Williams College Reunion: Part 2

I don't think anyone's actually reading this anymore. But anyway...

So after waking up surprisingly early while suffering from jet lag, we got breakfast at the Mission Park dining hall, then lined up for the alumni parade down Rt. 2 and Spring St, stopping traffic as we walked down in front of our class banner dressed in purple and gold, Williams' colors. (Yeah, they match our high school colors too) At the end, our mom walked down to a class meeting and we sat on a bench. We then checked out the town, and took a bathroom break in the Science library.

Afterwards, we had lunch with the other alumni, I had a turkey sandwich that was at least edible, and I just sat and played on my 3DS while our parents talked about matters I couldn't comprehend and my brother slowly threw a tantrum over his game. We then ate some free gelato and walked down to the Clark Art Institute.

The back of the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute

They had a special exhibit on Van Gogh; specifically, his nature works. I finally figured out how to appreciate fine art at this moment- I just look closely into the painting, at each of the individual brushstrokes, then zoom out and take in the scenery. Rinse and repeat until everyone's moved on. I feel like I understand art a little bit more, but I still don't feel moved enough by it. I dunno, my video game lifestyle makes me crave art that's more interactive. Afterwards, we headed back, ate some paid gelato, and rested our jet-lagged bodies until dinner.

By this point, our parents had a dinner party to go to, and we weren't invited. There was this kids thing going on, where kids would be playing a few generic board games, watching movies we've already seen, outdoors things, some other things I can't think of, and capture the flag. I found this as the opportunity to make a whole bunch of Team Fortress 2 jokes, so I decided to watch. Ultimately though, the action was kinda fragmented, and I never got to shout out "capture the intelligence" or "need a dispenser here" once. But I got to talk with some of the other college students, and that was fun. Apparently, one of the professors (I unfortunately forget his name) worked on certain aspects of Skylanders. That game with the portal of power and the toys We then walked back, it was late, and there thankfully wasn't a tornado siren that night.


On another note...

The Situation With E3

And one more thing before I go.

Now, if you keep up with gaming news, you probably have heard about E3. For those of you who have no idea about what I'm talking about (Most likely all of you), E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, where big gaming reveals are made and people get to try out demos of the new games before they're released.

One thing that has sparked much controversy is Nintendo's E3 presentation. In my opinion, it was okay. As usual, Nintendo put on an entertaining show with their second Nintendo World Championships, the first one after 25 years. For their Digital Event, they used puppets, which was fun.

But I'm not here to talk about puppets. Everyone agrees that Nintendo's E3 wasn't really the best one. There was a relative lack of new announcements, and while many of the games looked fun, there wasn't really anything as groundbreaking as Splatoon last year. But last year's performance was a tough one to follow. However, out of a mere sub-par performance, half of the Nintendo community has erupted into an overreactive flame. Many say that the Wii U and Nintendo are dying or already dead. Many are petitioning for the cancelation of the most controversial title shown, Metroid Prime: Federation Force. Some are going as far as to say that Iwata and Reggie should be fired.

Woah, calm down. It's not like solar emissions are about to destroy all life on the planet.

Currently, the situation is this: A third of the people on the E3 2015 community on Miiverse are flaming Nintendo. The rest of us are trying to act mature. Nintendo has made poor showings before, and we didn't try killing them then. Months from now, hopefully we can all look back on this and laugh.

Hopefully. I'm not in very high spirits for this community. We're trying to control the flames, but they won't go out.

Williams College Reunion: Part 1

Yeah, we're still here. Are you?

Anyway, my summer's gotten a decent start so far. Right as the last day of school ended, I was immediately picked up by my mom to catch our plane. Today, we would be flying to Massachusetts to attend my mom's 25th college alumni reunion. (Forensics team, I'm sorry I missed the bonfire) Our flight plans were as follows: Fly to SFO (Getting the inevitable delay in the process, because that's what our local airport is famous for), wait a few hours in the United Club, then take a 5 hour red-eye (Overnight flight) to Boston, and drive a few hours to Williamstown.

While I was surprisingly awake getting off the red-eye, I ended up falling asleep in the car, leaving my mom open to humiliate us on Facebook. I wanted to remove it, but once it's on the internet, there is literally no way to remove it from the internet entirely. When we got to Williams, we were given dorms to sleep in during our stay. We had lunch in town and everyone slept for most of the day. I played video games as usual. Meantime, I was questioning why these dorms didn't have air conditioning.

Afterwards, we all went out to the field for dinner. My mom talked to people about stuff I could not comprehend. I wasn't interested in the other activities going on, so it was a bit of a boring wait for me. Dinner was nice, there was a buffet in a tent set up on the field, and the food was pretty good. Then we went back up to try and sleep.

