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Summer is and has always been, my favorite season of the year. I've spent my entire life in the Midwest, barring rare trips to the East coast or the Southwest - I cannot understate how little I enjoy being cold. When I turned 18 and was legally free to make any choice I wanted (within reason), of course, I made the logical choice: going to college in Wisconsin, a place that's even colder than Chicago. It's late July, which means summer is in full swing. The trouble is, the past few years of my life have been incredibly stressful for one reason or another. Summers have come and gone, and by fall, I've often found myself feeling as though I didn't do enough to appreciate summer while it was here. The other day, I had an interesting moment. I've been getting into the habit of, every free moment that I'm awake, thinking as hard as I can to think of things I'm grateful for, while they're happening. I'm getting better at it. It's gotten t

*Sigh* ...the world's pretty fucked up right now, huh? Since both of my jobs involve exhaustive research and writing, I feel like writing has been less of an outlet for me lately...it's felt more like a chore. Or at least, this blog has. I want to write consistently; as an independent professional, that's important. Even if I write nothing but goofy shit like this, with goofy shit like the picture above as my accompanying visual media, it's important that I don't stop. The most important thing for a writer to do is write...wait for it... consistently . Lately I've been wondering if I should try writing a book. The same amount of writing this blog takes, I've been thinking about applying that same level of effort to outlining, writing, and editing a novel. Maybe a thousand or so words a week. I'm not exactly in a rush - if I went through with it, it would be for me, so I can choose my own deadline. I've always wanted to write a novel. Th

WARNING: 4TH LEVEL NERD SHIT AHEAD. Short post this week; it's been a difficult few days and I don't really feel like making a longer post. I'm back into Warhammer 40K in a big way...painting, building models, and now, beginning new projects centered around it. SPEAKING OF. I play a faction called the Astra Militarum. It used to be called the Imperial Guard, but Games Workshop, the company that makes this incredibly time-and-money-consuming hobby realized they can't copyright the phrase "Imperial Guard," so they renamed it something super gothic cyberpunk. The general strategy for the AM is this: bring bigger guns and more of them than your enemy, and shoot everything in your army at them at the same time before they get in range to start messing you up. Unlike some factions in the game, the AM are not supersoldiers or indestructible undead robots or ancient aliens with advanced technology; they are normal dudes with normal weapons taking on impo

Last week , I wrote about the remake of "Resident Evil 2," which was announced just before E3. This week, I want to talk about something close to my heart - even more so, possibly, than "Resident Evil"...because the only thing I care about more than the "Resident Evil" video games are the rights of the people making them. "Resident Evil 2" centers around the story of two protagonists: Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield. Before he went on to be the roundhouse-kicking poster boy of the franchise after the explosive success of "Resident Evil 4," Leon was a wet-behind-the-ears rookie who spent as much time complaining about how "nobody listens to me" as he did taking orders from civilians, despite being the only cop alive in the police precinct. After "RE2," Claire didn't see as much success. She next appeared in "Code: Veronica," my personal favorite of the series. Alyson Court, pictured above, re

E3 came and went again, and while everyone else was freaking out over "Cyberpunk 2077" or "Dying Light," I was interested in another announcement that flew relatively under the radar. Anyone who knows me knows this...I am obsessed with "Resident Evil," especially the early games. "Resident Evil 2" is getting a remake. Arguably, "RE2" is the favorite among hardcore fans, aside from the legendary "Resident Evil 4." As far as the old-hat Resident Evils go, it's the one everyone can agree on. It's not the first time an old title got an "update;" in 2002, "Resident Evil," the first in the series, got a total overhaul from its original PlayStation 1 graphics on the Gamecube. Besides improved graphics and voice acting (and let's all thank our respective religious deities for that), it included new areas and new enemies, including Lisa Trevor - the unkillable face-collecting monstrosi

***Minor spoilers for "Solo: A Star Wars Story" herein*** On rare occasions, I manage to avoid trailers before seeing a movie like "Solo: A Star Wars Story." I go in a total blank slate, and I get to enjoy or dislike the movie pure of externally-inherited bias. That said, apparently it was a particularly good thing I did so with this movie. A couple  of articles, as well as this video , have been circulating the web. The consensus seems to be that a good number of people wanted the movie to fail because they don't like that it was a movie about Han Solo that didn't include Harrison Ford as the lead role. Or, they didn't like that the project was greenlit at all. Or...name any of the millions of reasons people could have for hating a movie they haven't seen. I genuinely believe a lot of the Web-based hysteria comes not from people who saw the movie, but fans of certain reviewers. Apparently film critic Angry Joe, the Forbes writer Dani