Turning “The Pitt” into My Comfort Show: The Allure of Procedural TV
Television is one of my great daily comforts, or well, it used to be when I had time to watch television on a regular basis (i.e., before the birth of my daughter). We’ve switched eating in front of the television to eating as a family, which is great and ensures that our little one is able to get the nutrients she needs to grow up healthy and strong. I am missing out on a lot of premium television, however.
In the scant hours I do have to watch television, I find myself exhausted. Whether it be from the deluge of mind-freaking (sorry Criss Angel) news on a daily basis or yet another personal problem cropping up to stop my creative flow in its tracks (sorry writing projects), it is hard to invest the time and energy into consuming a new television show. Instead, I find myself falling back into shows I’ve already watched and letting the familiarity wash over me while my brain takes a respite, however brief it might be.
I’ve not been one in the past to rely on a “comfort” show, but here I am watching the first season of The Pitt for a third time, wondering, how did I get here?
Works in Progress: Update #4: The “Everything’s Mapped Out” Update
Hi there. It’s been a minute since our last update. Several minutes. Since Thanksgiving, in fact. So I thought I’d take a bit to give everyone a peak behind the curtain, so to speak, and see where we’re at with all of our favorite ambiguous and vague writing projects.
Revisiting the Liminality of Airports through the Lens of Airport Food
I am once again confined to the premises of an airport for an extended period of time with nothing but a laptop and a change of clothes, so it’s time to explore a space I once claimed to love: airports, the most liminal of spaces we can regularly encounter.
Avoiding the Void in 2026
If I were walking in a city on a dark, dreary night and decided to cut through an alleyway only to come across an armed robber who demanded that I pick a favorite time of year or else they’d shoot me, I’d have to say the no-man’s-land stretch of time that takes place between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
The Speed of Cultural Commodification: The Horrors of This Year’s Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
I never really watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade growing up. Being from New Orleans, watching a parade where you couldn’t catch beads or other awesome prizes just didn’t appeal to me on any sort of level. It was neat, certainly, when a balloon of a character of something I was interested in was featured and my family would be sure to tell me or point out to me that, “Hey, that one thing we know you like is in the parade this year!” And at first, that was exciting because I thought that there was something new in that franchise coming out soon and that’s why the balloon was present, to announce the new addition.
Works in Progress: Update #3: The Thanksgiving Update
Hola, would be readers, and bienvenidos to our [checks notes] third update for those devious little Works in Progress to what we call my current writing projects. This update, like the previous one, has a name! The Thanksgiving Update.
This might suggest that the update is scheduled to come out around the time of Thanksgiving, but here it is on November 21st, a little under a week away. I wonder what that means.
Well, let’s find out and dive deep into what’s going on with these writing projects.
Works in Progress - Update #2 - The Milestone Update
Hey folks, it’s me, your favorite blogger. Henry. Yeah, okay, I know it’s been a while and maybe there’s some room for forgetfulness, but don’t be rude and demand my name, what the heck?
Ahem, anyway, it’s been more than two weeks without a blog article of some kind, so that means an update post is required. And look at that, it’s got a name. The Milestone Update. I wonder what that could be hinting at? I can only imagine.
All Hollow’s Eve: A Replay Retrospect of Hollow Knight
2025 has seen a long awaited sequel hit the market after a long seven year wait in Hollow Knight: Silksong, so of course I’m not playing it. Instead, for reasons unknowable even to me, I have decided to replay the original Hollow Knight and write about it for you, my dear would-be readers. Let’s take a look into [checks notes] 2017’s indie darling Hollow Knight from the perspective of someone who has yet to beat it even once but is playing through it a second time.
Alright, I Think I Owe Y’all A New Deal
Just call me President Franklin "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” Roosevelt, cause I’m about to roll out a brand new deal for all of y’all would-be readers out there.
It seems as though my energies as of late have been successfully directed toward the fruitful endeavor of writing on one of my big projects that we just talked about a few weeks ago. Which is great. Like, it’s been really, really great.
I’ve also been the most tired I’ve ever been these past few weeks and am spending the bulk of my evenings in a brain dead state that has not gone unnoticed in my home life. There are trade offs to everything.
Speaking of tradeoffs, we’re about to pen a whole new contract between me and you and you and me (well, that’s just the same thing but reversed), so let’s get into it.
What’s Going On? - Why The Blog Updates Seem to be Slowing Down
Hey there, readers. Welcome to a post I’ve been toying around with in my head for about two weeks now. I’m both excited and remiss to have to write it, so we’ll see how it comes out, but basically I want to cover why the blog seems to be slowing down as of late. It’s a good news, bad news situation, so let’s just rip off some bandaids so we can apply some more bandaids.
My Favorite Pokemon Types and What They Say About Me (Maybe)
We’ve been covering stuff from my life too much lately, so let’s turn right back to Pokemon and talk about some of my favorite Pokemon typings. For those who don’t know, Pokemon come in all kinds of flavors or types that dictate their weaknesses and strengths. Originally, there were just 15 different types in the original games, but we’ve picked up a few more here and there and now we’re up to a whopping 18.
We’ll dive a bit more into the history of the types to give some background, but the main focus for why we’re here today is to talk about favorites. When it comes to Pokemon, there are many different species to choose from. 1025, to be exact as of the writing of this sentence. So it can be a little overwhelming when it comes to choosing who is going to form your party.
