Today marks the start of a new month, August 2020. But more importantly for our purposes, it is also Saturday – which means that it is time for the thirteenth edition of The New Leaf Journal Week in Review. Over the past week, I made no structural changes to the site other than to add August 2020 to the Archive on our header menu. I did, however, post four new articles since our twelfth week in review. Below, I will examine our new content and things to look forward to in the upcoming week.
New Content at The New Leaf Journal
I posted four articles over the last week. In the following subsections, I will post links to the articles with brief descriptions
The first article of the past week was “Teaching the Art of the Video Game Snafu.” In this post, I made a specious argument in favor if crafting video game strategy guides that lead unsuspecting players to error, only to subsequently advise them that they should learn from the error. The idea was prompted by a video game failure story from my friend and one of my own, neither of which can be confirmed to have happened at all. The article requires no knowledge of any particular game, but any fans of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, will find some stories to appreciate.
My second article was titled “I don’t want your emu and I don’t have to feed it.” The title was prompted by Victor’s quote from a decade ago – “I don’t like your emu and I don’t have to eat it; but you can keep the sofa” – that would give birth to our own The Emu Café section of The New Leaf Journal. The article focuses on the peculiar story of an Australian hotel banning unruly emus from entry.
My third article, “Seeing Hopkins-Jones II at the Theater,” tells the story of my seeing the dreadful 2010 boxing match between Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. at a movie theater in Manhattan. I had originally planned to include part of this story on my earlier article on whether one should leave a bad movie early. However, finding that it did not quite fit as part of that larger article, I gave the story its own article here. No prior boxing knowledge is required, for I fill in the necessary context in the article itself. Give it a read to find out why I stayed until the end of that foul-filled fight.
Finally, I wrote a tribute to the late Herman Cain in “The 999 Life of Herman Cain.” The colorful politician and business executive passed away on Thursday from the Wuhan coronavirus. In the article, I recount Mr. Cain’s rise to political prominence and how my friends and I borrowed his famous tax plan – the “9-9-9 plan” – to use as a new way to describe something that is epic. Through all the ups and downs, Mr. Cain lived a 999 life.
The Newsletter Leaf Journal News
Last Sunday, we sent out the second edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal. For those of you who have not subscribed yet, you can read that newsletter here and also see our growing newsletter archive. As promised, our newsletters include site news, unique anecdotes, and previews about things to come. If you like what you see, please consider signing up at our newsletter sign-up page. We will send the third edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal tomorrow.
Looking Forward
We will focus on publishing new content this week after a relatively slow couple weeks of posting. I have a couple of articles in the works, the first of which you will find tomorrow (Sunday, August 2) morning. It is unlikely that I will allow the news of TikTok’s apparent and very tragic impending demise to pass without mention this week, depending on how events transpire. I am continuing to work on some longer term projects – including an in-depth look at the best-told character arc in video games and a review of the terrible anime, School Days (in response to Victor’s post on Love Henry) – that should be posted later this month. Victor has been busy of late, but I look forward to reading some more of his music content and life anecdotes in the near future.
Parting Shots
Thank you as always for reading and following The New Leaf Journal. If you have some feedback for us, please consider using our public Guestbook or our non-public contact form.