Introductions and Whatnot

Some of you are probably wondering why this blog is called Helicopter Kick. Let's get that out of the way right off the bat:

Yes, that's me kicking a helicopter. No, it's not Photoshopped or otherwise enhanced. The story behind this is actually not that interesting. Want to know what is interesting, though? Me - but only every once in a while.

I've been writing on the Internet for a few years now. Some of you may be familiar with my previous blog, The Chronology Nut. This was a fun project where I followed fictional series in chronological order from an in-universe perspective, rather than the order in which they were released (think Star Wars). Over the course of many months, I worked my way through Castlevania, The Chronicles of Narnia, Rocky, and Warcraft with reasonable speed and fidelity. The project was a ton of fun, and between you and me, I have a fair amount of Assassin's Creed content sitting in storage. Why, then, did I stop?

This probably merits a post in and of itself, but more of you probably know me through my work at The Escapist. I've been working freelance for this great magazine since March 2011, and currently work as a News Correspondent for them. I try to get up one article every weekday, so if you like gaming, it's worth a read. This is where I've done most of my writing for the last few months, and the reason why my old blog fell by the wayside.

During my time at The Chronology Nut and The Escapist, I've avoided writing about myself as much as possible. This isn't because I'm a private person or have anything to hide; I'm extremely easy to track down on Facebook and Twitter, and those pretty much contain my life story told in minuscule chunks. When I write about games or books or movies, though, I don't want to take the focus away from the topic at hand. I want to write about the content, not my relationship to it.

Now and then, though, I'll get an interesting idea that's too long for a Tweet and too obscure for a full-length news post or article. Think of this blog as a way to bridge the gap between those two extremes. During your time here, you can expect to see posts about the following (in no particular order):

• Taekwondo
• J.R.R. Tolkien
• Science (especially astronomy and mammalogy)
• Star Wars and Star Trek
• Ernest Hemingway
• Atheism, agnosticism, secularism, humanism, freethinking, or whatever you like to call "good without God"
• My nascent relationship with Doctor Who
• Gilbert and Sullivan
• Nonfiction writing, both as an art and a profession
• Whatever else I think you might find interesting

If this sounds like your cup of tea, I'll do my best to keep you entertained. If not, well, thanks for stopping by, but now off you go! There's a whole Internet out there to explore.

By the way, I doubt there will be a solid update schedule for a while, but stay tuned tomorrow for my first substantive post, in which we explore the role of humility in martial arts. There's drama, I promise! And superheroes.