A Startling Revelation That My Phone Has Forgotten Things
Very recently, I found myself in an argument with a friend over the massive multiplayer online role playing game Guild Wars 2. Let's call this friend “Jeff” because that is his name and I'm putting him on blast.
In my recollection of the events surrounding my introduction to Guild Wars 2, my friend “Jeff” insisted that I find a way to play it with him, which I did by purchasing the game, only for him to quickly abandon it shortly after I had.
How This Blog (is Supposed to) Work(s)
Why hello there, would be readers. We’re going to get a bit meta with this week’s post and outline exactly how this blog works. Or, well, how it’s supposed to work, since it’s a bit on the fritz lately, much like everything in my life since the birth of my daughter. Babies are not one for routine, it seems.
We’ll start at the beginning with the naming of this blog as the source of the topics for each article and we’ll move through with the breakdown, why that isn’t happening as frequently, why I’m having to force myself to write at the end of the week now as opposed to the beginning of the week like when I started the blog back in [checks notes] March? That doesn’t seem right, but okay.
I hope this is somewhat entertaining if not just sort of elucidating a bit how my mind works when it comes to writing. If nothing else, it’s therapeutic to get this out of my head, which of course is the final bit we’ll cover, the why write of it all, so let’s just get into it without stalling much more for time. It’s not like stalling for time does anything in the context of writing anyway, since you’ll be reading this long after I am done writing it and how long it takes to write usually isn’t too apparent in the body of work since it is all presented as one complete piece. Here we go.
Arceus’s Goofiest Archangel: A Mega-Defense of Mega Dragonite
I’m not sure if it needs to be said, but I am somewhat of a huge fan of the Pocket Monster (Pokemon if you’re normal) franchise and have been since its American debut in [checks notes] 1998. Now, I’m not a spend money on the franchises I like kind of person, so outside of the video game entries into the franchise, I have very little to show for all of my fandom. This is to say, what I do possess that reinforces my love of the franchise are things that I carry with me in my dumb little mostly empty head.
Back When Tigers Used to Smoke: On Beginnings
With the recent addition to our family, I’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings. Everything is new for my daughter, she didn’t come equipped with much more than the instincts to eat, sleep, poop, and cry when we aren’t taking care of one of those needs. To be inclusive, there are a few other holdout reflexes that babies come equipped with like the ever troublesome Moro’s Reflex that triggers when a baby feels as though they are falling, e.g., any time they are being actively lowered into a crib (it’s kind of funny, they flail their little arms out wide and then close them again). Other than these innate reflexes, everything in this dumb burning world is new to my daughter.
And that leads me to a big question - how does one start introducing the world to one’s kid? How does one begin that process?
The Gradual and Prolonged Collapse of Quality: Enshittificafion and You
One of my hobbies as a semi-intelligent fool is contemplating the concept of entropy. For those of you who didn't study physics (and can sleep well at night), entropy is what scientists use to quantify the tendency in any system to pull toward chaos or randomness. I’m not interested in this form of the understanding of entropy - no, what I am obsessed with is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law, and I’m not sure who signed it into power, states essentially that entropy can only increase or remain the same in a given reversible process. No matter how efficient a process is the system’s entropy, the tendency to pull toward disorder, remains either the same or increases. It never decreases, never becomes zero, implying that over time, there will be less energy.
On (the Time that You Wait Before) Becoming a Father
Okay, so, where were we? Oh? It’s been a couple of weeks since I updated this little blog? Haha, well funny story there, would be reader - my wife and I just welcomed a little baby to this big, wide world full of tragedy (and hope and joy and so many things).
What’s that? You’re asking why I started this blog with the intent of writing every day when I knew full well that our baby would come this year and I’d be naturally interrupted in that goal? Haha, dear reader, you’re such a kidder. Of course I launched this blog with those intended goals. Because of the W A I T I N G.
Only Moving Forward: A Retrospective of The Last of Us Part II
Let’s get my bias out of the way: I am a huge fan of The Last of Us. It’s a good game - perhaps some of the best storytelling in gaming and the way the gameplay fits into the narrative and the worldbuilding is some of the sleekest game design in the modern age. And that’s a weird thing to say because The Last of Us is over 10 years old now.
![Word Review: Optimal - [Purposefully Left Blank]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/653ead14dd3bac3955e5500b/1746131612539-ZJQB8VSOF7OHH83KRIUN/WR-Optimal.png)
Word Review: Optimal - [Purposefully Left Blank]
I missed updating the blog last week, which wasn’t very optimal of me. Nonetheless, I have spent copious undefined years studying words and this Word Review series aims to review some of them. Do we really need all of these different words? Is that really..optimal for us as English speakers? Well, let’s find out, starting with the one word I keep using in this introduction. Of course, we will be rating “Optimal” on a scale unique to the word in a continuation of my life long work to study language, words, and their silly little meanings.
Disco Elysium is Probably the Best Detective Game of All Time into Infinity: A Writing Retrospective
From the first stirrings of atmosphere that we get from 2019’s Disco Elysium by ZA/UM, the world is shrouded in mystery. Two all but disembodied voices tally up sides of an upcoming conflict that will ultimately go unseen before one mentions the name of our protagonist, Harry. Not that we know that Harry is our protagonist. Not that we know anything much at all about the world of Disco Elysium.