Review - The Annotated AvP: The Story, part 11

Today marks the first significant snowfall of November in Ottawa, and what better way to enjoy a cold winter’s evening than by bundling up with a blanket and a mug of rich, creamy hot chocolate and reading the latest installment in the Annotated Aliens versus Predator: The Story? Buckle up.

Rant - Shame Food

I like to think I have good taste—literally. I love food, as my mild girth will attest to, and between my dad’s frequent culinary experiments and my own burgeoning kitchen creativity (emphasis on the “burgeoning”) I’ve developed a healthy respect for sustenance done right. However, I’m also in my early twenties, a year and a half out of university and basically poor, so between homemade butter chicken and lavish amounts of penne noodles I’m apt to stuff myself full of the worst “food” imaginable. And I love it. The following dishes make me feel genuine remorse, as if I’ve actually killed a part of myself, but Goddamn I love them so.

Tangent - On Pseudonyms

What's this? A midweek update? It's nothing big, but if you go back through my archive you'll notice I've changed every instance of my pseudonym, David Merrick, as well as its corresponding initials back to my actual name (as well as, it goes without saying, its corresponding initials). I'm doing this partly because I want to keep the Merrick name for my fictional stand in, but mostly because it's confusing to see it posted alongside people's actual names.

Again, nothing world shattering, merely a little less confuddling.

Interview - Jon Bois

Sports and I don’t go together. I doubt I’ve kicked a ball or made a basket since my last gym class in grade 11 and the most interested I can muster for any championship is the Winter Olympics hockey finals every four years—and even then, only if the Canadian men or women’s team is involved. If there’s a competition I follow with Superbowl levels of enthusiasm, it’s whatever election is going on at the moment.

So when I say I follow a certain sportswriter almost religiously, you know how big that is.

Louisville-based Jon Bois  has been writing for the sports blog SB Nation for the past few years with a unique focus on the absurdity of professional athleticism both on and off the field. He also writes for the recently resurrected site Progressive Boink on occasion. Recently, I had an opportunity to interview him via email on the subject of fumbles, nerdery and animated sports GIFs.

Analysis - "It was the trees themselves!"

With the exception of a mild fear of heights, I don’t really have any phobias to speak of, be they of bats or snakes or even spiders. I’m not afraid of the dark, enclosed spaces or open spaces either, unless I’ve read House of Leaves sometime in the last 48 hours. But I do have a thing about forests; as much as I love camping, they can really freak me the Hell out sometimes. And of course, I’m absolutely drawn to them both in real life and in a fictional context. Some of the most effective works of horror in the history of the genre are set in the forest, and I’m starting to think this isn’t a coincidence.