My online presence has always been careful. But ‘careful’ is starting to feel a lot like ‘passive’ in a time when passivity is a conscious and potentially harmful choice, and that’s not the stance I want to take.
I have always had strong opinions about life, about the world. I have always had a place to express myself inside my own home, and I’ve done my best to support my friends and people I know. And I thought that was enough.
Today marks one year from the last time I posted on this blog, so happy anti-blogiversary to me! To celebrate, I’ve done nothing. Except try again.
I decided several weeks ago to restart Que What Now because I want to change how I am interacting with the internet. A year ago I wrote a post about social media and how I was using it. I wrote about how I hated that social medias give me something to do when I should be focusing on something else and how much time I just wasted. At the time I was feeling pretty confident about changing my habits. It didn’t last long. But a couple of months ago I was doing enough real things that I wasn’t just wasting time. I fell off of Twitter and Pinterest completely and used Facebook only in the evenings because that’s how I communicate with people from this deep in the jungle. That’s when I decided to restart my blog.
There are many things that can make anyone happy. I was simply thinking about it the other day. And thus, here is a random, completely irrelevant, for no purpose whatsoever, list of some things that make me happy:
Hello again! Ezra here from Que What Now, hailing to you guys from Costa Rica for the first time! First off, I would like to apologize for not writing a blog sooner as we have now been here for three weeks. But on the bright side, I have more to write about now!
We arrived on Thursday at seven o’ clock at the Liberia airport (Liberia is one of the provinces of Costa Rica) and spent the day driving down to the south coast to our property. We spent a couple nights in a hotel in San Isidro (probably a 20 minute drive from our property) before we had cleaned up our property well enough to live in it.
Our property consists of a large circular front yard/parking space area in front of a cabin that is on slightly lower ground than the yard. The cabin is open to the outside and has a balcony and a one-person kitchen. Leading off it are various paths and staircases that lead to two more closed off cabins we are using as bedrooms. Behind the house is a steep ramp covered in sheer jungle. I’ll send pictures of the property and some of the other cool stuff down here in one of my next blogs, but right now my wifi is a phone’s hot spot and i shouldn’t try to upload any pictures.
There are a couple things I forgot about this country that came screaming back to me when we got here. The first thing I remembered was just how humid it was. I mean, the day before I had been in British Columbia, Canada, in wintertime. The tropical humidity was noticeable from the isolated hallway leading off the plane to the main airport. It was like a slap in the face- a very wet slap- when we opened the door and got to the main airport. I was sweating through my shirt by the time we were outside and getting in a taxi.
Another thing I forgot that occurred to me later was how much I missed the food. There is a large variety of food in Costa Rica just like in America, but like how eggs and bacon is kind of a national breakfast, there is a basic food selection that almost every restaurant has. And it is so good. I mean, I know that having rice and beans, eggs and fruit blended with water or milk sounds like it would get old eventually, but I could live off the stuff- almost literally. Through some basic minerals in there somewhere and you could survive on “Gallo Pinto con Huevos” forever.
Yet another thing I forgot was how surprisingly easy it is to survive here with only a basic knowledge of the Spanish language. Often people speak English, or the print on your menu in a restaurant is in both English and Spanish or you can use interpretive dance. You can make your way through Costa Rica relatively easy.
And the last and most striking thing I forgot about was the sheer size of common bugs here. It’s insane! I mean, at nighttime the jungle space behind our cabins is inhabited by cicadas. Sounds innocent enough, right? Yeah………. I hate the cicadas. I actually, really, truly DO NOT LIKE THEM AT ALL. Have I ever told you about the howler monkeys in Costa Rica? if not, I suggest you go and find a recording of a howler monkey right now.
We have a family of Howler Monkeys that also live in the jungle behind our cabins, and almost every morning they make that sound. I prefer that to the cicadas. For one thing the cicadas chirp at nighttime when I’m trying to sleep AND in the morning, and the Howlers just cry in the morning. And for another thing, they don’t “chirp” per se. it’s either a steady up and down synchronized cry, like “krrrrrAAAAAAAww! krrrrrAAAAAAAww!” or even worse: a superloud individual scream that starts out like normal clicking and speeds up until it morphs into a sound like a chain saw crossed with a man screaming as loud and long as he can, a sound that can last several seconds.It’s earsplitting. “Kli…Kli…Kli kli kli kli kli kli kli kli kli kli kli kli kli kli-kli-kli-kli-kli-kli-kli-kliklikliklikliklikrrrrrrRRRRRRRAAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWW!!!”
And thirdly, their sheer size is frightening, as I mentioned earlier. For example; put the tip of your forefinger and the tip of your thumb together like you’re saying “perfect”. Now look at the circular hole you have formed with your fingers. We have cicadas that big on our property. “Crashing through the underbrush” is a fairly accurate discription of the sound they make when they’re flying through plants. They sound like tiny helicopters. It’s scary. I wish they were small enough for me to feed to my praying mantis.
Oh yeah. Hannah and I caught a wild mantis, built a habitat for it and have been feeding it other bugs. We started out cautious, just feeding her moths smaller than herself, but have recently started experimenting with her diet, giving her a small beetle, a small grasshopper and a daddy long legs.
