Gabe’s Blog

Winter Break was tons of fun for me! I got to see my extended family on my dad’s side, which is something I do not really get the chance to do very often at all. First, I went and traveled to my father’s home in Madison, Wisconsin. I stayed there for a few days, enjoying the company of my dad, my sister, my dad’s girlfriend, and her two daughters, as well as a family friend named Karen. Karen made me a hat by knitting it, and it is super warm. Anyway, after a few days, I went to a small town in Michigan between Grand Ra[ids and Lansing that goes by the name of Portland. All in all, I believe that I spent a good 10 days of my winter break in Portland. While I was there, I saw my grandma, my grandpa, my uncles Jon and Josh, my grandpa’s wife (who I know as Nana), and two little kids that were from my uncle Josh and his new wife, Virginia. One of the kids is also named Gabe, so things got a little bit confusing from time to time. The other kid is named Aria, and she is about 2 years old I believe. She is just the happiest baby to ever exist. She’s always smiling and laughing, and I do not think I saw her cry once while I was there. She also knew all the words to the most important foods: ice, chocolate (pronounced ‘ogalate’), and cheese. While I was there, I spent a lot of time playing the card game rummy with my family. In Michigan, especially with my family, card games are an absolute staple. And I dominated that week. I also played a lot of guitar with my grandpa and my dad in my grandpa’s basement. We got hooked into his PA system and played a bunch of cool songs. My favorite to play was No Rain by Blind Melon. Good song. Overall, I had a really nice time visiting with my family in Michigan. I hope I get to see them again sometime soon, but then again, Covid kind of makes these kinds of things complicated.

My plan for this winter break is to make the most of it by spending time with my extended family in Michigan. Because of how far away they live, it is hard to go up north and see them as often as I like, so long breaks like these are perfect for spending some quality time with them. They are the family I have on my father’s side of the family tree, and they are all very kind. Usually, I am not able to go up there before Christmas, as my mother likes to keep me for the Christian holidays. This has always meant, however, that I was unable to ever spend time with my Grandfather on his birthday, which lies on the twenty fourth of December. As my grandparents get older, it becomes more and more apparent, with every passing year and every passing visit, they are not going to be around forever. Their health is mostly holding up well, but it is still not the best. In some parts, I blame myself for not making efforts to contact them more, or making efforts to convince my mom to let me spend more time with them. But I know that things like this just happen in people’s lives. I need to focus on the time I have left with them, and whatever I can do to help them as they grow older. I have even considered moving there once I get old enough and I get my High School diploma. It has never been easy to be away from family that I hold so dear for so long, and with the pandemic, I had to wait nearly two years to be able to see them again, even when I only get to see them once, maybe twice, in a year. I bet things will get better though. Have a nice winter break, everyone, and respect the time you and those loved ones around you have left: it is always ticking down.

Every November, citizens all across the United States of America have a feast to celebrate the national holiday of Thanksgiving. This is a day when people try to think of all that they are thankful and/or grateful for while stuffing their faces with turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and oh, so much gravy. But where did this time honored tradition start? Many people are taught and still believe that it started when the pilgrims and the native Americans had a feast to celebrate harvest and their newfound friendship. However, as many of you may know, the pilgrims and the Natives did not necessarily get along. For hundreds of years, those that have come to the Americas to colonize have disputed the natives, and killed so many of them. They have been discriminated against, called savages, brutally murdered and had their land stolen right out from under their feet. Yet, every year, we remember a golden image of a feast between allies.

Nothing about this feast really feels right once you realize that it wasn’t some kind of friendly get together, but a point in time where the Natives were mercilessly killed. Yes, the natives also killed their fair share of colonizers, but this is nothing in comparison to what happened to the many native tribes in North America. Even today, these poor peoples are set to live in reservations, where they live and die, without being given a second thought. These reservations are set up to make them kill themselves, much like the hood. This terrible atrocity of human kind is glossed over by hundreds of millions of people. While we live our perfectly average lives, and we feast every year to “friendship between peoples,” those living in reservations suffer.

But hey, turkey and mashed potatoes sounds pretty good, right?

Now this one is gonna be a real heavy hitter. I mean this story is really gonna knock you to your knees. It’s kinda crazy what is going on at my school right now. Recently, a bunch of girls have been caught vaping in their restrooms. Obviously, the school’s administration is not too happy about this, and they decided it must be stopped. So, the assistant principal gave the authority to some other female faculty member to help put a stop to the vaping-in-the-bathroom problem. Well, that did not go so well. The person put in charge seems to have gone a bit too far, limiting the number of people allowed in the bathroom. I’ve heard that there was a checklist used to keep track of it, and people’s time in the restroom was limited. For obvious reasons, letting people go to the bathroom for only three minutes is not very cool. What really makes me feel weird about the situation, though, is the fact that it was only the girls who received this treatment, despite the fact that the boys smoke in the bathrooms all of the time. I have gone into the bathroom during lunch maybe twice, and every time there is a huge crowd of kids just standing around smoking. So why haven’t any limits been placed on the guys, too? It just doesn’t really make sense to single out one group for doing something that multiple groups participate in. I’ve heard a lot of complaints, and I’m not sure if everything that I have heard is true or if it’s just rumors starting to spread (which is very, very likely in a high school), but either way, something about this just does not sit right with me. I definitely do not condone smoking or vaping in the school bathrooms, but is it really such a huge problem that such an authoritarian approach should be used? Then again, I’m probably just wrong, so whatever lol.

