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Contests

Weekly Trivia 9: Do You Remember? WINNER

September 3, 2014 | Ray | Comments (0) Facebook Twitter More...

Congrats to Barney Wei for the first factual answer.  And congrats to Monidipa for the creative answer to "Come up with a creative way to wipe out bad memories and restore good ones."

Here's her creative answer:

A creative way would be to find a rare kind of scientist who can make a special gooey, green fourmula that knocks you out for three hours. You are given this formula to drink because removing memories, especially bad ones are rather painful for the subject. Next, the scientist performs a sacred ritual in which he takes a piece of your soul and mixes it in with the blood from an Inland Taipan (the deadliest snake in the world). Once that is mixed together, the scientist puts it in a peculiar cylinder which turns the mixture into sparkling powder. Next, he sprinkles the poweder over your body and black smoke comes out of your heart. If you had directly put the Inland Taipan's blood on your body, you would have died but since you mixed it with something pure, it is an antibiotic to evil. When you are awake, you realize that you can't remember anything bad in your life. But the scientist never told you the side effects- if you undergo the procedure, then you will become a child again emotionally, trusting everyone and everything. After all, you've never felt pain, right?

Whoh. Wondering what the Inland Taipan is? I sure was.  Here's the wikipedia page for Inland Taipan.

800px-Fierce_Snake-Oxyuranus_microlepidotus
A very deadly inland taipan [wikipedia]

Both winners will be contacted and receive a rad read sent to their local library branch.

Collector Card Contest - We have a Winner!

September 1, 2014 | Thomas Krzyzanowski | Comments (5) Facebook Twitter More...

Collector Card ImageThus summer, we threw a contest. We asked you to find some cards, put them together like a puzzle, and be inspired by the image they created to do something creative. And you, WORD OUT folks, you came through with some amazing art.

We had essays and short stories, poems and songs, drawings and collages and even a bizzare quasi-mystery. It was really hard to choose the one we liked best, but after careful deliberation, we decided that the winning WORD OUTer was....

Continue reading "Collector Card Contest - We have a Winner!" »

Five Frames From . . . final word out 2014 edition

August 29, 2014 | Cameron | Comments (13) Facebook Twitter More...

What movie based on a book are these images from?

1-You have to live in Toronto to win the contest

2-You have to provide a valid email address so we can contact you if you win a prize (see privacy statement for more info)

3-Your entry must be submitted by Thursday September 4th at 11:59 PM if you want to be considered to win.

Va1

Va2

Va3

Va4

Va5
Boring legal stuff:

Your name, your e-mail address, the books you read and your thoughts about them are your personal information. Why do we need your personal information here?  Well, we want to publish your reviews, and we need your name and e-mail address to help administer the contest.  The Public Libraries Act is the law that lets us do this.  We'll be protecting your privacy every step of the way, but if you have any questions about how we're going to do that, you can contact TPL's Privacy & Records Management Officer, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON, M4W 2G8, 416-395-5658 or by e-mail at [email protected] 

Contest: AudioSplice v.9

August 28, 2014 | Alice | Comments (5) Facebook Twitter More...

Ben_Turntable from openclipart dot org
Turntable image from openclipart.org

The Last AudioSplice!!!

What's an AudioSplice?

The Basics:

I've taken little snippets of a handful of songs and smashed them together into a sort of sonic puzzle for you to figure out. There is also a theme that links the songs somehow for you to work out, to help you along and make it a little more fun.

So what do you need to do? Listen carefully! Try to identify as many songs as you can, look for that link between them, and leave your guesses in comments. If no one is getting close after a couple of days, I may come back and leave a hint below...

Winners of book prizes will be the commenters who a) get the link and the most songs, and b) enter the most amusing guess at the link (even if they are wrong). And by amusing, I mean it amuses me. ;)

This Week's Puzzle:

Five Songs. One theme to link them. A few rules:

  • In order to qualify to win this contest, you have to live in the city of Toronto.
  • You have to provide a valid email address - otherwise we can't contact you to let you know you've won the contest! We promise to keep your email confidential - for more information about this, see the privacy statement below.
  • You have to have submitted your entry by Sunday, August 31st at 11:59 PM.

GO!

AudioSplice Aug 28

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The boring legal stuff:

Your name, your e-mail address, the books you read and your thoughts about them are your Ipad-minipersonal information. Why do we need your personal information here?  Well, we want to publish your reviews, and we need your name and e-mail address to help administer the contest.  The Public Libraries Act is the law that lets us do this.  We'll be protecting your privacy every step of the way, but if you have any questions about how we're going to do that, you can contact TPL's Privacy & Records Management Officer, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON, M4W 2G8, 416-395-5658 or by e-mail at [email protected] 

Mini-Writing Contest # 9 -- August 27 to September 1

August 27, 2014 | Christine | Comments (9) Facebook Twitter More...

