Wowwowowowow I can’t believe that it’s 2025 already, it feels like just last year we were ringing in 2024! I need to go back to school I’m losing my miiiiiiiindddddddddddddddddd 😃😃😃😀😀😀

Anywho, we back with the FIRST issue of the year! Today, we’ve got the results of last weeks’ polls, I played a bit of Minecraft (a lot), did an interview, and Ashley has an animal for you all. Back to a normal issue today!

Have a great Monday y’all, we love you lots!

Monkey Monday #13, sailing in…..

Poll Results!

Last week, in the 2024 Monkey Monday Banana Awards, there were plenty categories for you, the valued citizens of Earth, to place votes on! And as promised, here are the results!

There are the results! Ties are lame, trapezoid got snubbed, and y’all apparently don’t remember the Quan paralysis incident. Otherwise good job! I approve.

Polls were a success, and we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback, so watch out for more of these in the soon!

-Nate

Nate’s Minecraft Survival World

Winter break is breaking my mind, so I decided to pass the time with some video games. After beating the entirety of Shadow Of The Colossus a few times, I decided to recommit to my once forgotten goal…

See, when I was a young lad, I played lots of Minecraft. But see, I only ever played on servers, with minigames and such. I never actually had a full survival run with me beating the Ender Dragon. Those who know anything about Minecraft may know that that’s kind of the main point of the game, yet here I am, with all these hours over years on Minecraft, never actually beating it.

Sure I’d tried, but I would always get bored quickly, and end up going back to multiplayer servers with my friends.

But now, I’ve been reborn anew. Now, I’m committed to finally defeat the Ender Dragon. I’ve been on this world for the past week, and I have yet to reach the endgame, but I’ve taken the time to relax and enjoy the little things of the game for the first time ever.

So let me give y’all a status report as to where I’m at:

Here is a picture of my humble abode. This is by far the prettiest house I’ve ever made in survival, and I’m quite proud of it.

Here is some interior to my house. As you can see, it’s currently under some construction as I try to figure out how to make this redstone powered door.

If you go forward to the right, where the wall becomes a stone cave, it will take you down a long set of steps, past my enchantment room, past my furnace room, and into the mine.

Speaking of furnace room, here we are! On the left, I have 6 furnaces, armed with plenty of coal. And on the right, we’ve got the garbage dump! I wasn’t able to fit the whole thing in one picture, but I’m very proud of this room. The entrance has lava windows in the corridor, which sets a really cool vibe.

Moving back outside, we’ve got my backyard! I have a nice little farm, full of sugar cane, wheat, carrots, and potatoes. On the right I have my cow farm! I use the wheat that I grow to feed the cows, allowing them to make more cows! Once there’s a good 80 of them, I go in with my sword, named “Gun”, and slaughter a good 40 of them. This gives me plenty of experience points and beef! Although not the most humane, I have a self sustaining food source.

Behind my farms, in the back, you can see I’ve done lots of landscaping. I’m planning on building a frog sanctuary back there.

You can also see the Nether portal on the bottom. I’ve journeyed into the Nether a few times, bridging far and wide in search of a fortress, but I have yet to find one.

Looking at the Nether portal from the other direction, there is a tall string of ladders. 128 to be exact! This takes you up to my super duper fancy mob xp farm! I spent many hours on this, gathering materials and carefully following a youtube tutorial. It’s pretty sick, it gives me lots of points needed to enchant my gear.

Speaking of my gear, here’s a little snapshot of my main gear:

My sword, “Gun”, and my Bow, “Arm Of Ra”, are the most decked out of my equipment. I had planned to get Infinity and Flame on 2 separate bows and combine them together, but on one of my enchantment rolls it gave me all 5 of those enchantments at once, giving me an INCREDIBLE bow. The sword also has a bunch of enchantments.

The armor and tools all have pretty standard enchantments: Unbreaking, Efficiency, Protection, Fortune, etc.

Lastly, back in my house, right next to my record player, we’ve got my to-do list!

I’m planning on putting a couch on this side of the house, under the list. I also have the door to work on, as well as the frog sanctuary, and continuing the main game by finding a Nether fortress.

So yeah that’s pretty much all I’ve got to show you all. Hopefully I can update you next week with an Ender Egg, meaning I’ve beat the game, but we will see. I only have a couple weeks to finish this up, because I won’t have time to play once I get back to school. That’s all!

-Nate

Update, 1 day later:

I’m da goat.

Pick of the Week

I literally have been listening to nothing but Pierce The Veil and Adrienne Lenker on repeat, and I’ve already talked about those guys extensively, so let’s do something completely different.

For Christmas, my sister wanted some jazz records, so I had to link her up with some Miles Davis, one of the Jazz goats (I‘m pretty sure, I’m not super versed in the jazz lore tbh), and Kind Of Blue is a record of his I love!

This record is absolutely fantastic. As a non-jazz expert, I’ll try and describe as best as I can.

It’s mellow, smooth, quiet and buttery, perfect for a coffee shop, or a fancy restaurant. To me, this album does a fantastic job of maintaining beauty and gentleness, while also having plenty of joyous, soulful, emotional playing. It’s simultaneously works as background music for getting things done, or really interesting, focused listening.

Miles on the trumpet is fantastic across the board. He manages to pierce through the background with beautiful melodies, without sounding intrusive, or isolated.

Don’t have much else to say about it, it’s just perfect! If you like jazz, or need some background music to put on, give this a shot!

Is it Ripe?

While working on this issue, I gave Suntub by ML Buch a listen. I’ve never listened to this artist before, but I heard she has some similar elements to my king Mk.gee, so I gave it a shot.

And my thoughts? It’s pretty good! It’s got alot more droning, shoegazey elements to it, making for a longer, more atmospheric listen, really feeling like a mix between Mk.gee and Duster. The record would alternate between lyrical songs and instrumental songs, providing a little scenic walk between each “singing” song.

I really liked everything that I heard sonically, but the entire listen as a whole did start to drag a tad for me.

I think if the more I listen to this album, the more it’ll grow on me, because everything I heard was incredibly beautiful, I just need to digest it first.

If you’re a fan of chill music, and don’t mind beautiful, slow instrumental, dreamy, reverb driven guitar tracks, maybe give this a shot!

Favorite Songs: Flame shards goo, High speed calm air tonight, Well bucket, River Mouth

-Nate

Ripeness: 7/10

Interview Time!

Ashley’s Animals

Quan Quotes

Verse Of The Week