want a Ferrari" argument, and actually called it that.
After the rounds were finished, the T.Hill Crew were all going to go back to Neo's. M@, Neo, and I were held up looking for Molle, so we figured that the others had gotten on the bus without us. Since Marina had Neo's bus ticket, we went over to the food court to get change. When I got over there, I saw Ethan trailing behind this big group of people. I got closer, and saw Corey kneeling in front of some big Asian guys. They were yelling at him "Say you're sorry, bitch." One of them kicked him in the chest, and at this point it had gone way too fucking far. I told them that the cops were coming, and managed, somehow, to keep my voice calm. Just like that, they walked off into the building. Mr. Shulman came up, and asked what had happened. After discerning that Corey was okay, he said that he'd drive us to Neo's. So we went into the building, turned a corner, and there were the Asian guys. Shulman started yelling at the top of his lungs "Are you the stupid fucks who were fucking with my kids?" It was so scary; think of a big guy with a crazy beard, sounding like he wants to rip your head off, yelling at you. Scary.
So, we ended up safe at Neo's. We chilled with her, Ethan, and Molle for a while, until it was just the three of us falling asleep to Princess Mononoke. We had pizza for breakfast, and then we were back to York.
Our first round was against Christine Wadsworth and some guy from LCC. Now, Christine is one of the best debaters in Canada; she placed third at the National Seminar. We'd been up against her before, at Thornhill, and won. We laid down "This house would abolish foreign aid," and raped her sideways with it. She was annhiliated, and the judge said as much: "Your speech had very little flow. Don't worry though, it'll come with experience." And he said this to her. Too good. As well, the jugde gave us tons of ideas for strengthening the debate, and called us "satanic fuckers" for cutting off AIDS drugs to Africa.
Next up was Alex Levy from Northern. The resoultion: Canada should annex an number of small island nations. Levy was fucking gold. You know, we'd get international prestige, control trade routes, get Canadians out of the cold, and so on. Golden. M@ wasn't too hot, and neither was the M.C., but I got up, and gave my best speech ever. I called the government "pina colada drinking losers," and made brilliant historical parallels with Japan and Greece. Levy's P.M.R. was as good as his speech, and he used the term "as patriotic as beaveres dipped in liquid Canadian flags."
So going into the hidden quarters, we felt pretty good. At least 3-1, maybe even 4-0. When we were prepping our government case, instead of doing procreation licenses, I had the brilliant idea of "This house would endorse a negative population growth rate." No, wrong, you fail Dave. We got fucking nailed.
We didn't make it to the semis, but Ethan did, and he was up against Levy. Alex laid down "This house would abolish marriage." It was such a loose case, but Levy pulled it off easily, even though he called Ethan's dad a "poof, and probably a fairy too."
The finals were Levy against the team that beat us in the quarters. Yet again, Levy pulled out a genius case: "This house would standardise penis size across Canada." Words cannot express how good he was, but I give you this quote, that really sums it all up: "Because really, Madam Speaker, who cares who wins? I'm up here living my dream. One of us is going to walk away with a trophy after a debate about penis size."
Levy is my god.
He ended up winning, because the opposition was somehow more offensive than he was. Ha, score.
M@ and I placed 7th as a team, with M@ narrowly missing 8th speaker, instead pulling 9th, and I was 17th. We should have run "Shut up hippie," or procreation licenses in the quarters, and taken them. We could won the semis too, since the other round was about protectionism, which I could own. As for the finals? Who knows.
Some new cardinal rules of debating:
Thou shalt not lose in the quarter finals against a shitty team, especially after being the second seed with a 4-0 record.
When in doubt, go for it.
And, most importantly,
Thou shalt always be pirate.