Hey everyone! Welcome back for Mini-Writing Contest Number 9. :)

Since this is the last mini-writing contest of the summer, I'd like to end with something very fun. 
Have you ever heard of a “spoonerism”? A spoonerism is a pun that happens when you accidentally switch the letters or sounds of two words in a sentence, creating something very funny. Here’s a great example of what can happen:

RUNNY’S HEW NOBBY
Runny Babbit kneared to lit,
And made a swat and heater,
And now he sadly will admit
He bight have done it metter.
(from pg. 24 of Runny Babbit: a Billy Sook by Shel Silverstein)

Try experimenting with some of your own spoonerisms and try writing a funny short story or a poem using them.

Please keep in mind the following contest rules:
1. You have to live in Toronto to win this contest.
2. You have to provide a valid e-mail address so we can contact you if you win a prize (see privacy statement for more info)
3. Your entry must be submitted by Monday at 11:59pm to be considered to win.
4. Winners will be announced the following Tuesday.

Have fun!

Your name, your e-mail address, the books you read and your thoughts about them are your personal information. Why do we need your personal information here? Well, we want to publish your reviews, and we need your name and e-mail address to help administer the contest. The Public Libraries Act is the law that lets us do this. We'll be protecting your privacy every step of the way, but if you have any questions about how we're going to do that, you can contact TPL's Privacy & Records Management Officer, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON, M4W 2G8, 416-395-5658 or by e-mail at [email protected]

Weekly Trivia 9: Do You Remember?

August 25, 2014 | Cathy | Comments (13) Facebook Twitter More...

  Maze runner
In the Maze Runner, the Creator wiped the boys' memories before putting them into the maze. However, Thomas still remembers someone. Who is it and what was his connection to this character?

 OR

Come up with a creative way to wipe out bad memories and restore good ones.

 

 

Some rules to follow:

1) You have to be a resident of the city of Toronto to win a prize.

2) Your answer has to be submitted by Monday (September 1) at 11:59 PM if you want to win.

3) You need to provide us with a valid email address if you want to be considered for the prize.

Winners will be contacted at the end of the week.

Your name, your e-mail address, the books you read and your thoughts about them are your personal information. Why do we need your personal information here? Well, we want to publish your reviews, and we need your name and e-mail address to help administer the contest. The Public Libraries Act is the law that lets us do this. We'll be protecting your privacy every step of the way, but if you have any questions about how we're going to do that, you can contact TPL's Privacy & Records Management Officer, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON, M4W 2G8, 416-395-5658 or by e-mail at [email protected]

Fan Fiction Contest Winner

August 23, 2014 | Monica | Comments (3) Facebook Twitter More...

6a00e5509ea6a1883401a511e3f4b8970c

A BIG congratulations to Beatrice Perusse, for her winning fanfic Echoing Long After Us based on the animated series Evangelion.
Thank you all for you amazing entries, and all your hardword. You all are so talented, and we hope to see more of your work in the future.

Check out Beatrice's fantastic fanfic here:

