The Content Mill

Red taillights streaked through the countryside, crisscrossing the forest and vales like lines on a map.

The drum beat echoed in her head, pounding out a staccato rhythm piercing through the rev of the engine.

A house. The house. His house. A facade she remembered from a lifetime ago.

——

Thanks to AJ Fillari for joining us this week! Go listen to their show Dot Zip, or hire them to edit your audio!

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Eric is M...

In this episode of the Content Mill, we dig into the latest news and happenings in the games industry.

Today's big story is the talk of the town: the games industry is taking a big old break. So sit down, relax, and hang out as we talk about the backlog games that will be filling up this year of no new releases!

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Eric is MrTheHuman

Gianni is GianniDiCrosta

Nate is HeroicHeadgear

...

Mr. Ree was not having a great time. Did not have a great time. He'd been dead for at least a week. But, in a room filled to the brim with newspapers, the body was only the second most unexpected thing.

The place had stunk to high Heaven, but I couldn't tell anymore. This wasn't my first rodeo. No, what grabbed my attention was the organized chaos of the newspapers and the red pen circling words and headlines and faces in photographs. My face, specifically.

There was a meaning to the madness. Somehow, it all...

Predator. Prey. Stars. Smoke.

A drum beat. Pounding. Quarter notes, then eighths. Urgency and danger.

And then she blinked. The Dame—that's who she was now—couldn't shake the hollow gaze and incessant beat of the Emptys' drums. Even miles away, pushing the accelerator to the max, she could still hear them...getting louder, somehow?

Predator. Prey. Stars. Smoke. Predator. Prey. Stars. Smoke.

What did it mean to this her? And what did it have to do with the Emptys?

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From the first days in the trenches when he found the first, Ellington’s Bones spoke to him. It took him weeks to determine that the dissonant whispers nagging at the back of his mind, edging in from his periphery, were emanating from the bone of unknown origin in the mud. A rat femur. Or rabbit, perhaps.

The whispers never calmed though, not until he found more. Overlaying tones coalescing into something, though he was never quite sure what. But they spoke, he was sure of that.

He worked them and they helped him. He li...

Mr. Ree's apartment door was loosely swinging on rusted hinges. The dial tone of a phone echoed through the hall, an incessant ringing too loud to make any sense.

I shoved the door open with a gloved hand and stood in the doorway, my eyes unable to settle on what I saw. Newspapers covered everything. Stacks of every rag and sheet available between the rivers teetered like funhouse skyscrapers. The walls, floors, and furniture were covered with papers, inky contours wrapping every table leg and hiding every speck of plaster on the walls.

And the...

There were a lot of things that Ellington brought back from the War. Scars, callousness, his crew, and his Bones. Few things in his life were as hard-won and cherished as that vibraphone, built piece by piece over his years in the trenches.

When he played, they sang. When they talked, he listened. And right now, they were telling a very interesting story.

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Eric is MrTheHuman

Gianni is GianniDiCrosta

Nate is HeroicHeadgear

Phil...

Ten years ago. A soirée at War’s end. Combat boots and heels gliding along floors slick with champagne suds and gin. The sound of lost loves and newfound ones pounding in rhythm to the exuberant roars of a band letting loose.

Romance was in the air and Ellington was loving it. Four long years and he was back; back in front of a crowd, and backed by his newfound friends: The Emptys.

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Eric is MrTheHuman

Gia...

The Dame. The Broad. Madame Noir. The Woman with Black Hair. She had so many names and came from so many places it was hard to keep track.

Behind the facade, who she truly is was hard to say anymore. They were like oil, glistening and swirling together, a rainbow of identity that only coalesces in unity when looked at the right way.

She sipped her drink, waiting for Ellington to say something.

Ice swirled in the frosted glass, clinking like neurons. Was the job just a distraction to get some time with...

I peeled off a handful of bills and handed them to the cabbie, tipping my hat and pulling the collar of my coat close. The weather had not improved since I left Ellington and the Emptys on the boardwalk and I was grateful for the stack of cash the Dame had handed me.

The case made no sense, but in this city the difference between reality and fantasy was blurry on a good day.

Trash flanked the entry to the building, piled like cord wood. I found Mr. Ree's apartment and rang, getting an electric...

The Empty fortune hails from the Pacific Northwest somewhere. There's no real defined story and you'd never be able to nail Earl down on a real answer anyways—believe me, I've tried—but it really doesn't matter.

This outfit was masquerading as a normal down-on-its-luck jazz troupe playing dives all up and down the east coast, when at least three of them had generational money from families they were avoiding. Earl, Ellington, and that guy on the sax...what was his name?

I'd end up getting to the bottom of each of them in time. For...

Patinated brass and well-worn sheets of music. Blue light reflected off the chipped keys of the piano as Earl hammered out some melodious racket. It all blurred together for Ellington, the sound, the lights and the smoke. So much smoke. But through it all, there she was.

Ellington—if that was his real name—had never seen a woman quite like her before. Indescribable, but desirable nonetheless. And there she was, sidling up to that musty gumshoe.

Ellington set his mallets down and slid off the stage, his stride longer than his shadow. Smooth. Ellington was...

The juice was pouring and Ellington was playin' them bones like no other. It had been months since that foggy evening I first stumbled into this joint, and times had changed. It was that time of year and every Tom, Dick, or Harry was bustling in for some tunes and a warm-me-up between bouts of boardwalk shopping.

I was tapping my toes and slugging gins, watching an Old St. Nick get too deep into his milk and cookies, if you know what I mean. His friend, Jingle or Tingle or whatever, swooped in and ushered him back...

The track held nothing for me, no dame in a fascinator or the pound of hoof beats could pull me from this stupor. So I walked along the boardwalk, rain slicking the creaking wood. A seafood shack styled as a golden ship, a rinky dink cafe ablaze with the Big Apple's skyline, none of it drew me in.

