Welcome to my Now Page, my thoughts and what I’ve been up to lately. Loosely inspired by my friend Jack Grimes’ format. You’re reading the 2026-04-22 version of this page. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

Doing

The homework grind is real. Just like my last Now page, it's Thermo. Again.

Thinking

Ditto.

Watching

SHIT I forgot to write anything about Project Hail Mary last week! I went to see it at The Oriental, a cool as hell local theater here in Milwaukee, with my friend who's seen it three times now. I thought she was kinda crazy for seeing it that many times, but holy shit I get it now. It's fantastic. Based solely off of how much fun I had watching a movie, it's way, way, way up there with The Fifth Element. So, so, so many times, my jaw actually dropped and hung open. Knowing that the vast majority of it was done with physical sets, FX, and puppetry just made it better.

I think one of the cooler little bits I haven't seen many people talk about is how it does get the nature of science right. Of course Grace is disappointed when his hypothesis is wrong, but he keeps on working on it and coming up with a crazy-ass idea to jury-rig a plywood box to trap the Astrophage samples! It's a gut punch, especially when you've been defending what sounds absurd for the longest time, but you discover and learn and adapt. It's never just "well, that's wrong, guess I'll pack it up." The nature of science is to march on! The nature of humanity (and Eridians and whatever else may be out there) is to march on!!! Yall know I'm a sucker for stuff about the indomitable human (or Eridian) spirit, and Project Hail Mary has this in spades. Go watch it.

Playing

• Sniper Elite 5. Look, I love a good stealth game, I love a good immersive sim, and I love killing virtual Nazis. You give me a game that's all of it? Hell. Yes. It's got some really nice stealth, some very pretty environments, lots of fun little interactions and sidequests and ways to procure your equipment on-site, and so many Nazis to kill. It's almost like Hitman, except you're not penalized for killing guys (cuz they're Nazis!), you just gotta hide the bodies afterwards. I spent a good 3 hours in the first level figuring out how stealth and sniping works, then killing as many Nazis and collecting as much intel as I could. I haven't even touched the multiplayer yet, which is a really cool spin on Dark Souls-style invasions where you're a Nazi countersniper. I mean, the Nazi part isn't cool, but the counter-sniping part is cool. I've seen videos from a guy who does invasions where he randomizes his guns and still hits shots from across the map. Shit's wild.
• Redout 2. I've seen some wild videos like Peak of Wonder on Youtube, and seeing as how Redout 2 was in a Fanatical bundle that was about 6 bucks, I gave it a shot. Dude, this rules. It's right in the middle between F-Zero and WipEout, taking some of the pure speed and racer energy from the former and the airbrake strafing from the latter. I still gotta wrap my head around piloting properly, but I'm having a blast with it so far.

Listening

• Manning Fireworks (2024), MJ Lenderman, Anti- Records. I've never heard something this unique before. Nobody does the slacker rock-slash-country twang that MJ Lenderman does. His lyrics are really cutting and brutally honest, but also really funny. If it weren't for that sense of humor, I could see some complaints about it feeling a little too self-hating incel for some people, but it totally avoids falling into that vibe. How do you expertly follow a line about Lightning McQueen blacking out up with "How many roads must a man walk down before he learns/He's just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse 'til it burns?" This is one of those albums where whenever I go to listen to a single track, it turns into a whole-album listen. Hell, that happened to me as I was writing this.
• Physical Thrills (2022), Silversun Pickups, New Machine Recordings. I'm not really sure how I feel about Silversun Pickups' newer albums. They aren't bad, but I keep wishing they'd lean into more of the shoegazey elements from their Swoon and Carnavas era. Empty Nest is a ridiculously catchy single, I love how fuzzy the vocals are on System Error, and the lyrics of Quicksand really get me for some reason--they sound very interrogative, but somehow also there's some level of care there. Other tracks like We Won't Come Out just completely miss me. I had a little bit of fun with it and I think there's some neat ideas I could borrow for my own songwriting, but I'm not sure how long its impression will last.
• Discovery (2001), Daft Punk, Virgin Records. What an absolute classic jammer of an album. I'm not sure there's a bad song on here, just songs that aren't quite as good. Somehow, Daft Punk goes from uptempo and funky to downtempo and lush again and again without feeling too disconnected. It also somehow never clicked for me that future funk is very French house-inspired until I listened to some of the more chopped-up tracks like Aerodynamic and Superheroes.