Echoing Long After Us
An Evangelion Fanfiction
By Beatrice Perusse

Kaworu’s one wish in that first timeline was that he could see Shinji’s face, look at Shinji instead of the metal features of the giant robot-like being that was Evangelion unit 1, but he knew that the Eva kept Shinji safe. Kaworu trusted Yui’s presence to take care of Shinji.
Kaworu could still hear Shinji’s cries ringing in his ears and feel his own head being separated from his body and his torso being crushed to pieces as Shinji tightened the Evangelion’s grip when he decided to try again.
Kaworu had not meant to love the lilan, to love Shinji. He and his siblings, his fellow angels, were meant to wish for nothing but the humanity’s destruction. Kaworu was meant to descend upon the planet Earth and tear it apart, not love it so much he abandoned his kin. But Kaworu had been created as Tabris, as the angel of free will, so for all he knew this had been part of the plan all along.
(He somehow doubted it.)
The space in between timelines was always strange. The place in between the world he had left behind and the infinite number in front of him. It was rather unhelpful, in Kaworu’s opinion, for all it revealed was that there were new realities in front of him, and not what was in them. Of course in the beginning he did not know this, and after catching his metaphorical breath, he dove straight into the next world.
(He realized later how little thought he had really put into the whole process, and found it bitterly amusing how much damage he was causing himself for a human who had only begun to consider loving him at the time.)
The second timeline was much like the first, and he began to get familiar with the sensation of being crushed into pieces. The third and fourth and tenth worlds were much the same, though Kaworu did try his best to change his actions. It seemed that no matter what he did, history repeated itself.
Perhaps, Kaworu considered, he should change the beginning.
He did not kill the cat, did not meet Shinji in the rubble, waited longer. He thought that perhaps he could resist the call of Lilith if he changed his own actions.
He could not.
Kaworu stayed in that place in between for what could have been minutes, could have been decades. Concepts such as time were abstract in that place, a fault that was paid for in the rushed moments between when Kaworu saw Shinji in each world, and when he met his inevitable demise.
I think I may have been born to meet you
His own words haunted him, though he believed them. Perhaps he was born for this. Perhaps this was some form of punishment for what he was, for what his brothers and sisters had done.
In the timelines where Kaworu had gone to school, he had felt sick when they studied Romeo and Juliet. Those characters were such fools, and he was so like them.
With something that would have been a sigh from any other creature, Kaworu looked back on the world he had just left as it began to fall into pieces, and entered the next timeline.
This one was different. Shinji had not become an Eva pilot and the world was worse off than Kaworu had ever seen it. It did not take long for things to go wrong. He had at least two weeks to treasure each moment huddled beneath a tent in a refugee camp with Shinji, sharing body heat and giving Shinji as many rations as he could get his hands on. Then the pneumonia took hold. Shinji deteriorated quickly, his delicate human form that Kaworu so loved becoming the reason for his death. Shinji’s body was simply too weak and malnourished to fight for long, and the camp was so overrun with sickness and injury that no one could spare a bed or medicine for a boy who was obviously dying. Kaworu was confused. It had never happened like this. It was always Kaworu who died first, and Shinji got to live, that was the point. If Shinji didn’t live then what was the point of it all?
He curbed his thoughts on the last night, when Shinji’s breath came raggedly and unevenly, his skin cold and clammy. Kaworu held his hand, and spoke to Shinji about pointless things for as long as he could. It was around two in the morning when Shinji’s breathing got shallower. Kaworu, not knowing what else to do, lay down next to him, curling at his side, his arm draped around Shinji’s skinny frame, trying to will warmth back into the boy next to him.
It began to snow outside, and Kaworu sang softly, a song of love and loss and triumph and cherry blossoms, until Shinji’s breath finally stopped.
Kaworu did not cry. Some part of him was proud of that fact. He brought himself up onto his knees, laid a kiss on Shinji’s cold forehead, and whispered:
“I will see you again soon.”
He rose to his feet, and walked out into the cold. He did not want to do what he was planning where Shinji’s body lay, did not want to sully Shinji’s corpse with his blood. When he reached the edge of the camp, Kaworu drew Shinji’s knife from his pocket, and jammed it into his throat.
He floated quietly between the worlds after that. Feeling more hopeless than ever before, Kaworu took hold of the warmth that was Shinji’s soul, and let it pull him into the next world.
The timelines were never the same after that. Sometimes they were Evangelion pilots, sometimes they led lives uninterrupted by impacts or angels. Sometime Kaworu never saw Shinji at all. Sometimes Shinji loved him, sometimes hated him. Sometimes Shinji died first, but usually Kaworu did. He lost count of how many worlds he had tried to save.
Kaworu treasured the worlds that had never experienced the impact or the angels. Before each death, he held in his mind the image of Shinji doing peaceful things, wearing sweaters and reading books and going for coffee and awkwardly asking out Asuka Langley. Whether Shinji loved him or not in those worlds, Kaworu was grateful that the human was closer to being happy, even if something always went wrong, even in those peaceful timelines. One of them died, or one of their friends suffered, or there was war or disease or Yui once again died when Shinji was young, and Gendo Ikari planted the roots of misery in Shinji so deep that Kaworu could not help in time.
Kaworu almost gave up once. He had tried to stop, staying in the place between the worlds as long as he could, before he was pulled into the next timeline by Shinji’s soul, and he thought perhaps he had not given everything in vain.
Finally, Kaworu reached the world where he waited. He waited until Shinji started the new impact, until Shinji was trapped inside the Eva with what was left of the original Rei Ayanami. Kaworu played along as Seele’s puppet for as long as he needed to. (There was always Seele in the worlds where Kaworu and Shinji were Eva pilots, always that group of old men lurking in the background, pulling strings and attempting to use the power of the angels and the celestial beings for their own, always attempting to end the world and find the Dead Sea Scrolls for reasons Kaworu could not really grasp. Always being unwittingly manipulated by Gendo Ikari in the background, always at the price of Shinji’s mind.)
This world was different enough that he thought perhaps this time he might be successful in bringing Shinji the happiness he desired.
Shinji was broken and scared and alone when Kaworu finally met him again. Kaworu offered what little comfort he could to a boy who had lost everything, gave answers to Shinji about when he had done as plainly as possible. He tried to love Shinji, tried to fix a world he knew he never could.
In a mess of piano notes and tears and blood,
I really was born to meet you
This world ended like so many others did. The DSS choker went off
I’m sorry
This was not the happiness you wanted and deserved
Kaworu stopped the next impact. He smiled at Shinji as kindly as he could, each tear that fell from Shinji’s eyes pierced him, though a twisted part of himself was glad someone would mourn him.
Kaworu steadied himself in between the worlds, still rocked by the feeling of choking on blood and bursting apart, still hearing Shinji’s screams.
It was time to try again.

