Archive for April, 2009

Pail of Sausage

Monday, April 27th, 2009

The problem with only updating bi-weekly is that by the time I get around to posting, I have a bucket of links. I will, however, do you the service of not posting the flash game to which I am currently addicted, as it is nothing but a humungous brainless waste of time. If you’re going to think about video games, reading my articles about People in your WOW Guild and Video Game Drinking Buddies will be much faster, and much less addictive.

Anyway, this blog has been slightly less storied than my WSO blog, perhaps because at that time I didn’t have many links to share. Back in those days, I wrote about the various ways in which I’d managed to fail at cooking. But I’ve consolidated the best of those old blog stories into a single column. Back then, just out of college, was the first time I was out of work. It’s vaguely similar to what I’m doing now, only I had no experience freelancing, no resume, and few books under my belt. Still, even back then I was working on God To Verse. This week’s portion I think is a good example of what I’ve tried to do in terms of explicatory work; the bible is filled with passages like, “She was in labor for seven days with her son, so she named him Mohar”, and it doesn’t make sense unless you know that “Mohar” was Hebrew for “week of pain”, so I’ve got little parenthetical bits to explain all of that.

The big link of the fortnight, however, is the video contest I’ve recently entered. See, I’ve been doing a lot of rapping at local performances, but I don’t have any sound equipment. So when I heard there was a contest to win a free microphone, I figured I should enter. Annoyingly, I don’t think the rap I entered is as good as the freestyles I perform locally, but it’s still a video of me rapping so you should feel free to take a look. (Thanks go to the inimitable Daniel Beck for videography.)

Oh, and in case I forget to post again before then, my improv troupe will be performing on Saturday May 9th at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield. Come out, and I guarantee a good time!

A Taxing Week

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Yes, it’s soon to be April 15th, which means it is tax time once again. I still have to finish filling out some forms, but at least I finished paying my 2008 No Car Tax last weekend. Or I guess technically, two weekends ago, since last weekend I was briefly in RI to perform at the Catch a New Rising Star in Lincoln. With only a 5-minute slot though, it wasn’t much show. I figure those who like my rapping can catch my weekly podcast or my guest appearance this Saturday at the Red Room, while those who like my comedy can come to one of the monthly comedy open mics here, or catch a performance by my improv troupe.

Anyway, I know I probably sound like a commercial, but perhaps that’s because I recently reviewed a book about the infomercial industry. I must say, writing for the USA Today is interesting. Because they have so much to cover, they tend to like their articles very concise, and so I often find that my articles end up edited down quite a bit. Still, I’ve been told to write what I think the book merits, so I’d rather overwrite than be too brief and force editors to make up whole paragraphs.  Regardless, writing reviews is something I’ve always wanted to do, and now I’m doing it, so yay for that.

Apparently there’s recently been a large kerfluffle over at Amazon, where a number of GLBT-related books had their sales ranks removed. This was originally theorized to be an attack on homosexuality, but more recently Amazon has called it a “glitch” and some online troll forces have claimed responsibility, noting that they did it for the “Lulz”.  I was going to “comment” on this, but after the previous “sentence”, I got too entertained by putting “certain” words in quotes. I guess I’m easily “amused”.

April Fooles

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Yes, it’s April, which means that there is even more foolishness going on than usual, and you can come join in. Tonight I’ll be at The Alley in North Adams at 8:30 for their free open mic comedy. This weekend is also the Fools Fest in Pittsfield, a celebration of foolishness that contains many many events. The two I’m involved with are the free open mic comedy at Mission on Friday night, and the Royal Berkshire Improv Troupe dinner theatre at Dottie’s on Saturday (tickets by advance reservation only).

I’ve been celebrating the foolishness at home as well. Yes, in addition to simply living like I normally do, which many would say is foolish enough. But I recently finished Christopher Moore’s new novel “Fool”, which follows the behind-the-scenes skullduggery* of possibly my favorite Foole** of all time, King Lear’s. For those of you who enjoyed “Lamb”, or who are Shakespeare buffs, I highly recommend it. I’m currently reading “Ship of Fools” by Katherine Porter, a classic book which like too many classics seems to be starting rather slowly, and has buckets of POV racism. Still, I will inevitably finish reading it anyway, as I am incapable of not finishing books once I start them.

Blog posts, on the oth–

*Apparently WordPress is attempting to fool me into thinking skullduggery is not a real word by underlining it in red. But then again, it dislikes “Foole”

**I cannot type “Foole” without thinking of George Carlin, whose routine “Occupation: Foole” no doubt had some effect on me.