Yes, it's another week

Hello everyone! It is great to see you again. Thank you for joining me! I hope you’re having a great day so far.

I did no work on either of my two main projects - speedrunning and game development - last week. I took a week off and regrouped. I mostly did chores around the house and relaxed. I went on a run four of the seven days. That was good.

I decided that I need to eat fish a lot more often than I do. I ate fish for lunch every day last week. Typically just a salmon fillet with veggies. Simple stuff. Why has it taken until now for me to get into a practice of making fish at home? I’m not sure. I might have thought it was difficult to do. It’s not. I also might have thought it was expensive. It’s not that expensive. I have had stretches of time where I ate oatmeal for lunch. I have had stretches of time where I ate bacon and eggs for lunch. Right now, it is time for fish. Cool.

Erika and I watched Silence of the Lambs last week (spoilers for it upcoming). I originally saw Silence of the Lambs when I was in high school. I really liked it and read the books back then, too. So, on some level, I knew that the movie was about a trans serial killer. But, watching the movie for the first time in the era of actually understanding my own trans identity, I was like, “wait…this is about a trans serial killer!”

There’s a complicated history of white cis men trying to generate a narrative than trans people are prone to criminal behavior. It has been done historically and continues today. Add it to the list of reasons the world is awful.

I still enjoyed the movie. It came out in 1991, so it’s almost 35 years old at this point. It was definitely an interesting re-watch in the modern day though. I give Silence of the Lambs a 7.5 / 10 on the unofficial McLepke media rating scale.

I also finished a book last week, called The Silent Patient (no spoilers for this one). The Silent Patient is currently on track to be a one-hit wonder. Its author, Alex Michaelides, wrote three unsuccessful films prior to switching it up and writing this book in 2019. The book was successful, which led to him writing two other (unrelated) books afterwards, neither of which garnered the same praise The Silent Patient did.

The book is about a psychotherapist who is working with a famous artist staying at a psychiatric care unit. The famous artist killed her husband, and has been totally silent ever since then. Maybe through therapy, this crime will reveal itself to be more complex than it is on the surface!?!?

I give The Silent Patient a 6.8 / 10 on the unofficial McLepke media rating scale. It had some good twists and turns, but I did not fly through it like I have other thrillers.

Erika and I also watched season one of the British version of The Office this week (spoilers). I had a lot of time for media since I took the week off of working on my projects. This one is a bit like the salmon fillets; I’m not sure why it took until now for me to look into the British version of The Office. I’ve watched the American one several times over.

The British show ran from 2001 - 2003, while the American version didn’t come out until 2005. Those are some crucial years, technologically speaking. Watching season one of the British Office, you can almost hear the dial up noises. If my 1990s video game playing and development of a 1990s-era video game weren’t evidence enough, I have a fondness for the years around y2k. Maybe I am the right age to have a hyper-sensitive eye when it comes to some of the nuances of technology in these years, but I was surprised at how different the two offices - British and American - feel, despite being so few years apart.

The second surprising thing about the British Office for me was how incredibly funny Ricky Gervais is as the Michael Scott / Steve Carell regional manager character. I had never seen Ricky Gervais in anything, but for some reason I sort of had a feeling I wouldn’t like him. To his credit, Gervais was also the shows creator, writer, and director (alongside Stephen Merchant). My admiration for Ricky went up a bunch of notches by the end of season 1.

A third surprising thing - if you watched the four season BBC show Sherlock (an incredible show), or the television adaptation of Fargo (didn’t see all of it, but I liked what I saw), the guy who plays Watson (in Sherlock) and Lester (in Fargo) is the same actor that plays the British version of Jim Halpert, Tim Canterbury. Seeing him so young was really fun for me.

A final surprising thing for me is how similar the plot is to the American version. Obviously I know the American show was based on the British version, but I was still surprised at the extent to which the two overlap. The “Jim” character still has a crush on the “Pam” secretary who is still in a three-year engagement to a “Roy” character who works in the warehouse. There is still a “Dwight” who is referred to as the assistant ‘to’ the regional manager. There’s a “temp” character. Season one still opens with a looming threat of one of the regional branches closing, and ends with a merger of two branches. The pilot episode in particular is fun to watch; the American pilot was close to a shot-for-shot reproduction of the British pilot. Many lines are retained word for word.

