I have (finally!) been playing through Dragon Age: Origins, a classic Bioware RPG that has been on my to-play list for years. I’m not very good at it, but luckily hobbies do not require skill to produce enjoyment. Jobs, on the other hand, often require skill to produce money, so I’m glad that I’ve been able to put my writing abilities to work for some good clients lately. For whatever reason, I really enjoy tackling dry or complex topics and explaining them in fun and approachable ways.

Arguably, that’s what I was doing in this recent column about return-free tax filing.* But my favorite column from the past month was probably my March Badness Tournament of annoying things.

Of course, April is National Poetry Month, and so I’ve been writing a poem a day.** So between that, the columns, and the freelance gigs, I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately. So I’ve also been trying to do more playing, hence the Dragon Age. People always say, “Work Hard, Play Hard”, but I’ve always preferred the idea of “Work Smarter, Not Harder”, so ostensibly my guiding principle should be “Work Smart, Play Smart”?***

I don’t know, maybe playing classic RPGs instead of a high-impact sport is playing smarter instead of harder? Although possibly getting more exercise would be smarter, since presently I mostly just walk. And my back hurts. That smarts. Guess I’ll walk it off.

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* Also arguably, I was just taking the next logical step after seeing John Oliver tackle the same topic.

** As opposed to Buckminster Fuller, who makes a dome a pay.

*** “Shop Smart. Shop S-Mart.”

For the past month, I’ve been besieged by an absolute torrent of spam comments. Over a thousand, easily, although I haven’t exactly been counting. But the upshot is, since I no longer have the brainpower to pore over every single comment, I’m just deleting comments in droves, so if you’ve commented on this blog in the past month and you are an actual human person annoyed that your comment never showed up, feel free to drop me an email. It’s nothing personal, it’s just bad timing.

I guess I’d have to describe the spam as a Minor Headache. Certainly not on my list of top 20 things wrong at the moment, and as 2022 has continued giving in its 2022 manner, I am trying to take my victories where I can find them. For example, I finally got around to starting up my bi-weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to in this form which I should really put somewhere more permanent on the site:

Meanwhile, I’ll just put it in my posts with no rhyme or reason. Well, I guess technically me being me, I’ve always got rhyme.*

Not much boardgaming these days, but videogame-wise in addition to continuing in Genshin Impact, I’ve recently started the delightful puzzle game Baba Is You, and it really requires some lateral thinking. I’m always a couple years late to these things because I want them on sale, but single-player games don’t go bad, and I’d still recommend it to people who want to experience cleverness.**

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* Well, most of the time. It isn’t a crime. Go suck on a lime.

** Which I hope describes most people reading my blog. I’d feel a bit put out if someone was like, “Oh no, I hate cleverness, that’s why I read Seth’s writing!”

While I am fortunate that Debbie and I remain relatively healthy and happy, the past few months have been sub-optimal even aside from the cold weather and global pandemic. So far, 2022 is not winning any prizes*. But, here we are, I’m still writing things and playing games and life goes on.

Probably my favorite column I’ve written so far this year was this bit of Political Theater, although since I never know if people are actually seeing my columns, sometimes it feels like I’m just talking to myself. In an attempt to change that, and beat the Facebook/Twitter algorithms in order to get my column into the hands (eyes?) of people who want to read it, I’ve started a tiny newsletter. So if you’d like an email every couple weeks with my latest columns and other writing and thoughts, you can sign up here:

https://tinyletter.com/RisingPun

I haven’t, uh, actually written a newsletter yet. But once there are people signed up I’ll feel pressured to do so. And ideally that will make me send updates more often than once every month and change, not that I’m comparing to anything in specific. *glares at blog* *blog glares back at me* *Friedrich Nietzsche glares at abyss*

Anyway, not much boardgaming aside from a couple games of Goa the other week, but on the videogaming front I played through a few runs of Griftlands and found it a surprisingly compelling mix of RPGish story and Slay the Spire-style roguelike deckbuilder.

My blogposts so rarely have those clever punchline endings like my columns do. I wonder if there’s a way for me to fix that… the Aristocrats!

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* aside from possibly, “Second Place, 2020 Look-Alike Contest”. First prize went to 2021, naturally.

Well, the ebook edition of From God To Verse launched earlier this year, and in celebration of that fact, I commissioned a rap about sacred texts from one of my favorite rappers, MC Abdominal. He even named it after my book! So please go take a listen to this insightful and lyrically masterful rap:

MC Abdominal: From God To Verse

Well, it’s soon to be Thanksgiving, and as I discuss in my latest column, it’s important to use the appropriate Thanksgiving prepositions. I have many people to whom I am thankful—friends, family, and clients—and although I try not to only express this appreciation annually in November, it’s not a bad time to take stock. I lucked into a pretty nice life, and as long as I remember to appreciate my favorite people and enjoy gaming (rather than wasting time angrily replying on social media), things are good.

