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Hey folks, sorry I keep missing my weekly mark - a lot has happened lately. In fact, that's what I wanted to write about tonight. First of all, I wanted to give a huge thank-you to everyone for the copious benedictions through Facebook, text, or a regular phone call over the past couple of weeks. If you're not sure what I'm talking about: last week, I admitted that my mental health is suffering to a large number of people and humbly asked for emotional support. Some sent texts, some called me up, others sought me out in person. It was the "Dragon Ball Z" Spirit Bomb of kindness and love that I definitely needed, and I'm deeply grateful to everyone who answered my plea for help. I've been noticing, as my life has slowly been taking shape into something new, that a lot of things about my old life are falling away, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. This is a time of transition in my life, and I'm doing my best to be proactive about helping t

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

Some things I'm grateful for: By mid-June, I'll have paid off about $4000 worth of debt...in just over four months. I really, really dig my hair. And I'm glad I'm not going bald. I have some truly great friends. I'm in the ideal situation for someone who doesn't have access to affordable healthcare - I'm young and healthy. I love what I do. I don't live in Russia. I've never been shot. I live in an age where cars drive themselves and I have a computer that is always connected to the Internet in my pocket. "Game of Thrones" comes back next year. I still have an entire season of "Vikings" to catch up on. I live in the age of Netflix and Hulu, so I don't have to deal with the nightmare bullshit of cable companies. I was born white, male, and American, so in a lot of ways I lucked out; I'll never have to deal with a lot of shitty things that the majority of the world has to deal with.

While everyone's attention has been fixed on the gun control debate, the royal wedding and Trump's failure as a diplomat, another story broke yesterday that should perhaps be getting just as much attention as the first and third on this list...it should definitely be getting more attention than the third thing on this list, but people do love their distractions. The NFL just slapped the first amendment in the face. An official ruling  yesterday decreed that NFL teams will be fined if a player residing on the field during the singing of the national anthem does not stand, or in the words of Roger Goodall, "show respect for the flag and the anthem." ...it's downright fascistic. There's no better word for it. While it's true the first amendment's jurisdiction does not extend to the private business sector (the NFL is not publicly traded, believe it or not), that doesn't change the fact that it's an act that shows blatant contempt for the

WARNING: Spoilers for both "Infinity War" and "Watchmen" ahead. I know the latter is almost 10 years old now, but heads up anyway. "Infinity War" explores a deep question: if you had the choice to let one person die in order to save ten lives, would you do it? It's a heavy concept, and it's more complex than the film seems to argue. Kill One, Save Ten Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olson) and Vision (Paul Bettany) have a series of moments in which Vision, fearing capture by Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his thugs, implores Scarlet Witch to kill him by destroying the Mind Stone. The Mind Stone is the Infinity Stone that serves as his power source. Though extremely reluctant, Scarlet Witch eventually does so. "It's not fair, but it has to be you," Vision says, pleading and apologizing at the same time. Earlier in the film, it was revealed the relationship between them implied during "Captain America: Civil War" had ful

"This is America" is a music video released last Saturday by Donald Glover, AKA Childish Gambino. ...there's a lot to unpack about it. Other sources have covered to death this video, which felt to me less like a typical viral music video and more like an interpretive dance piece. With my background in psychology, I had a very specific reaction to it. It's the kind of video you have to watch at least a few times. Fortunately, that's made easy on the viewer since it's just as catchy and full of jaunty, fun dance moves as it is horrifying Kubrickian scenes representing everything from biblical signs of the apocalypse to the Rodney King beatings. The brilliance of the video comes from the fact that Gambino and his backup dancers spend most of the video distracting the audience from what's going on behind them, occasionally shocking us with gun violence and abrupt tempo changes. This can best be demonstrated by an experiment I first saw in a psych

This will doubtless upset a lot of people if it's true, particularly those who favor direvolves over dragons. That's why I'm using this sentence to pad the preview, so people who don't want spoilers can't see the thesis for this article I've written in the next paragraph. Arya Stark died in Braavos. The real identity of the person who took her place is The Waif, her otherwise nameless rival from training with the Faceless Men. The fight with the Waif The Waif was clearly better than Arya - more cunning, more ruthless, better at face-changing, and with greater weapon proficiency. Evidently, she's strong as hell, too - pause the frame on Lady Crane's corpse and try to wrap your head around what the hell happened to her. Remember, Arya had been stabbed several times  by the Waif. The entire time she was running, she was losing blood. With her fight-or-flight senses activated, her body was coursing with norepinephrine and adrenaline, s

Love him, hate him...just don't ignore him. Especially now. Avicii, real name Timothy Bergling, was around my age at the time of his death, give or take about six months. Poor bastard never made it to age 30. Some loved him. I know a lot of people, myself included, jammed the fuck out to "Levels" in college. We played the music video ad nauseum for each other in dorm rooms bathed in the violet glow of blacklights while sipping Miller High Life and shrieking the lyrics in gleeful falsettos, harmonizing with joy in intoxicated dissonance. Some hated him. I suppose there are a lot of people who disliked his music, citing "Levels" as the "only good song." I myself never followed his music after that one hit. I do know, however, that up to his death, he was playing sold-out shows all over the world. He'd been doing that since he was a teenager. Then, he started canceling shows to go into emergency surgery. This article by "Psycho

Approx. 8 minute read Heads up: picture of fake cooking injury towards end of article, avoid if sensitive to blood Your broke ass needs to learn how to cook. I started cooking in the summer of 2012. I was living on my own for the first time, working two jobs, supporting myself. I had two goals I hoped to meet by doing this: I wanted to save money by eating mostly food I cooked from scratch, and I wanted to lose weight. I wasn't overweight or anything, I was just on the threshold of where I wanted to be in terms of fitness. I succeeded at both. The picture above is of a bowl of homemade congee I made for myself. It tasted better than a Chipotle burrito and cost me about $0.35 in ingredients just for that bowl. You too can harness such power! Cooking is intimidating, I get that. So is getting into shape, getting your driver's license, learning how to swim, and lots of other things that are worth having. Like all those things, it's just a matter of starting small

If you've been struggling to find full-time work, especially if you're young and don't have a ton of experience - it's probably because you're looking for full-time positions.  Of which, especially to the "entry level" market, there is a scarce amount. Those who aren't in the "entry-level" bracket often make the false assumption that when people complain about how rough the job market is for college grads, they're reacting to the same considerable obstacles that they  had to deal with. In some cases, this might not be untrue. They may also point out that unemployment is currently super low. It's sitting comfortably at 4.1% , a huge change from 2008, when the recession began and that number was sitting at a depressing (recessing? Sorry) 10%. Skeptics may cry "doomsaying" when addressing the complaints of younger professionals, especially (do I really have to say it?) millennials, but there is significant evidence that