Five Frames From . . . August 22nd-August 28th Edition

August 22, 2014 | Cameron | Comments (3) Facebook Twitter More...

What movie based on a book are these images from?

1-You have to live in Toronto to win the contest

2-You have to provide a valid email address so we can contact you if you win a prize (see privacy statement for more info)

3-Your entry must be submitted by Thursday August 28th at 11:59 PM if you want to be considered to win.

Ds1

Ds2

Ds3

Ds4

Ds5
Boring legal stuff:

Your name, your e-mail address, the books you read and your thoughts about them are your personal information. Why do we need your personal information here?  Well, we want to publish your reviews, and we need your name and e-mail address to help administer the contest.  The Public Libraries Act is the law that lets us do this.  We'll be protecting your privacy every step of the way, but if you have any questions about how we're going to do that, you can contact TPL's Privacy & Records Management Officer, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON, M4W 2G8, 416-395-5658 or by e-mail at [email protected] 

Contest: AudioSplice v.8

August 21, 2014 | Alice | Comments (1) Facebook Twitter More...

Ben_Turntable from openclipart dot org
Turntable image from openclipart.org

What's an AudioSplice?

The Basics:

I've taken little snippets of a handful of songs and smashed them together into a sort of sonic puzzle for you to figure out. There is also a theme that links the songs somehow for you to work out, to help you along and make it a little more fun.

So what do you need to do? Listen carefully! Try to identify as many songs as you can, look for that link between them, and leave your guesses in comments. If no one is getting close after a couple of days, I may come back and leave a hint below...

Winners of book prizes will be the commenters who a) get the link and the most songs, and b) enter the most amusing guess at the link (even if they are wrong). And by amusing, I mean it amuses me. ;)

This Week's Puzzle:

Five Songs. One theme to link them. A few rules:

  • In order to qualify to win this contest, you have to live in the city of Toronto.
  • You have to provide a valid email address - otherwise we can't contact you to let you know you've won the contest! We promise to keep your email confidential - for more information about this, see the privacy statement below.
  • You have to have submitted your entry by Sunday, August 24th at 11:59 PM.

GO!

AudioSplice Aug 21


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The boring legal stuff:

Your name, your e-mail address, the books you read and your thoughts about them are your Ipad-minipersonal information. Why do we need your personal information here?  Well, we want to publish your reviews, and we need your name and e-mail address to help administer the contest.  The Public Libraries Act is the law that lets us do this.  We'll be protecting your privacy every step of the way, but if you have any questions about how we're going to do that, you can contact TPL's Privacy & Records Management Officer, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON, M4W 2G8, 416-395-5658 or by e-mail at [email protected] 

Mini-Writing Contest #8 -- August 20 to August 25

August 20, 2014 | Thomas Krzyzanowski | Comments (7) Facebook Twitter More...

Hey everyone! Welcome back for Mini-Writing Contest Number 8. :)

Here are some more questions for you to answer. What do you think is awesome? Is it something big, like winning an epic cross-country race? Or is it something small, like finding some spare change underneath a couch cushion? Here’s some more awesomeness:


Riding home with a box of pizza on your lap.
Placing the last piece of the puzzle.
When you open a book to the exact page you were looking for.
Old, classic board games.
(all examples are from pgs. 39, 90, 187 and 251 of The Book of (Even More) Awesome by Neil Pasricha)

Continue reading "Mini-Writing Contest #8 -- August 20 to August 25" »