A few minutes after, we were interrupted by the tornado siren.


I'll be trying to update this once a day. There might be breaks in between for various reasons, either I didn't have the time or I forgot to. I'll try to avoid that.

Summer

It's finally here. Well, almost. But for seniors, it is. Except there's still graduation tomorrow night. And we really don't have any seniors in our group. If I remember correctly, Alice is the oldest one in the group, with me second in age.

But that's off topic. My point is, summer's here. Which means that our group isn't going to meet up for three months. So, what does this mean for this blog?

Now, we did have a huge hiatus a few weeks ago where no one could come up with a post. I amended that simply to remind all of you (If any of you are still reading) that we're still here. But now that summer's here, a shortage of posts probably will be noticed. Many of the others will probably forget that they've been working on a blog, but at least I'll be here, posting random things from time to time. Some of the others have said that they'd post from time to time as well, so keep on the lookout for that.

I also may include posts from my Miiverse account from time to time. For those of you who don't own a Wii U (In other words, all of you) Forever alone Miiverse is a little message board where people talk about video games. For me, video games are not an addiction, but a lifestyle. So you'll be seeing my world a bit more, and it's just as abstract as it sounds.

(YES, that's my first name. I know we have to keep that secret. But you know what? How many Sams do you know? It's even a multi-gender thing. I know from personal experience.)

Color Warfare. I posted about it earlier and that I would finish it before school ended. I'm a lazy fool. If Color Warfare isn't finished over the summer, I have no excuse. I GOTTA GET IT DONE. Either way, I'll post about it here when I have news on it, so stay tuned for that.

Well, that's all I have to talk about. Unless something unspeakably horrible happens to me, I'll still be here, typing on my keyboard, hoping that people actually read what I type...


-Rapid

Counting

only 10 more days...

only 9 more days...

It's what I keep telling myself

only 8 more days... 

Finally, summer is coming. 

I just have to keep counting down.

Strange Thoughts

Q: Why shouldn't Trickmaster Rapid be given too much empty free time where he's doing pretty much nothing? Times like showering or sleeping?
A: I play video games for this very reason; it keeps me occupied. Really, when I'm unoccupied, one of two things can happen.
Half of the time, especially recently, I might go into a downward spiral of depression and think depressed, possibly semi-blatantly self-destructive thoughts.
The other half, you get moments where I pace around in my mind for minutes upon minutes, constantly muttering the phrase, "666. Darnit, Loominatus!" over and over, as if I was rehearsing it or something.

Moral of the story: Video games aren't all bad. The way I think of it, it can act somewhat like alcohol, except alcohol is stupid and impairs your mind for days so you can't game properly.

(This post is also a reminder that we're still alive. Our town has, thankfully, not yet been completely wiped out by the impending apocalyptic earthquake-tsunami that everyone seems to be hyping up lately. Thank you guys for giving me nightmares about it, by the way.)

Eugene

    This weekend my dad took me to Eugene to watch the Oregon Ducks' spring, which was a scrimmage so the fans can see all the new prospects for the season. As the game began, it immediately stood out the lead candidate for replacing our first round, second pick quarterback was Jeff Locke. Jeff Locke has been the back up quarterback for Marcus Mariota. As accustomed, there were quite a few trick plays, but we really saw the bulk and depth of our team. It was a warm day, although the wind was a little gusty. But for the most part, it was really nice. At half time we went to concessions and got hotdogs, and soon after, the game started up for the second half. Gameplay went on, and one side won the game. After the game, all the players lined up on the sidelines and gave the veterans their jerseys. After that, we filed out of the stadium and got into our car. The we headed to Burger King to get milkshakes and went home. It was really nice to get a chance to spend time with my family.

Season

Gymnastics season is officially over. I should feel relieved. I do, but I am also sad. Now I don't have anything to look forward to. There isn't a meet to get ready for in a week or in a couple weeks. Now we are going to learn new skills for eight months. Eight months.
If you can do some basic math you can figure out that our season is four months. But our season is somewhat special and different from the lower levels. Since we are called "Optionals" we have a different season, for one thing the lower levels or "compulsories" have two seasons. One in the fall and one in the spring. The reason we don't have two seasons a year is because it takes us almost eight months to get all of our new skills, when it will take them two weeks to get their new skills. They also don't get to make up their routines, while we do. They are usually young and still come to gymnastics every day because they think its fun. They work every day in the hope that they can become an optional. In the hope that they can become us.
But a lot of them don't understand that while a lot of them have the drive and determination right now, it takes a lot to stay in this sport after level 5. It is hard to stay in this sport when you get past 6th grade. Especially in junior high and high school it is hard to stay in this sport. You want to join the volleyball team or do track. You want to do these other sports and if you are going to stay in gymnastics, you can't. Its just that simple, in order to get to the upper levels you cant do any other sports. You have to have all your time invested. All your focus on this sport.

