Exams

While writing my L.A. exam the furthest thing from my mind was in fact the L.A. exam.  In fact not very much was actually going through my mind at the time.  The same applies to me while I am writing this blog.  The same also applies tome while you are reading this blog.  No matter what time of day or night it is I am trying to get a little more sleep, eat a little more food, or play another five minutes of video games. 

The simple fact of the matter is that school begins to early and for the first hour of classes I am simply trying to wake up.  I then stay conscious for about five minutes, then try to fall asleep again for the rest of the day.  I would be willing to pay a mint for an extra five minutes of sleep in the mornings.

Exams just happen to take place at the perfect time for me.  As long as I write the entire exam in the first hour I will pass.  If the exam takes more than the one hour I am trying to wake up I then fall asleep again and don`t finish the exam.  Lucky for me the L.A. exam was amazing.  The exam consisted of copying a letter that I prepared in advance.  The rest of the exam I just happened to not notice.  The most likely reason that I didn`t see the rest of the exam is that I fell asleep, reraising the issue of school being too long and starting too early.

The Couch Wars

Roger vs. Bell.  This is the story behind all the pictures of blue and red couches.  First I will describe the Rogers Campaign and then I will describe Bell’s counter-campaign. 

This is the Rogers campaign.  the blue and red sides are equal, but with one difference.  The red side/Rogers costs $25 less than the blue side/Bell in phone bills.

A week later Bell came out with it’s counter-campaign.  The blue side is much bigger than the red side.  representing that you get a lot more TV channels with Bell, for $25 less every month.

Rogers was just entering the phone industry at the time and so therefore lowered their prices to attract customers.  At the same time Bell was just entering the TV business and so they lowered their TV prices.  Either way both companies dropped millions on advertising.

Year End Trip

The end of year trips in middle school have always been the one thing to look forward to (other than school being over).  This being  said, there have been some good trips and then some bad ones. 

In grade six we went to Pine crest.  There our activities were fun and we were busy doing fun stuff.  The same cannot be said about our grade seven trip.  At Tanamakoon our activities consisted of: staying out of our cells during “free time”, standing on the docks over the water we couldn’t swim in, and playing bump with a deformed basketball and a tumour. 

The grade eight trip is rumoured to be the epitome of year end trips.  The trip consists of taking a coach to Ottawa where we get to spend time in the city.  We then go to Quebec where we are treated to a ghost tour.  Then we go rafting on the Ottawa river.  All in all it should be the best trip by a long shot.

Social-Networking

Yes a lot of people use them but not all.  I am one of the few people on this planet who do not have a Facebook account.  To me it is near a complete waste of time.  Simply having the option of going on Facebook instead of finishing homework is becoming a problem for many people. 

The whole idea of a social-networking site is that you meet new people and share information.  The problem with the information being shared is that you do not know who is seeing yours and you don’t know if the information you are seeing is legitimate.  This lets people be someone else online.  It also lets people access information you may not want them to.  Though the idea of Facebook is good people have twisted it and now use it for purposes that it was not originally intended.  Just remember, be careful.

Justin Bieber

Many people have very strong opinions about Justin Bieber!  Mine is that he has been crafted into what people want him to be.  That is very respectable because he is making more money than he could possibly use.  For that sole reason he is awesome. 

For those who say that he sucks I cannot honestly say that their reasoning is poor.  Justin Bieber does what he is told to do, and nothing else.  He also can’t sing.  Unfortunately there is nothing I can do (shot of killing him) to make him stop singing.

For those who say that Justin Bieber is an amazing singer I have no comment other than that what you know and see of him is what the producers want you to and nothing else.  For that reason he is a poor singer because he is not really singing but, more so lip singing what he is told to.  Justin Bieber still makes more money than me and for that reason, is amazing.

The Spell Chequer’s Poem

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

This is the spell chequer’s poem.  It is one of the most infamous four paragraphs ever written regarding spell chequers.  no one knows who first wrote it but it would have had to have been after spell chequers were invented.  It may be hard to read if you look at it carefully so just skim over the words and it makes sense. 

The irony of the situation is that I am writing this blog on a pea sea and I am using a spell chequer.  I am sure that there are many speling erors in this blog but please remember that I am writing about erors and therefore am exempted from punishment.  While you may not appreciate this poem, it will always have a special place in my heart along with all the other odd things in my life. 

Blogs

When Ms. Weldon walked into class on Wednesday and wrote several numbers on the board I  immediately knew they had to do with blogs, or lack of.  There are 15kids in 8A.  Unfortunately 7 out of these 15 students did not post their blogs last week, me being included in those 7.  3 students have not posted blogs since the end of March break.  To me not posting a blog in two weeks is a sign of disrespect, not posting a blog after 3 weeks would be simply unacceptable.  Fortunately no one has reached this point yet.

37.6 % is last weeks average.  This average includes the 7 people who did not post and got 0.  Once everyone posts their blogs and if they get the same marks as every one else, the average will rise to 80%.  Unfortunately many students are opting for writing all their blogs at once at the end of the year.  This is not a very good idea because the end of the year consists of exams and trips so finding time to write blogs will be difficult. 