Like a beacon in a storm, a club marquee flickered in the evening fog—it had been hours since I left the office—smoke pouring from the doorway. Names in broken bulbs announced the act, missing letters like teeth punc...

The door hadn’t opened in seven days. The foil letters—an ostentatious facade to this disheveled abode—peeled, flaking away from the reeded glass like the petals of lilies in late spring. Water dripped into a tin bucket, the slow staccato rapping out gunshots. I hammered the “U” key on the typewriter in time. No paper, no ribbon, just the rhythmic patter of a smoke-swirled, scotch-soaked soliloquy.

That last case rattled me: the empty house, the thumping…the cardboard cutout with horse ears. It was all too much for my frail mind. I needed to get away. I need...

EXTRA EXTRA: Mr. Shackleton Skellington, Magnate of the Skellington Bones Xylophones fortune found GUILTY of participating in illegal bones trade with Extraterrestrial being! Sentenced to thirty years in MAXIMUM SECURITY. Mr. Skellington alluded capture for multiple weeks, until Kzzshkt Ksshzkkkt found him holed up in a compound on "Bonedown Island." Authorities are now investigating Mr. Skellington's connection to the island.

The recipient alien species, HERETOFORE UNKNOWN, has not surfaced since Mr. Skellington's capture, though a blurry image of a towering mountain of meat with a cape of human spines has surfaced.

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The sound of sleigh bells echoed throughout the house, punctuated by staccato thumps. Holiday cheer was all around. Tinsel hung from the mantle and lights twinkled on the tree, a rotten reminder of the happiness that should've been in this house. The thumps continued, but no one answered.

I tiptoed through the house. Past the bowling ball, the toaster, and the sharpened keys of a Skellington bone xylophone that littered the steps. I was hired for one job and that machine gun thunking sounded like my first clue.

A silhouette stood framed in the second...

Tzzzkt tzzkkktzzk "Hello?" zzkt "is—" zzzzktkkzz "—thing on?"

"Somehow, I got turned around. On the way back from the pr—" zzzkt "—I got lost in the space-time conti—" zwwwripkktt

"I'm adrift in time, like that part in my least favorite Christopher Nolan film, Inter—" zzzrookkt

"Hold on boys, I'm—"

Well howdy kiddos and kiddettes! Welcome back to the Skellington Bones Ragtime Entertainment Hour with me, your host, "Shaky" Skellington! On today's show, we have a new guest who says he flew in from a radio station in 1990!" Pause for laughter "We've got ourselves...

Hello and welcome back to KACL 780, that was “Rattlin’ Bones” by the Great Jingle Tingle Band from their 1996 promotional tour with Skellington Bones.

It’s the top of the hour so we’ll have news and weather coming up on the 8s and 10s, but I’m going to open up the lines for a few minutes if you’ve got questions for your local radio psychiatrist, you can give us a call at 555-KACL.

“Hello caller, you’re on the on, how can I help you?”

”Yeah hi “Frizendo” or whatever your name is. I thought this wa...

Hark! What doth I heareth upon the moors! 'Tis that the rattle of manacles and the xylophone timbre of thy Skellington bones?

That's right, Ghouls and Ghosts, it's our first every Halloween Episode Sponsored by Skellington Xylophones, the premier maker of bone xylophones: "It's not a 'phone if it's not bone."

This episode we dig into the spooks and the scares that get our skin a'crawlin', AND maybe the games that our weenie selves get scared by...even when you're just supposed to be having a fun puzzle-solving time. It's a haaaauntingly spooky time at...

2025 has been a banger year for games, but the show isn’t stopping! The Content Mill gets together to talk about our most anticipated games for the remainder of the year. Play along and see if you can guess what each of us is the most stoked for. It probably won’t be surprising, but it will be fun!

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Eric is MrTheHuman

Gianni is GianniDiCrosta

Nate is HeroicHeadgear

Phil is Phil Bothun

Well howdy there, partner. I see you've got quite the iron wagon there. Not seen one of them there wagons with all them angles before; you best mosey on down to the steamyard where The Doc is working hard on his latest concoctions. Oh, I don't quite know what he builds out there, but every few days, the children come out prattlin' about the latest Licensed Video Games. Now, I don't know nothing about no video games, hell, I don't know if the word video has quite been invented yet, but it's a darn-tooting Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory of...

You're really hounding for some content, huh? That makes sense, it's rough out there, best to hang out with these four chuckleheads as they debate who has the best top 5 video games from their birth year. Three old heads and a 2000s baby and you're probably thinking to yourself, well obviously the guy who has Playstation games has to win, right?

I'll never tell.

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Eric is MrTheHuman

Gianni is GianniDiCrosta

Nate is HeroicHeadgear

...

Well, well, well. You're back for episode two, huh? Can't say I'm all that surprised. Hey, did I ever tell you that those headphones look good on you? Well, they do, you little cutie you.

Ahem. Anyway. Welcome back to the Content Mill! Today, we're grinding up some primo flour straight from the land of floating dolphins and flowing dunes! That's right, we're reviewing Sword of the Sea, the latest game from Giant Squid. We also debut our incredibly unique, never-before-seen rating system that, honestly, is shocking no one else has used yet.

Visit the...

Wait, what's this? A new podcast? From four content creators from four different corners of the internet? As we say in my homeland: you betcha.

Welcome to the Content Mill! So hey, come on in, roll over a bag of flour and comfy cozy. It's time to meet your hosts! For our very first episode, we talk about who we are and, if you pull back this very large trench coat we're all wearing, what games are propping up these cute little heads? That's right, let's dig into the top games that make each of us.