You’d think I would be. After all, I’m nothing if not a gourmet, or at least a gourmand. We’ve acquired a rice cooker and make our own Sushi, cook greek food like Moussaka and Pastitsio, Thai food like Pad Thai and Red Mango Curry, and pretty much anything else I could want to eat. Life is good, especially culinarily speaking. But old habits die hard*. And that pretty much explains why I was ill last weekend. Confused? You won’t be, after you read my most recent humor column.

Speaking of unwell Feds, Ron Paul doesn’t like the Federal Reserve. If you’d like to know why, you should read my book review of “End the Fed” in the USA Today.

“Not Well Fed”  is an anagram of “Letdown Elf”, which is inaccurate if it refers to the Elf in Scepter of Zavandor, a boardgame where the Elf character has propelled me to victory in my past two games. It is perhaps more accurate if it refers to my failure to play many RPGs lately, because I’ve been busy with other work. And, okay, boardgaming.

“Not Well Fed” is also an anagram of “Deft? Well, no.”  And this describes how I feel much of the time, especially recently with my failure to create any new raps in the past few months. I have ideas for another rap song or two, and I’ve got some lyrics written, but these things take time, and the goodwill of busy unpaid collaborators. Still, I hope to have at least something new in the rap arena before the end of the year.

Also, God to Verse online is now done. Over the course of a year, I posted all of Genesis, so it’s all there for you to read if you’re interested. The full five books will likely be published in print form at a future point in time, but that’s all that’s going up online. Meanwhilst, if you’re around North Adams on October 17th, you could see my improv comedy troupe perform at the Main Street Stage, where I “Often Dwell”.

*Thankfully, so far, so do I.

…but summer seems to have come and gone almost instantaneously, regardless. At least I don’t have to go back to school now.* Still, I’m sorry to have the summer so swiftly ended. It seemed short, perhaps because it rained almost every day and never really felt like summer except for a week or two. But we quickly go from being over-heated to being freezing cold, and again I wish for some method to send heat into the future.**

Still, at least I have something to look forward to in September. For this coming weekend is the Second Annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, a momentous occasion on which I compete with my girlfriend in 26 boardgames (one for each letter) over the course of a single weekend. Last year the first day tally was 11 to 8 in my favor, but the second day was marred by a lack of boardgames for letters like X and Z. This year’s acquisitions have filled those gaps***, so we’ll be playing 26 games and keeping score. I’ll post again in a week and let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I recently learned that a book review I wrote a while back is up on the USA Today website, so if you want to read about how discount culture is ruining America, feel free. At least this time, nobody seems to have confused my summary of the book’s points with my personal views, as has happened to me before.  Last week I got to read an advance copy of Ron Paul’s upcoming book railing against the Fed, so when that review runs, we’ll see what happens. I still really enjoy reviewing things, and I feel I’m getting pretty good at it.

While I could never professionally review a book where the author is a friend of mine, Stick Figure Hamlet is finally available in (comic) book form, and a must-read for any Shakespeare fan. And as long as we’re linking, there are only two more weeks left in God To Verse before Genesis is done.

*I could, mind you. But I don’t have to. Volition is my favorite thing.

**Aside from a really inefficient heater. Although if a useful method actually existed, the resulting entropy would probably screw up the planet significantly anyway.

***Although due to bad planning, I traded away my only E-game because we didn’t like it****. So we technically will play 25 of our boardgames, and then an E-game which will either be a) borrowed from a friend, b) a print-and-play game I found online today, or c) Elbow Hockey.

****It’s surprisingly hard to find good 2-player boardgames that begin with E. For the most common letter in the English language, there are very few games beginning with E. And the ones that look most interesting (El Grande, E.V.O.) all seem like they want more people from the reviews. We also only have a single game beginning with X, which I acquired mainly because it began with X. This leads me to believe that at some point, I should invent a good game and market it by giving it a name beginning with X, just to appeal to obsessive gamers like myself.

Okay, no it isn’t.*  But I totally want you to look on my works, ye mighty.**  Of course, there’s the usual weekly updates for News in Rap and God To Verse. But I’ve also got a new book review up at USA Today, about a new book discussing the pleasures and sorrows of work. It’s a view of the workplace through fresh eyes, and I fear my mental desire to compare it to a foreigner like de Tocqueville looking at American democracy through fresh eyes may just be rooted in the fact that this author also has a French de-noted name (de Botton). Still, it was a neat read.

(Also, I got the manuscript version rather than the book version, which was weird for me as I hadn’t had a big packet-format object like that to read since college. I think I prefer actual pre-publication books to review, although reading a manuscript does remind one that the book doesn’t really exist yet.)

But most importantly, of course, is board games. My latest shipment arrived (using up the last of the credit I’d accumulated selling my Magic cards), filled with wondrous games like Small World, Yspahan, and possibly my new favorite, Le Havre. Le Havre is the sequel to Agricola, and while the play time is a bit longer than ideal, there’s a lot to tinker with, and I’m looking forward to tinkering with it more.

Speaking of board games, I have a new article up on the Best Dang Games Blog about Luck in Board Games. If that sort of thing interests you, or indeed if you play board games at all, it’s a very short read and something I think is worth considering. But then again, I’m probably biased.

Our improv show in Great Barrington last weekend went very well, which was nice because my family had driven up from RI to be in the audience, so I’m glad they could see me at my best. Our next show is at the Majestic in West Springfield on Wednesday August 12, and then we’ll finally be back in North Adams on August 22nd. Come watch!

