Author: Heath Andrews

Sometimes a headline is unfair to its subject in that it can only convey so much. Gary Paulsen will forever be known to millions as the author of the young adult novel “Hatchet,” but in truth, his work was so much more than that. Paulsen wrote a great number of novels aside from the “Hatchet” series that contained themes of nature, humanity’s place in it, and the wonders and perils it presents. He was an ardent dogsledder and competed in the Iditarod, making him a posterchild for the concept of “write what you know.” He passed away at the age…

How far would you go to save the life of your dog? It’s not a happy question to ask, nor is it one that you could probably formulate an answer to right away. What we think we might do versus what we actually do are two drastically different scenarios. It’s also one that Laiha Slayton found herself in on October 4th, 2021, while she was visiting Yellowstone National Park with her family. One of the primary things that Yellowstone is known for is the geothermic activity there which has created a number of geysers and hot springs. Chief amongst these…

Every so often a story comes along about an actor or stunt-person losing their life to an onset accident. It’s always tragic and almost always preventable if proper precautions had been taken. While these incidents are frequently associated with dangerous film and television work, they can also happen during the course of a stage production. Regrettably, this is what happened at the famed Russian Bolshoi Theatre on Saturday, October 9th, 2021. Yevgeny Kulesh was a 38-year-old actor who had been performing at the Bolshoi for almost 20 years prior to the accident that claimed his life. This time he was…

Nintendo’s “Metroid” series has a complicated history between its fans and the company that created it. Despite debuting in 1986, the series has only had 15 games released; 10 if you don’t count any remakes, spin-offs, or the “Metroid Prime” compilation. Much of this is supposedly due to the series having more success in America than its native Japan. It has taken a decade of waiting for an original, mainline installment in the series to come along. In 2021, Nintendo finally released “Metroid Dread.” A day later, website Kotaku ran an article about how effective PIRATING “Metroid Dread” is, and…

Wherever there’s legitimate money to be made, there’s always a scam to follow. This has been true for centuries and likely always will be. Phone scams, email scams, work from home scams, Nigerian Prince, online banking, crowd funding; you name it. It is therefore no surprise at all that an NFT scam could pop-up, especially considering the unregulated nature of the entire thing. And while predictable, it’s still unfortunate that an NFT-related project ended up with investors losing over $2.5 million. If you ever want to know if you’re being scammed ScamSearch.io is your best bet. Let’s try to set…

Serial killers do not deserve to be celebrated or discussed with a sense of mystique; yet somehow they still manage to find themselves talked about like legends, enigmas, and parts of the social zeitgeist. One of the most infamous, due to their never having been caught and cryptic clues left behind, is the Zodiac Killer. For over 50 years, their identity has remained a mystery yet a team named the Case Breakers claims to have solved this. But that claim in itself may be pretty dubious. Also, spoiler- no, it’s not Senator Ted Cruz. A lot of news agencies have…

In “Star Wars,” one of the most important materials on the planet of Tatooine is water. The desert planet is so barren that special machines are built just to harvest any kind of moisture out of the air and condense it into water. Owen Lars, Luke Skywalker’s uncle, was a farmer working the moisture vaporators, and having to settle for a protocol droid that was familiar with the language of binary load lifters, which were similar to binary vaporators in most respects. And now that technology of the moisture vaporator can be yours in your own back yard! The concept…

Konami has been responsible for some of the most popular and successful franchises in video gaming history. And then in 2015 they threw that all away for the sake of making pachinko and slot machines. They destroyed their relationship with “Metal Gear” creator Hideo Kojima, canceled the most promising horror title in years in the form of “P.T.”/”Silent Hills,” and then tried to turn “Castlevania” into a pachislot machine featuring “erotic violence.” But now it’s 2021, and whether it be because of a boom in the home video game market due to COVID-19 or a desire to improve their image,…

Can a missing person find themselves? It’s an almost Buddhist like question. And no, we don’t mind “find themselves” in an existential, self-discovery sense, we mean in an actual, physical sense. In a very odd but still very real turn of events, a man from the Bursa province of Turkey put this hypothetical situation to the test without even realizing it. On September 28th, 2021 Beyhan Mutlu had come across a search party combing through the woods for a missing man. The gentleman in questions had been reported missing after a night of drinking. According to the search party, the…

Dollar Tree will be raising their prices for the first time in the franchise’s history to offset rising costs.