Tell you what- remembering that she’s small, why not you guys suggest bugs I should try to catch and feed to my Mantis (whos’ name is Nim). I’ll put them in her cage and record how she reacts! And take pictures of her eating it’s head! (they always go for the head.) Just give your bug suggestions in the comments below!
The title was sarcastic. OF COURSE I PLAY MINECRAFT! That’s basically all I’ve written about on this website! Ugh… never mind.
Hello, Ezra here, and today I will reveal what me and my friends look like in Minecraft so you can give us a friendly shout out if you see us on Youtube or on a server.
This is me.
This is me in my custom skin designed like Spiderman’s most dangerous enemy, Venom, who I think is the best comic book character ever to exist. As of today my friend Blaise also plays on this account, and so you may run into either him or me on a server. Make sure to say hi!
This is Hannah with and without “Venom Mode” on;
Hannah has made her custom skin kind of match mine, changing it to what seems to be a female reincarnation of Venom. And in the background is a completely irrelevant villager who appears to be about to jump off the roof of a house.
Hello, Ezra here, and today I am writing my current plans for the scary Minecraft Map I’m going to try to make this school year. I don’t have all the backstory figured out yet, so I’m going to update this post as soon as I have it all figured out. But for now, I hope you enjoy this sneak peek at my current backstory idea.
In the late carboniferous period, over 300 million years ago, a small and recently evolved species of lizard that was-
Okay. Wait. Hold on. You’re doing this all wrong! My voice does not sound the way you’re imagining it does. Stop that! You’re making me sound ridiculous! Besides, This is a dramatic backstory part that goes back 300 million years. I need presence.
So imagine that my voice sounds like one of those guys who narrate nature documentaries. Like David Attenborough from the Planet Earth series. Or Morgan Freeman. Someone like that.
Ahem… In the late carboniferous period, over 300 million years ago, a small and recently evolved species of lizard that was in constant danger of the giant insects and gargantuan arthropods that lived in that time began to evolve in a way that other creatures of that time were not. Instead of striving to become bigger and stronger and faster than everything else (which was quite commendable in that particular age), it gradually became more INTELLIGENT than everything else. And, by chance, the species survived long enough to become a formidable predator in the mid-Permian period, the age where lizards first started to become giant reptiles who ruled the world, such as the mighty Dimetrodons. However, the highly intelligent creature, having had 45 million years to develop and evolve, had a highly developed anatomy and mind. It dug burrows, made basic tools, camouflaged itself in order to catch prey and developed a uniquely potent venom that, when applied, rushed to the nervous system and affected the simple reptilian part of the brain that processes the fight/flight response (which was… well, a large portion of the brain of a large primitive lizard). All of these attributes made up for a lack of strength, as the creature had a relatively weak design of standing on it’s hind legs, making it easy to catch off balance, but allowing the creature to use its forelegs to grab objects with flexible fingers and opposable thumbs. The lizard of over 300 million years ago had become a domesticated, reasoning humanoid predator.
However, at the end of the Permian period, the species died along with 95% of all life in the biggest extinction ever recorded due to the creation of a worldwide desert with too little water. The species, depending highly on water, could not cope and died out quickly.
In modern times, a team of archeologists illegally searching for objects of value under an ancient temple stumbled across a giant salt pit at the foundation of the artifact. After professionals excavated the pit, they found the body of a previously undiscovered prehistoric reptile- perfectly preserved in the salt and buried with tools dating back over 250 million years ago.
No one had an explanation for why it was found in a pit of salt, but it seemed like the creatures had preserved their bodies much like the Ancient Egyptians did. And they had made tools! This suggested that the they had more intelligence than any living thing since humans. And to think that they evolved over 250 million years ago when everything was supposed to be primitive! Unable to resist the temptation of cloning the creature to see how it acted, the government secretly started to work on recreating the creature.
Afew years later, a call went out for guards with high positions in government affairs to come to a secret underground facility…
Of course that’s where players will come into the map as the guard.
For those of you who didn’t understand all that or didn’t want to read through all that backstory, here’s the simplified version. Make sure to keep that Morgan Freeman voice up!
A long time ago, lizards turned into awesome human-y reptiles because they didn’t like big bugs and lizards. Later their big brains made it easy for them to kill stuff because they could lay traps and make tools. But then the water went away so they died. But a long time later some dudes broke the rules and went into a really really old building and found a big hole filled with salt. Then they called in secret agent dudes to dig it out and they found one of the really really old human-y reptiles with it’s skin still together right. So the secret agent dudes thought “Hey! These guys were really smart to bury themselves in a big salt hole!” and tried to make one that was not, you know, DEAD. Then they called in more secret agent dudes to their secret hideout.
Yep. That’s it in a nutshell.
Or, if you need (which I sincerely hope you don’t), here’s a simplified version of the simplified version;
Scary human lizards die. Humans try to make more after they die. They get in trouble.
Well… there you have it.
I hope you liked this sneak peek and if you have any suggestions please tell me in the comments below.
"I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me."
~ Lizzie Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
