Good morning Waukesha! It’s looking a bit frigid out there. You can expect a slight chill in the air, with a high of 15 degrees Farenheit, and a low of -6 KRILLION degrees Fahrenheit.

Usually when it gets cold around here, I laugh at all these Wisconsinites and say something along the lines of, “back where I’m from, we’d be wearing shorts and Crocs in this weather!” But truly truly I say to you, it has been a cold, biting first week back at school.

Anyways, we got another issue of Monkey Monday for y’all. As you may have noticed, our team here has been prioritizing our working time to other areas of life, and thus Monkey Monday has gotten slightly less attention resulting in issues that may be a bit shorter. We appreciate your grace and understanding, and hope that when the issues are indeed a bit shorter, they can still bring about a good start to your week! Anyways, Here we go!

Monkey Monday 3 #2, thawing in…

For this next segment, I would like to firmly apologize to any/all color blind readers. It is truly a tragedy that you cannot see certain colors, and for that I give you a moment of silence.

…

That’s enough silence, here we go!

Color tier list. What color is the best?

I would like to preface that most every color has its use, and every color, given the right circumstance can be ELITE. So take into account that just because a color is lower than other colors, doesn’t mean it’s a bad color!

Behold, your tiers:

Mediocre

Pink - At the bottom of our list, we’ve got the color pink. While I will be the first to point out a gorgeous pink sunset, or a beautiful pink cherry blossom, Pink doesn’t have a whole lot of redeeming qualities for me. Shoutout flamingos though, cool bird.

Gray - Second from the bottom we have gray (or grey if you’re British). The poster boy for metal, gray is quite sleek, but also quite bland. Versatile, but not the most. Personally, I think gray is underrated, and has many great appearances. Sadly, as underrated as I think it is, the furthest I can place it is right above pink.

Neat

White - Moving onto our next tier, we have white! White is a classic, clean color. Light typically appears to us as white, milk is white, plain white t-shirts are white. If we were to make this list on how versatile a color is, white would be so, so much higher. If you’re trying to make color combinations, white works with everything. But this list isn’t on how useful a color is, but what the best color is. And as useful and slick as white is, at the end of the day, nobody is calling white “colorful.”

Black - Very similar to white, on the opposite end of the (literal) spectrum, we’ve got black! I think black accomplishes almost everything white does, but I favor black over white just barely. Black has been my go-to color for shirts for about 5 years. Only iin the past year has my closet stopped looking emo. As awesome as black is in so many situations, it has the same Achilles heel as white: it’s useful, but doesn’t have color.

Really Neat

Red - Now we are getting into some real, colorful, heavy hitters. Red is classic. Red apple, red Target logo, red Chuck Taylor’s, red puffle, red barchetta, red lightsaber, the list is endless! However, what is red’s biggest strength, is also red’s biggest weakness. Red is just so, obvious. It’s kind of like the default colorful color. And while red is possibly the most classic color of all time, truly truly, I cannot place it higher than what is to come.

Blue - The Yin to red’s Yang, blue is probably the most beloved color of all time. People love blue. Blue may not be the classic, but it is definitely the fan favorite. Blue is a very beautiful color, and very diverse in its shades. Blue is a staple in nature, being the color of the sky and the sea. Similar to red, however, the popularity and commonality of this color keeps it from placing any higher, but blue is a truly excellent color.

Purple - The first secondary color to grace this list, we have the royal color, purple. There’s something quite elegant yet strong about purple. Tame, yet perplex. Purple is probably the closest color to achieving sentience, it just seems so smart in a way, I don’t know how to explain it. Back in the day, this was the cool, luxurious color, sought out by kings and royalty of all sorts. Purple truly deserves it’s place in the pantheon of top 5 colors.

Green - The color of peace, nature, and serenity. Green sits unrivaled at the top of the really neat tier. There is something so enchanting about green, with its gentleness and kindness. Green has some of the highest highs, but also the lowest lows. Over the past few centuries, green has dipped, HARD. We see the bright, blaring greens of the electronic age. The checkmarks, the dollar, the green lights at stoplights, the Spotify logo, it’s all crashing down. Green is transitioning from a color of the natural world, to a color of consumerism, and for this, I fear the great green has fallen from it’s once great peak.

Supreme

Yellow - Yellow, my sweet yellow, where do I begin? You are such joy, such happiness! What a carefree and gentle color. So friendly and bubbly. If you were to pick up a color, I think you would find that yellow is the lightest. But it is that feathery lightness, the innocence, that makes yellow so charming and true. If you meet someone whose favorite color is yellow, they are probably the most friendly person around! They might have to ask you your name 5 times, but you won’t get annoyed. The friendliest color, yellow.

Orange - A sneaky entry, orange stands second on this great mountain. Orange has the most personality of any color. It’s spunky, clever, and full of energy. If you meet someone whose favorite color is orange, chances are they are super interesting and super cool. While I wouldn’t want to sport orange from head to toe, it’s the spice of the color that makes it so cool. In the same way that I would get sick of the most delectable dessert if that was the only food I could eat, orange surprises you and charms you with a subtle, yet unmistakable wit. Shoutout Otto’s Orange Day.

Brown - Finally, the color that stands atop the rest. One of the oldest colors, the most tested, and wise of colors. The humble brown. You may be surprised to find such a color at the top of this list, but I assure you that there is no color greater than that of the mighty brown. Brown is full of wisdom and flavor. A cup of coffee, a piece of dark chocolate, observe the stark contrasts of sweet and bitter, as is life! There is nothing artificial about brown. It is honest, and firm. Yet it is also warm, and genuine. I love brown. Brown is reliable, but will push you forward. Old, yet always innovating and maturing. While not the flashiest of colors, I will firmly state that brown is the greatest color of them all.

Behold, the final list:

-Nate

Trampled by Turtles, quite possibly the second greatest band name of all time (behind The Band of course). A bluegrass group from the glorious land of Paul Bunyan himself! I was introduced to these lovely fellas by my good ol’ winter roommate George, who is an expert on all honky tonk music.

This album is a whole lot of fun, and if you’ve never given bluegrass a shot, because you’re all grumpy, and mad and “don’t like anything country” like Nate of the past, then now is your time! Turn on a speaker, grab a friend, and start dancing to Duluth!

-Nate

While I was working hard at Zeman over break, I listened to a couple different audiobooks! The first one I sunk my teeth into is the Orson Scott Card’s sequel to Ender’s Game, titled Speaker For The Dead. I was really really excited to get into this book, since a lot of people on the internet said it’s the best book in the series. Furthermore, the author himself stated that Speaker For The Dead was the book he always wanted to write, but needed to write Ender’s Game first to set up for it.

And yeah, I can see why. This is the book that it’s all about. This is what Ender’s Game was meant for. It is a wildly different book than it’s predecessor, and I cannot state that enough. While Speaker is a direct sequel, the tone, storytelling, theme, all feels very different, almost like it’s a completely different genre.

The book takes place 3,000 years after the events of the first book, and takes quite a while to unravel everything that happens. In fact, if there’s one gripe I had with the book, is that it took a few hours of listening to all the different threads to finally get a grasp of what was happening. But once all the threads come together, everything goes wild.

While not as exciting as Ender’s Game in a sense, the whole concept of the speaker, and the xenology is so fascinating and creative, and Card uses these pieces to craft a masterful tale. Anyways, it’s a fantastic book, maybe a bit more difficult of a read than the first book, but the payoff is better. Go read Ender’s Game if you haven’t, and then read this one.

-Nate