Don't they wonder why there are only 5 Optionals? When in level 3 there are about 25? When in level 4 there are about 20? And in level 5 there are about 6. It gets harder and harder to stay in this sport. The tricks get harder and harder, everything gets more intense.  Bigger meets, more pressure, more stress.
As a level 8 I am the top level in my gym. Along with 3 of my other team mates. But one of them is leaving... getting pulled by the endless thoughts of wanting to do another sport.

The End-Of-Year Slump

Well, I've reached that point in the year. I now call it the "End-Of-Year Slump". Every year, for reasons I fail to understand, I start becoming lethargic in all my classes, with grades dropping to the bare minimum. I also start to inflict injuries on myself (usually the head) around this time of year. Of course, the Slump's effects never really occur in that order. While the first slump of mine began in the 7th grade, and the self-injury began the year after, my first recollection of something resembling the Slump's effects happened in the 5th grade. Please, don't ask. It wasn't a pretty moment, and I haven't truly recovered. Of course, maybe the reason I couldn't recognize the Slump any other years before is both because my work ethic was spotty the entire year between the 2nd and 6th grades, and the fact that they only started giving us access to our grades in the 7th grade onwards.

My 7th grade year's slump was, while quite tame on the physical harm side, quite harrowing on the gradebook side. For one, my grade in Social Studies was an IP (our system's new term for a D). I managed to get some work in, but not enough. To save myself, I had to cash in all the extra credit slips I had been stocking up on over the year. Figures as much that in my 8th grade year, they abolished the extra credit system altogether. My grades in the 8th grade were on a similar note, although I was able to salvage them all (except PE, which was stuck on a B). However, I was noticeably stressed after PE in my 1st period, notably because in my next period, band, I would just hole myself up in my corner and repeatedly bash my head in with a music stand. This usually continued through 3rd period. The end of the year was probably my least-favorite and most anti-climatic end of the year I've had to date. It'll be that way for some time, since I'm missing the end of this year for a Williams College alumni meeting my mom is attending. I felt quite depressed at the end of the year. Now that the year had ended, I would just fade into the shadows once again until fall rolled around and I got involved in whatever the heck a forensics is. (I no longer regret making that decision, but I still couldn't live with myself if I had to repeat what I've went through)

The Final Tournament

Hello everyone, I've returned from the forensics state championships.

Unfortunately, I failed to reach semifinals in radio. I blame this on the fact that one of my judges completely missed the fact that my radio station was a parody of NPR, but I'm not disappointed. I'm quite relieved, really. Now that this tournament is over, I can finally rest. Just in time for the end-of-year slump, where I'll probably have to spend entire weekends working on homework. But that's a blog post for later...

Best Friends

"Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship."

-Epicurus 

Codenames, secret languages, fantasy plan for the future, inside jokes.

Not everyone has someone who knows them inside out.

What is it that makes us pick a human and want to stick around with them?

Solitare!

   Some people might see black jack, poker, or even go-fish as the primary card games. In my mind, however, solitare is the best card game in the world. Lately it seems I have been "titling"  things as, "The best in the world," but this game really is. It tests your mind by making you remember cards, recognize color, and create strategies to collect cards. My friend and I are both fairly into this game, and we have even discussed starting a club. But for the time being, we are very competitive. Solitare is probably one of the things I'm most addicted to at the moment, and I encourage everyone to play this game.

A Little Self-Rant on My Self-Deprecation

First, I'd like to talk about how I know what I'm bringing upon myself by writing this. I feel that half of the pain of depression is the depression itself; the other half is dealing with the people around you. You can't simply tell people that you're depressed. Otherwise, you just get an empty lecture that doesn't really mean anything to you about optimism, happiness, etc. In reality, you can't really stop depression. It's an all-consuming void, sometimes altering your logic in the case where I seem to want to cause even more harm to myself. At least, this is my case. I know that everyone’s just going to tell me to stop harming myself like this as if you can just flip a switch and end it. Heh… It’s really that easy, isn’t it? That’s why I don’t let anyone know or try to help me. It’s just as Hyperbole and a Half describes it- It’s like I’ve got a pair of dead fish, but everyone ignores that fact and tries to go find them or something. So please, don’t talk to me about this. I know what you’re going to try to say, and I honestly am not really interested.

My Little Alien

Since I was around eleven years old, I've had what's called a "Ganglion Cyst" on the top of my left wrist. The first time I noticed it, I thought it was a bone, but it clearly wasn't. So I went to the doctor. 

WARNING.. slightly graphic descriptions and images below. Click 'read more' if you don't have a weak stomach. 

Districts Results