Gearing up for another backpacking trip this week withmy son. Going to try for another 20 miles.

Did a ten mile hike with my sixteen-year-old son today. Judging by my pace and the amount of pain and blisters at the end, I am officially old.

My honors students opted for a desert final this spring becasue the finals week scheudle made my usual cooking dinner option impossible. So, we're having cheesecakes, cookies, brownies, and charcuterie.

Ending my spring honors class by watching Grave of the Fireflies.

My students in my visual rhetoric class are making such amazing work this semester and it's giving me so much hope and joy.

Well, since I turn 48 this year I guess it's finally time to start getting those hand tattoos I've been thinking about.

I just need to find the last 1k words to put this draft to bed. Just a few more. Feel like an old man trying to talk himself into climbing up a hill.

Teaching The Society of the Spectacle today in my Visual Culture class and it feels almost too much on-the-nose for the moment.

My body has waited until the last three weeks of the semester to fail me with sickness. Could also be becasue I spent the weekend outside in the cold and the wet.

One of the things I appreciate about the Band Director for my son's school is that they send out calenda details for a year in advance. So, I'm updating my calendar through next March. This is great for being prepared and not having conflicts, but it's also fucking with my sense of time.

Spring trap season is now in full swing, so my free time has completely vanished. The upside though is that I love being able to have this adventure with my son. I wouldn't trade the time for anything.

Spring is approaching. This means it's time to develp new hobbies that I'll never have time to fully pursue, but will enjoy knowing how to do. On this year's list, we're going to learn how to make homemade cheese.

New volume in the Approaches to Digital Game Studies series! Games That Haunt Us: Gothic Game Space As a Living Nightmare edited by @mutanttheorist.bsky.social released today! Very worth your time to check out! www.bloomsbury.com/us/games-tha...

Writing about necropolitics and cultural erasure in games and struggling to reign in my inner monologue about bad design in the process. The inabiltiy of games to deal with various cultural representations well is no accident- it's a feature of a system that profits from poor design decisions.

It's a writing day with @tlecaque.bsky.social which feels like a good reason to also make corned beef reubens with malt vinegar chips. At some point we'll break out the whisky, but we have to hit some word counts first.

Prepping 30 lbs of bbq pork, 15lbs of bbq jackfruit, and assorted baked goods for our PRIDE fundrasier tomorrow. I love feeding people in general, but feeding people for a good cause is even better.

This week's batch of meal-prep burritos is desperately in need of hot sauce. Or really flavor of any kind. Not my best work.

I am starting to think that teaching six classes on top of everything else this semester was a poor choice. I'm going to have to give myself a hard age cutoff for doing this. No excessive overload after reaching fifty.

It's Play week for my game design students. They voted for Slay the Princess, but Firewatch was such a close second we're going to carve out another week later in the semester to play that one also.

As a treat for myself, I have just ordered a warhammer. As one does.

My students in Visual Culture and Rhetoric this semester are feisty and creative. This gives me hope and joy.

We have reached the stage of life where I am incredibly excited about getting new socks.

My daughter is in her second year of college. Today, during her graphic design class, she played a game of "Cheese or Font." She became so animated that her smartwatch registerd the class activity as a high-stress workout. I love hearing these stories on our way home everyday.

Office is cleaned and organized, syllabi are finished, Blackboard portals are built and done. It's going to be a twenty-credit semester, but I've still managed to fit in some weekly writing time. Now to make sure I also keep fitting in lunch and weight lifting for my health/sanity.

Publication announcement! The two-volume collection on game genres is finally out today! Thanks to my co-editors @gerald-voorhees.bsky.social, @profmatthew.bsky.social, and @betsybrey.bsky.social for all the work and friendship. Thanks also to our excellent contributors for their time and energy!

Doing some writing today, and I have no idea why it's taken me this long in life to realize that Phil Collins might just be some of the best writing music there is.

I can't remember the last time a game made me laugh so hard as Dispatch.

Got all the holiday shopping done early this year. It's more fun shooping for my kids now that they are older and they want specific, nerdy things related to their interests. Also, all everyone really wants is the family tradition of a day at the bookstore followed by deep-dish pizza.

I think the highlight of my day has been having a conversation on this platform using memes and quotes from the movie Predator.

Anyone else having that non-specific end of semester anxiety? Everything is done, for the moment, but I keep looking for the things I'm forgetting...

Ordering a bunch of books to start a new thread of research around some long-running work. It's always exciting when following a new idea down the rabbit hole!

Heading into the holiday break with all of my grading finished, writing deadlines met, and personal obligations satisfied. Going to live in sweat pants for a week reading, playing some games, working on some new projects, and hanging out with my family. Also, there will be several soups made.

Academic friends, we're looking for a new Graphic Design colleague to join us in the Art and Design Program here at Grand View. It's a tenure-track position in a small, highly collaborative department with areas in Graphic Design, Studio Arts, and Game Design. www.paycomonline.net/v4/ats/web.p...

Watching my game capstone students collaborate to make really interesting work, and it reminds me why I love this job.

Keep thinking about this poster and how true it is. Mighht be time to hang it back up in my office.

Everyone around me is excited for Spoopy Season. Meanwhile, I'm over here cheering for soup season. Thinking of making some lasagne pesto soup this weekend.

Saw a student walking across campus today dressed as a Wookie. The kids are alright.

My son earned his Eagle Scout rank this week. This has been an adventure four years in the making. I'm incredibly proud of him and his dedication to his interests, but it's also a reminder that he's definitely getting older. Parenting is often bittersweet. I wish my father could have seen this.

Per one of my students: "Does the rapture count as an excused absence?"

Of all the things I thought I'd be buying in my late 40's, never did I imagine a golf cart on the list. And I don't play golf.

This has been a project long in the making, and evolving from several years of conversations with good friends and colleagues. I'm beyond proud to have worked with everyone to help bring these to life.

All those constitutional literalists about the second amendment of the last 20+ years have suddenly become highly invested in post-structural semantics when it comes to due process.

Took my son snowshoeing this weekend for one of his last scout merit badges. It's been a while since I did that myself, and I'm definitely feeling it in the arthritis today. It was worth every step for a good afternoon helping him get closer to his goals. Still gonna old-man grumble today...

Of all the things that exhaust me working in higher education, the emotional labor of aggressively angry students is perhaps the most taxing. I could not have predicted how much of my teaching life would be so similar to working as a bouncer.

Looks like Murder by Death will be playing in Iowa this summer. Been a while since I last went to a concert, so maybe it's time again.

As the laws about curriculum continue to emerge, I was told by one angry parent that the inclusion of Rene Descartes and Erving Goffman in my class reading was 'leftist woke propaganda." Let that settle in for a laugh before the uncomfortable scope of this stupidity makes us all more angry.

My article "Sex as Reward in Games" can be found among great company in the recently published Handbook of Sex and Sexuality in Games Studies by Bloomsbury. You can find more details and buy the book here: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bloomsbur... (if you're interested in reading my article dm me).

Syllabi finished, Blackboard pages updated, Spring 2025 is ready to roll. I'm not ready, but the semester is, so here we go I guess?

2025’s #GenerationAnalog will be July 15-16, online, free, open to public, with the theme PUNK Abstracts due: March 31, 2025 (750 words) Acceptance by: May 1, 2025 (Past acceptance rate: 30-50%)

Holiday breaks mean a chance to catch up on all the work I can't do during the regular semester. Today I'm finishing the bathroom remodel. Got the new shower installed and drywall placed/textured. Now to paint and install the new fixtures.