Overall, I give season one of the British version of The Office a 9 / 10 on the unofficial McLepke media rating scale.

Another source of entertainment during the week - I watched the movie Tomie. In Japan, Tomie is a whole franchise of horror entertainment. It started out as a manga in 1987, it got adapted into a television series in 1999, and there’s a total of nine movies in the franchise, with release dates ranging from 1998 (the original, the movie I watched) to 2011.

In each piece of Tomie media, there is a beautiful woman named Tomie Kawakami. The thing is, as the DVD cover art above may indicate, she’s hella evil. In fact, she’s a monster. She has the ability to entrance her admirers and get them to follow her command. To make matters worse, even if you kill the body inhabiting Tomie, the monster will survive and regenerate back into a new version of Tomie Kawakami. Each installment can be in a different time period with a different actress portraying Tomie.

I enjoyed Tomie. It’s a little slow-paced at times, but it also benefits from being set in 1998 in Japan. As mentioned in the British Office discussion, this plays to my favor.

The Tomie DVD also took some sort of roundabout trip to arrive at my apartment, which made it feel a little more special. I requested Tomie from the library probably close to a year ago at this point. There is only one copy, but at the same time, it’s not like there’s tons of people queued up waiting for a movie this old. When I requested it I think I was third in line to get it.

I am guessing that someone checked it out and didn’t return it for many many months, or maybe the original copy got lost and they replaced it or something, because the queue never moved. Month after month I would check out games, books, movies and TV shows, but the status of Tomie was always the same - on hold, not yet ready. I got accustomed to seeing the creepy woman on the cover of the DVD staring back at me whenever I checked my library holds. I started to hype up the movie in my mind.

I was floored when one day I checked and there was a little truck icon next to Tomie; it was being shipped to my local branch. This movie actually existed! After such a long wait it was something like a surprise present. Use your local library everyone; it’s a great time.

Anyway, with all of that said I give Tomie a 8.8 / 10 on the McLepke unofficial rating scale. My library doesn’t have any of the other 8 Tomie movies, but maybe I’ll go looking for them.

Finally, I played a video game for fun during my week off. As much as I talk about video games on this blog, it’s honestly pretty rare that I sit down and play a video game purely for fun. One of my goals for the week off was to buy a new game and play it. After browsing steam for a little bit, I landed on the terribly named Contract Rush DX.

Contract Rush DX came out on July 30, 2025, so it’s brand new. It was created by a two-person team, one programmer, and one artist + musician. The game plays like Mega Man meets Contra. It’s very adorable - the visuals were definitely a selling point. Here’s the cast enjoying dinner together.

Five of the folks pictured are playable characters, while the sixth runs the coffee shop you use as your headquarters. If you are counting seven people in the above picture, that’s fair: I didn’t count the parrot. The parrot and the pirate are a combo deal.

The game features an intro stage, followed six stages that can be completed in any order you choose, reminiscent of the original Mega Man. After beating each level, you unlock 4-5 mini challenges to test your skills with, as well as a second version of the stage you just beat that will have new surprises in it. After beating all six bosses, you’re off the the final boss.

All in all it took me around 15 hours to play all of the content available in the game. It sells for $20, though like all Steam games, you’ll be able to find it on sale eventually. It’s only available on PC right now.

This game strikes a chord with me and the game I am working on. It’s really cute, but it’s also tough as nails at times. It’s not perfect, but I really respect the work they did with this game. Some of the most impressive moments are the bosses. A truly great, difficult 2d boss fight should feel like a carefully orchestrated dance when it is working well. The toughest boss of Contract Rush DX executed this to near-perfection. I was enamored enough with the fight that I recorded a no-damage run of the fight for YouTube. Enjoy.

I give Contract Rush DX a 9.2 / 10 on the unofficial McLepke rating scale. It also had some good music. I particularly enjoyed this one.

That’s it for me this week! I hope you all have a wonderful week. You can do this; I just know it. Until we chat again <3