* Although if my first name had been Robert, I’d totally want my middle name to be Ozymandias. Because then my name would be Rob, and my initials would be Rob. Also, Ozymandias is a pretty cool middle name, if a bit unwieldy for a first name.***

** Despairing is optional.

*** Or, I guess, an only name.

If you were to travel back in time and ask my highschool self what career I would have in the future, “Underpaid Rapper” probably would not have been in my first hundred answers. But sure enough, here I am, frequently rapping for insufficient remuneration. I suppose between my epic* limericks and my songs with Lex, the fact that I kept rhyming makes sense.

As with most things I do, it started largely as a joke.  I wrote an email to my favorite rap group at the time (Blackalicious), and ended up making a silly rap to send them. But then I ended up joining an online nerdy rapping community, and started rapping a lot more. I put up a myspace page and began writing raps for posterity. I started freestyling everywhere I went, from a humor conference in Ohio to the streets of San Francisco. The rap video I posted two months ago ended up winning a little contest. Last weekend my improv troupe was performing in Providence, and our most popular game is one I invented where we do the whole scene in rap form. Tomorrow I’m doing stand-up comedy at a local bar, and I generally end my set with a freestyle rap.

I’m still trying to freestyle about the news every week on my rap podcast, News In Rap. And later this month I’ll be heading out to a national nerdy hip-hop festival, to meet other nerdy rappers from that aforementioned online community and around the world. Somehow, rapping has become a large part of my life. It’s perhaps an odd place for me to end up, but I have to admit, I’m enjoying it.

(this column has nothing to do with rap. God to Verse, on the other hand, could certainly be performed over a rap beat if someone wanted to.)

* by which I mean many stanzas in length like an epic poem, rather than epic in the modern internet parlance that means full of win**

** although they were also full of win

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!

Okay, I’m probably never going to be bad-ass enough to be thought of as a renegade. But this week is my best shot. I reviewed a book for the USA Today called Career Renegade, about quitting your job and doing what you love. And hey, it sort of resonates.

Meanwhile, my column rails against the very popular Facebook, because we renegades rail against things that are popular. And things that it’s popular to rail against, like the bible? That we re-write in rhyme.

Because after all, we know that rhyming is the province of renegades.* Only a bad-ass gangster would bring you the News In Rap, right? And only a 1960s renegade beatnik refugee would be planning to perform at a poetry slam this Thursday, which you can see by showing up at The Alley on Thursday night around 8ish.

And now it’s time for the big renegade move: Ice Cream For Lunch. Yes, rebellion can be delicious.

*Roses are red, Violets are blue,
Renegades often ignore the rules of rhyming.**

**But not when you expect them to.
(To rebel in season is not to rebel, suckas!)

Last week my improv troupe had two performances in South County. During the Saturday performance at Barrington Stage, there was a game of Quotes* where I was playing a mad scientist**. For this reason, with no other prompting, I decided to threaten my enemy with a giant gorilla robot. Sadly, my invention was not perfected, and the robot stalled out and did not attack. A minute later in the scene, my partner picks up a quote and reads “Get your stinkin’ paws off me, you damned dirty ape.” Needless to say, I was overjoyed to have proof that my evil gorilla robot was functioning after all.

Note to self: Never try to describe improv to people who weren’t there.

In other news, my column is about board games, my freestyle rapping is about the news, my friend’s new fantasy short story is about Odin’s ravens, my rhyming version of the Torah is about due for a shot at publication, and my bedtime is about now.

*Quotes is a game where we get our audience to write random lines of dialog on scraps of paper before the show. These papers are folded and not looked at. During the scene, actors will pull out random quotes from the audience, read them, and work them into the scene.

**Yes, I know, typecasting.

And what better way to celebrate than my Day After Christmas column?  Well, sure, you could catch up on God To Verse, or News In Rap, but why not do all three?

I enjoyed a wonderful Christmas, playing board games all day, then out for traditional Chinese buffet with some artist friends, some gaming friends, and some girlfriend. Said girlfriend and I then came home to watch Police Squad and play more board games, which is pretty much a perfect evening. If you’d like to learn more about gaming with your partner, why not read my new article about that?

Also, I’m always surprised when the Chinese restaurants have Christmas music playing on Christmas. I asked them to either turn it off or switch to something more traditional Chinese, because most people going to Chinese restaurants on Christmas? Really don’t need any more Christmas music right now, thanks. Anyway, Christmas is over, so there’s the Chanukah party tomorrow, and then New Years festivities for the next week. Now that’s how you ring out a year.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy reviewing things? Well, I do. And hopefully you enjoy when I review things too. Because I have two recent reviews. One of them, team-written, can let you know where to get pizza in the Berkshires. The other will tell you whether you’re likely to enjoy a certain party board game, which happens to be a decent game for people who don’t like most board games.

And you should be glad that I’m happy writing these reviews. Because as I mention in yesterday’s column, new research suggests that your happiness is affected by the happiness of your friends, their friends, and even their friends. So if you’re looking to help yourself out by making me happy this holiday season, tell a religious friend about GodToVerse. Mentioning it to your pastor, your rabbi, or even fellow members of your congregation, would be appreciated. Definitely by me, and quite possibly by them as well.

Okay, it’s not Thanksgiving for another two days. But I won’t be posting anything for a few days, so I figured I’d send out my good wishes now. I hope your holiday is as good as my last few days have been. Improv went great. There’s a new pre-Thanksgiving podcast at NewsInRap.com, and new chapter up at GodToVerse.com.

Perhaps most entertaining to me is the article I recently came across where someone wrote about my WordPlay presentation from the other week. I’ve had various friends read the article, one of whom said it made me sound like a mad scientist, and one of whom said he wished it was written about him. Conclusion? One of my friends wants to be a mad scientist. But I already am, and I have to say, I’m good with that.

Time to go eat some ice cream… for SCIENCE!