Twitter kinda sucks. It can also be kinda cool sometimes. There are so, so many people on twitter with different ideas, ideologies, beliefs, and life experiences. It seems like wherever you go, there’s an argument brewing between some people that seems incredibly pointless. But there’s also the good side of twitter, where people exchange thoughts on things they like, like television shows or video games. They can be about books or politics or the world in general. Many of the political ones are pretty bad, though. Even if you agree with them, it just seems hard to see at this point. We’ve grown up in such a connected time, with so much tension in the world: these two things have not mixed well. Honestly, I feel like if there wasn’t any social media I would care more about politics, but at this point, I’m just tired of seeing it and hearing it everywhere. It’s just a constant barrage of people being stupid or ignorant (or both) and other people getting angry about it, yelling with their keyboards. It just seems so negative, all the time. People complaining and complaining about how their lives’ suck, how others’ lives’ suck, how society sucks, but nothing is actually changing. At least, it seems that way. It just feels like the world keeps moving in this downward spiral. Yet, if you look away from social media’s negativity, it shows that the world is doing pretty well (if you don’t think about the environment). I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s hard to remain optimistic with so much pessimism everywhere online.

Near the beginning of this month, September, I began to read the first installment in the Lord of the Rings series, The Fellowship of the Ring. I am now nearly done with the novel, and I must say that it is really good. I am truly enjoying this book, as I had believed I would when I started to read it. I remember, however faintly, watching the movies with my parents when I was very young, but I have not been able to recall much of the story. It is fun to finally understand what the big deal is about this series. The world building and characters are excellent. The descriptions of magical lands and peoples are incredibly captivating, and the writing style of Tolkien is incredibly easy to fall into.

I am very excited to finally fully understand why my parents love this series so much. Yeah, my parents are both huuuge nerds, and that is most definitely where I got it from. I enjoy weird things like Sci Fi and Fantasy, Superheroes, scary movies, chemistry. I am pretty run of the mill nerd boy. So, it does make sense that I am enjoying my time with The Fellowship of the Ring. It is pretty nerdy, with Shakespearean esque dialogue full histories given on races that don’t actually exist. It is really cool that an entire world, complete with complex cultures and histories, just came out of some dude’s head. Most people my age would probably drop dead from boredom after the first couple pages, but I guess I’m just built different.

Crash Bandicoot 2 is not an easy game. It is certainly much more polished than the first game, with tighter controls that make it far easier than the first installment in the series, yet it is a hard game nonetheless. Few levels of this game, however, compare to the utter b.s. that is the level “Diggin’ it.” The worst enemy in the game is introduced at this level and is one of the most frustrating enemies in any game that I have ever played.

Before I go fully into what makes this level so, so terrible, I should probably explain what type of game Crash Bandicoot is. In the mid to late 1990s, Sony was looking for a way to promote the release of their new system, the Playstation. With brand new technology emerging and three dimensional games such as Super Mario 64 being released and loved by many, Sony decided that a 3D platformer with its own mascot would be the way to go, and they hired developer studio Naughty Dog to make this happen. They came up with Crash Bandicoot, a tough-as-nails platformer with a wacky animal from the Australian outback as the main protagonist. The title gained two sequels and a racing game spinoff as the years progressed, and the title were known for their inovation and tough but (mostly) fair platforming and its emphasis on collection in the form of gems that are gained from secret paths or breaking all of the boxes in a level.

Now with that out of the way, I can explain why this level is soooooooo awful. For starters, I decided that I wanted to get all of the gems in the game. This, was my first mistake. This level has 2 gems in it: one gained from beating the level while breaking every box, and another collected at the end of a special section that could only be reached by making it there without dying. This, normally, would not be much of a problem in itself. But there were boxes in this special, deathless, section of the level. This section is an alternative route as well, which left boxes in the other side left to be collected. This meant that I had to go through the level without dying, go through the special section and break those boxes, and then move backwards against the camera through the missed section in order to break the other boxes. This gets worse. There are many, many bees in this level. That doesn’t sound too bad, but these enemies will kill you in one hit, and are incredibly hard to kill with a perfectly timed attack (all of which is made harder when you are traveling backwards and cannot see them when they come at you). OK, I ranted for long enough. Anyway, I beat the level and got all the boxes after about 2 hours of trying. That sucked.