Some Thoughts On The Matter

      There will be two types of people who read this blog: those who have seen Parkour Civilization, and those who have no idea what I'm talking about. At first, I fell into the latter group, and was confused by the memes and references that had began to spread into my Twitter and Instagram media feeds. Parkour Civilization, which was a video series by Minecraft Youtuber Evbo, revolves around the idea of a dystopian society where everything is decided by parkour jumps. Now, I haven't been tapped into Minecraft Youtube for a long while, and I was completely unfamiliar with who Evbo was. However, on a half whim, other half joke, Wade and I decided to check out what all the hype was about, and sat down to watch the series.     Immediately, I was surprised that this wasn't the 20-minute long Youtube videos I remembered watching when I was younger: this was two 2-hour long MOVIES that were written, acted, and filmed completely within Minecraft. Already I was intrigu...

      By this point in the new semester, I have become accustomed to the weekly disasters I seem to face in my apartment. Whether it be power outages or a relentless war waged against the cockroach incursion in the kitchen, the life I have led within the boundaries of my home has been one of ceaseless defense, a restless attention to the state of things that can go wrong at any moment.     So, when a hurricane was predicted to wipe off Tallahassee from the map, and classes were cancelled for the week, I figured it was par for the course. For the first time since arriving, the roach incursion had lessened, and no power or water outages had happened this week. Naturally, God himself had decided to take it upon himself to participate in the weekly disaster on a larger scale, almost as a punishment for daring to believe that Wade and I could live a single week in peace at home. As the storm approached and more reports of its intensity began to roll in, the majority ...

      I love my buddy Wade! He's my best friend, best roommate, and soon-to-be best League of Legends duo (sorry bro). With his birthday coming up, I wanted to do something really special for him, because he's just a special guy. As I was coming up with ideas on what to do for him, his partner, Sam, beat me to the punch and texted me asking if I could help throw a party for him. Relieved that I wasn't alone in planning something for him, I happily accepted, and we began to plot a secret surprise party for Wade, with him none the wiser.     The fun part of planning a party for Wade with Sam is that we're fairly different people. Beyond having different types of relationships with Wade, we simply represent two different sides of Wade, and so, we had a few funny moments where we realized how different we were...     Regardless, we pushed our differences aside for the sake of our shared vestment in Wade and we continued with the party preparations. Sam was...

      It looks like once again, I'm going to be talking about Minecraft and how I've developed some skills and knowledge as a result of my pursuit to be better at building in Minecraft. Last time I wrote a blog about this, it was centered on structures like trees, churches, and libraries, delving into the theories and architectural styles that inspired each build of mine. However, I haven't been building many homes as of late. Instead, I've been focusing on improving my terraforming, or building of landscapes.     This has long been touted as one of the most difficult aspects of Minecraft building to get right, since the blocky medium doesn't translate smoothly into creating believable landscapes. Think about it, most houses and buildings you see in real life can be translated (with a little creativity) into a few cubic shapes, given a sloped shape or two. But landscapes, whether they be lush, sprawling forests or gentle sloping hills, are a little more difficul...

     Without fail, every single time I have mentioned that I am an English major to a new person I meet, their knee-jerk reaction is always: Oh! So you want to be a teacher/professor?  And every time, I have flared a little smile and replied, Nah, I'd love to be a screenwriter!     I have no issue with being an educator. In fact, it's probably one of the career choices I respect the most in other people.  To me, the very act of pursuing the education of others is an inherently selfless act: you choose to help others flourish and succeed, rather than pursuing that success (at least, how society views success) for yourself. Admittedly, however, I think that I've always subconsciously viewed this as a passive act. You sacrifice  your potential, you surrender  to teaching. I know that this mindset is wrong, and I always give my brain a little slap whenever the thought crosses my mind, but it still persists in the further corners of my brain. ...

     Finally! I'm writing about something related to my studies instead of random interests I have! Earlier this week, I had stayed behind in my Multicultural Film class to talk with my professor about the subject of masculinity and hegemony, since I was interested in the subject and we had just scratched the surface of it during our lectures. He seemed pretty happy to see I was interested, and he recommended I watch a short film called American Male , which was made by MTV a few years ago.     During our class, we had discussed the concept of homosociality and how it ties into the expectations for masculinity set by society (this extends to feminine expectations as well, but I'm choosing to focus on men today). The term homosociality is used to define the nonsexual attraction between members of the same sex, meaning its what traits men find "cool" in other men or otherwise "acceptable". According to Sharon R. Bird in their paper Welcome to the Men's Clu...

      Hey there! This week I was pretty busy with school and other stuff, so I ended up leaving writing a blog post for the last second. But then a dilemma struck me: I had no idea what to write about! Usually I have some sort of life story to talk about, or a new piece of media I want to share with my readers, but this week has been pretty quiet, and I haven't really watched anything this week besides JJK with Wade, and I already talked about that earlier this week. So I opted to do what I usually do when I need to clear my mind and think: fly around my Minecraft build world!     I've had this Minecraft world for over half a decade now, and it's been populated with a field of builds and ideas I've had throughout the years as far as the eye can see (or at least, as far as the game can render). However, about three years ago, I started working on one mega project, aiming to create an immersive world out of nothing with my bare hands, instead of individual project...

      Hey! Ever since I wrote my blog post on my experience watching JJK, I've still been interacting with parts of the show on the daily. Whether it be rewatching some scenes on YouTube, looking up funny GIFs to send to my friends who've watched it, or rewatching the series on anime nights with my roommate Wade, Jujutsu Kaisen has wormed its way into my life now. However, none of these have been as ever-present as the soundtrack. Whether it's to motivate myself on my runs, to hype myself up when playing videogames, or even just lying in bed listening to songs, I've realized that I'm seriously infatuated with the music of this anime. So let's look at why!     I want to get this out of the way immediately since this was a big source of inspiration for this blog post: the other night I had a video titled "Gushing About Jujutsu Kaisen's Soundtrack for 88 Minutes" on my YouTube recommended. Seeing as how I love the music and I had a spare 88 minutes a...

      As the dust settles and the roach population dwindles in the new apartment, my roommates and I have started to get comfortable in our new home. However, I realized today that despite living here for an entire week, I had yet to use our kitchen at all. Granted, this wasn't entirely the product of my own laziness- dirty dishes and rotting food plagued the kitchen for the first few days, and when that got cleaned up, we lost our power for a few days, so we weren't there at all. But now that all of that is out of the way, and my other roommates are either out or asleep, I chose today to christen the kitchen.     Immediate disclaimer: though I am incompetent in many, many areas of life, cooking is probably where I'm at my most incompetent. This, paired with the fact that I only know how to cook a couple things at all, would later lead to a few mishaps. The first pathetic attempt     Remembering how I would grill some smash burgers with my Dad every we...