Is it really necessary to make us post a blog every week?  Why not make a blog and a comment due every other week?  it would greatly reduce the work load hanging over all our shoulders.  You would also have to mark half the amount of blogs you do now.  When you say that we have 134 hours to write and post our blogs please remember that we spend over 50 of those hours sleeping.

Evensong

        Friday afternoon, 1:40, SJK Chapel, 35 minutes, lots of bored kids.  This is a common sight at SJK when Middle and Upper school congregate in the tallest building at St. John’s Kilmarnock, the chapel.  At 1:40 learning stops and the religious portion of the school week takes over.  The chapel itself is a grand building but has the potential to become quite stuffy with a few hundred bodies in it.  Based solely on the expressions of those participating in evensong it can become a tedious poses of sitting, standing, singing, then sitting again.  All in all it is by far the longest 35 minutes of my life.

          There are many issues orbiting in a roundabout fashion with Evensong at the heart.  First and foremost is the timing.  2 o'clock on a Friday afternoon is usually when I would prefer to enter the state known as sleeping, or at the very least a state of reduced consciousness.  Second is the setting.  A grand building with reasonable architecture and high ceilings is the optimal location for a large gathering. The chapel does fills this roll well, unfortunately at 1:40 every Friday too many people sit in it for too long and it becomes the most boring and stuffy room north of the tropic of cancer.

        Since someone decided that a blog can’t be someone complaining, and complaining, and complaining I have to give a possible solution.  In light of this complication I propose one of two things.  Option one being to cut a few holes in the roof to let in fresh air.  The second and more practical option being to shorten the length of evensong. 

             After you finish reading this and nothing happens to improve evensong I won’t be disappointed.  The simple fact being that a grade eight student wrote this and my opinion will be greatly overshadowed by the big changes at SJK being implemented next year.  

Who Controls Your Life?

On January 12, 2010 the most devastating earthquake to hit the area devastated Haiti.  In response to this natural disaster SJK “camped out” for Haiti.  In total we raised 9000.  The government then doubled our donation bringing the grand total to 18 000.  After the “camp out”  most people were hysterical about the amount of money raised and the help it would provide but then quickly forgot about it and instead focused their attention on the Olympics held in Vancouver, BC. 

On February 12, 2010 the biggest sporting even to be held in Canada Happened.  In response to this sporting event  SJK “forgot” about Haiti.  In total we have won 4 gold, 4 silver, and 1 bronze.  During the Olympics most people we hysterical about the medals we won but then quickly forgot about them because they saw our men’s hockey team loose so badly to the US.

What does the most devastating earthquake to ever hit Haiti and the Olympics have in common?  They were both the center of attention while the media was displaying them on TV, in newspapers, and on the radio.  Most people have stopped worrying about Haiti and is no longer a concern because the media has focused our attention to the Olympics and not the devastation in Haiti.  I don’t know about you but I think it was better when we raised 18 thousand dollars for those who need it then watching someone go down a snow covered hill with two sticks strapped to their feet.

Braces

On Wednesday, February 10 the worst possible thing happened to me.  I got BRACES!!!!!  To get the BRACES I missed a class of History, French, and Part of Working With Words.  During those three classes those fortunate enough not to get BRACES at that unfortunate time played games and did very little work.  Meanwhile dentists were gluing piece of metal to my teeth and stringing wires to them.

Not only did I have to suffer through that day of BRACES, I then had to survive a night of not being able to eat any candy, pasta, popcorn, or cookies at Middle school’s Camp Out For Haiti.  Me not eating was not because the orthodontist said that I couldn’t; it was because it felt like there was a cavity in every one of my teeth.  On the upside the orthodontist said that the one thing that I could eat without sounding alarms in my jaw was ice cream.  It was a good thing then that for service fair 8A made Ice cream Sundays.  Which I helped my self to. (after paying).

After reading this over I have concluded that this blog post will grant me an 80% or higher if you don’t notice any of the speling mistakes and if I properly sum up how braces feel.  If you take an analog of the human body and make all of the body parts proportional to how sensitive they are to touch the mouth would be ten times bigger then it is.  In plain English your mouth thinks things are ten times bigger then they actually are.  this means that one tiny little speck of food caught between your teeth feels huge.  just remember, BRACES are not a bit of food caught between your teeth, they are bits of metal glued onto the outside of your teeth and are strung together with a tensioned wire.  BRACES SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Multiple Misleading Meanings

If you go to school, have ever gone to school, or have ever seen one you know that at school you have to practice a fire drill.  At SJK when the fire alarm is sounded you stop what you are doing, get up, and go outside to line up with your respective class. Once the alarm stops ringing you are allowed back inside and you continue to work.  Remember, there  more than one type of fire drill.

 

Do you play sports?  If you do and you live in North America then you have heard of Gatorade.  It is a well know sports drink that boosts your energy levels. You use Gatorade when you want to drink something and get your energy up, fast.  But what if you have a heart attack and someone calls the paramedics only for an alligator to show up at your door.  Remember there is more then one type of Gator aid.

