It's not technically anybody's fault that corporate-sponsored escapism has become a team sport in 2017. It's just what happens when a sub-demographic like the Xillennials (that's the folks in their mid-30s with living memory of the 1980s) were raised by aggressive, cruel marketing campaigns.

Sega against Nintendo. Boys against girls. Kids against their parents.

Now we have a half-dozen movie franchise shared universe vehicles to side with or against. While Marvel's MCU has succeeded up to this point, the Warner Bros. and Universal copycats are dying on the vine.

How'd they botch it...?

There a great difference between movies released in the summer movie "season" and movies that are emblematic of the summer season. Movies that embody that summer mood. These are movies you always watch when the season is making you jump.

I want to address the best summer movies. Movies that are about long days and about living for night.

Today, I'll look back at 2012's cult 3D-showpiece: DREDD, starring Karl Urban.

What're you reading this summer? Really, not anything? No, if it has the word "GIRL" in the title, it doesn't count, sorry.

You've got a phone, don't you? You probably even have an iPad. Here's a hint, check the Kindle store for free stuff. 

You don't need to spend any money on summer reading just yet. There's a great library of free books to read online over on the Amazon Kindle Store. This will help you narrow the search... 

The modern world demands we manage our time. When you sit in a tiny room opposite a person interviewing you for a job, they're going to ask you how well you'll deal with the demands of time.

It's a matter of allocation and prioritization. This demand seeps over into our off-work hours, namely, that the modern world will offer fewer of those hours, if you can even manage to distinguish them.

Enter: Netflix. The bullet that killed broadcast TV. It's still "television," but it's on-demand streaming. Of course, if Netflix killed TV for busy adults, how will the upcoming Netflix Alternative manifest, meaning, what'll kill Netflix?

Conjecture: video games. Why? Because they invite agency.

I'm sorry, I've done the math. It's solid.

Yes, it turns out, I've read some stuff on the internet. What's more, I've read some books. The words and lettering, my god, they match up!

Now, here's the trouble: writing is a craft and 97% of what you read out there is shoddy and physically harmful, like a child living off his own hand-crafted birthday cake for his entire adolescence. That's a heck of a tummy ache.

I want to solve that problem. Here on Ghost Little, I'm writing free books to read online, available for all, with the audience in mind...

Taking the planet's hyper-fast globalization into consideration, we must face facts that clear communication across all available channels is already a critical survival ability for humans.

Learning how to write quickly and honestly is an under-exercised muscle in the human arsenal.

Until a search engine can properly face-scan a few quintilian faces on video files, writing remains the most measurable communication format, and the blog post remains the backbone of the written word for all peoples, personally and professionally.

Mastering this writing craft will make you an efficient, effective communicator...

Overwhelmed by the sight of a buckling bookshelf at the your local shop? Worried you'll buy something and never finish reading it? Well, first, you should support local businesses.

Then, you should check the Amazon Kindle Marketplace for free books. 

In fact, there's a near limitless supply of free books to read online, assuming you know what you're looking for. Here are a few greatest hits to get you started... 

Have you felt this: you've just written a piece of original fiction you stare up at it on the page, curious if you've violated a critical rule of storytelling?

Maybe the premise sucks? Maybe it's a no-no to have somebody's motivation be item-X or person-Y?

Something that you can't help but be a pessimist about the way things are structured. But we here at Ghost Little are all about teaching this planet how to write better stories. That's why I assembled a list of 7 tropes to flat-out avoid if you're trying to put something to the page...

Right on cue, David Lynch reappeared. We were neck-deep in adaptations and reboots, and he shouted the death-song of the shared universe, if we could tune our ears to hear that pitch.

Lynch might be arriving back on the scene with his weird Twin Peaks baby cradled in his arms, but now, the baby is grown up, and strong as ever.

There's a marked difference between movies released during the summer and movies that are emblematic of the summer season. Movies that live in that summer mood. There are movies that make seasonal sense to watch during certain times of year.

I want to address the the best summer movies. Movies that are about long days and about living for night.

Today, I'll look back at Bruce Willis and John McTiernan's DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.