 

 

 

Have you ever had a bottle of beer?  Have you ever been in a house and had the lights on?  Well obviously the answer is yes, you are using a computer with an internet connection so yes you have used a light bulb.  Only recently though have beer and light bulbs been combined into one.  Remember there is more than one type of light beer.  there is incandescing, LED, and even florescent beer.

 

While you may have an answer that is right others might have an answer that is also correct but is completely different.  If you have a fire drill at school,that could mean to you that you need to evacuate while to someone else it means that there is a drill that shoots fire in some closet.  to you Gatorade is a drink but to the person next to you it means that an alligator is coming to help you.  Light beer might be a beer that lights a room, or not.  Remember not every one sees thing the same way you do.  Do you see the arrow?

 

School

If I could change one thing about school it would be giving everyone Wednesday afternoons off. A break in the middle of the week lets you go home and either do homework or play video games. Really we would only miss varsity and LA. So as you can tell we won’t be missing much. To make up for losing one hour of English we could just take out a French class and make it English. Taking Fridays off too wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
If I could not change the time frame at school then I would try to change the schedule. Please do not take offence. LA would only be two classes every week. Science would fill one of the open slots while art or music filled the other. GYM would be every day and be two hours long.
If the busses could be changed they would. No longer would all the students be forced onto a yellow monstrosity we would instead be boarded at a lazy rate into limos. The limos would have hands free calling for the driver and most important of all they would have a pool with a life guard.
Paying nearly 20,000 a year I would expect that there would be some more amenities than there are. The purpose of coming to school is to learn, but I don’t see why we can’t learn in comfort. Learning in those limos would be great but even better would be just having Wednesday afternoons off. Fridays for me are always long and arduous so why not just stay at home and have fun. The best idea is instead of coming up with all these ideas that appeal to both sides just don’t come to school at all. That is what I would change.

Super powers

To be or not to be? What is the meaning of life? Why? Those are the questions. If I could have any super power I wanted I would chose to have the ability to answer any question I wanted. Specifically those pre mentioned. Why? Well I cannot answer that because I do not have that super power.
To be able to answer any question would mean that when the evil villain is holding some civilians hostage I can save them simply by thinking how. After that I lay my overly elaborate plan into action and after it fails I will come up with a better, less complex plan that the evil villain will fall into and will then be locked up in jail. This less complex plan will probably consist of a big pit dug in the ground and some leaves over top to disguise it.
As for the meaning of life the answer is obviously 42. And To the question why, because I cannot answer that I must make do with saying why not? Yes levitation is great and laser eyes are awesome, but if you know the way to defeat them then their superpower is useless. As well as answering the questions previously mentioned it would be of great significance to know other things. Like how to become evil overloads of the world and I would then be able to implement the list of 100 things to do. www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord

Books or Movies

Can you read? Have you ever read a book? Have you ever seen a movie? When you answer yes to all three of these questions please realize that you are reading right now and that many of the books you have read in the past have been turned into movies. Whether books becoming movies is a good thing or not is up to you but please at least read this blog which is entirely opinion and not backed by fact.
The book Eragon written by Christopher Paolini was an amazing book in which there are elves, dwarves, and dragons at the same time. Unforgivably the movie was a piece of; for lack of a word I can use without getting in trouble, a piece of junk. This is just one example of a great book being turned into a horrible movie. On the contrary lord of the rings was an ok set of books and was turned into a set of amazing movies.
In grade 7 Mr. Pitt read The Lightning Thief to us. We all agreed that it was a great book and some of us went on to read the other four books in the series. When I went to see avatar in the theatres one of the ads in the beginning was of The Lightning Thief being turned into a movie and well at least by the ad I think it will be a good movie. Though if it is a bad movie I have no power to make it better I hope for the best. As long as there are a lot of explosions and good special effects it, at least in my mind is a good movie, even if the characters are shallow and the plot pathetic.

While in the past there have been horrible movies as well as great ones I still think that reading a book and the movie about the book is a horrible idea. If you read the book, great. If you match the movie, great. But please just don’t do both. It will ruin it for you and please remember that you are reading right now.

Did You Know???

By the time you read this blog 200,000 songs will be downloaded illegally. At this rate it will take 46 days for every human on this planet to download a song illegally. That’s 6,700,000,000 songs. Remember, someone has to write all those songs. If you read one week of the New York Times you will have read more information than you would have in a life time in the 18th century. Most people just skim through the paper not pausing to think just how much information they are seeing and that their great, great, great, great grandfather would probably never have seen that much information in his life.
This year we will make 32,000,000,000,000 bytes of unique information, more than was made in the previous 5000 years. Those 32 trillion bytes that we will make this year will be but a miniscule portion of the amount of information that will be made next year. And the year after that, and the year after that and so on and so forth. At least until the great apocalypse comes and all the humans are killed by the alien invaders.
Next time you go on the internet or read a book think about how fortunate you are that you live now and not a long time ago. Just remember that 200,000 songs have just been downloaded illegally and that you have read more information than you would have in a week in the 18th century. On the downside we have to know all sorts of stuff that we wouldn’t need to know 300 years ago. Just remember you are smarter than most people were in the 18th century and you are only a kid.