Speaking of gaming, we played through the little 5-game campaign of Blackout:HongKong, which reminds me that Alexander Pfister is on my top boardgame designers list and I should really get more of his games given how much I also enjoy GWT and Mombasa. Currently playing Hallertau, another big Uwe Rosenberg farming game but only 6 rounds instead of Agricola’s 14. Also pretty good. And on the videogame front, I finally finished Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite, the former of which didn’t thrill me, but the latter I quite enjoyed*.

And today I noticed that my poetry book has its first official review** on the Amazon page for The Disapproval of My Toaster, so that’s exciting. Almost as exciting as Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwiches! I can’t wait.

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*Admittedly, neither quite compares to the experience of playing the first game fresh with zero expectations, but that was many years ago and we were all younger and more innocent.

**Also pleased with another unofficial review from a friend: “So excited to have this insightful, funny, raw, introspective and poignant book of poetry!”

Which is to say, this week I want to share some review and reaction blurbs on my book of short poems, The Disapproval Of My Toaster. Here are some things that readers have said about the book:

“I love your poetry book”

“all too real universal truth about people”

“I really love a lot of them (and don’t hate any!)”

“full of existential dread and maudlin musings”

“I quite like it, like a lot a lot”

“fun and thought provoking”

“This book of poetry, the clever word play, the punch of honesty that cuts into the social structure of our new world of trauma and distance.”

…that make the whole world say, “Wow, Seth, you do not have a good singing voice, maybe you should just write the songs and let someone else sing them.”

Noted. And indeed, that’s what I’ve been doing. Freelancing is always feast or famine, and after a few weeks with hardly any work (during which I finally beat the Witcher 3 DLC, as well as Transistor), the past week or two things have picked up again with an interesting array of gigs, my favorite of which was to write a song parody for a corporate client. Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to share said parody*, but it did get me in a parody-writing mood which explains my latest song parody column, The Day That Facebook Died.

Other than that, things have continued much the same, with more writing, gaming, and eating tasty food. Sure there are ups (we’ve just started our 14th annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, where Debbie and I play a boardgame for every letter of the alphabet), and downs (I’m only just recently recovered from a somewhat irksome back injury), but basically I’m still here existing as best I can during a pandemic; hope y’all are managing to do the same.

*Because I’m a ghostwriter you can trust to stay ghosty, which is why you should hire me.

** This isn’t even a real footnote. By reading this, you’re cheating, you cheater. Maybe you should scroll down and buy one of my recent books to restore your honor.

If it seems like I’m not only posting more often than usual, but also releasing cool non-column things more often than usual, you’re not wrong! That’s because the combination pandemic, climate crisis, and political hellscape* has served as a massive memento mori to remind us that tomorrow is in no way guaranteed. So I should probably try to do some of those things I always planned  And thus my past few posts where I’ve finally put out my first book of short poems, and finally put out an eBook version of From God To Verse.

Today I’m also pleased to share another cool non-column thing, which is that one of my stories that I told at a story slam has been animated by Mary over at SketchMyStory, so if you want to see a stick-figure Seth become stranded with an ancient warrior god and tasty baked goods**, you should absolutely check out my episode of SketchMyStory.

Which is not to say I’m not still writing things! Whether it’s satire about America’s foremost Anti-Vax Spokesperson, or my column about the time I accidentally squandered a life-changing opportunity, I continue to put words in order. Now that I’ve released two books in the past two months though, I may calm down again with the publishing. Like my brief spate of submitting poetry to many journals last year, it’s fun to get things published when I’m reminded that life is fleeting, but usually afterwards I realize that life also has no meaning, and that goes double for publishing books.***

But being alive is still great, I absolutely prefer it to the alternative, so to that end… get vaxxed if you haven’t already, wear a mask, avoid crowded indoor spaces, and try to survive the pandemic so we can see how the climate crisis goes!

* I’m at the Pandemic! I’m at the Climate Crisis! I’m at the combination Pandemic and Climate Crisis!

**I mean, if you have to be stranded, I definitely recommend having tasty baked goods.

*** Can you believe that nobody wants to hire me as a motivational speaker?

If you’re in a rush, I think the post title pretty much obviates everything I have to say here, but then again people in a rush aren’t really reading this blog to begin with. Anyway, as you may be aware, two decades ago in 2001 I started rewriting the entire Torah/Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) line-by-line in rhyming couplets. Interrupted by life, jobs, lack of motivation, and a couple other books, I finally released From God To Verse in 2010, in print form.

It was, and still is, my magnum opus: a complete line-by-line rhyming version of the entire Torah, including short rhymed chapter summaries in addition to the full text. To kick off the Jewish New Year, two decades after I started writing it, I am finally releasing From God To Verse in eBook format.

eBook-ified!

* I hired a copyeditor, and someone to format it all for ebook to make sure all the pages line up right and the Table of Contents is all hyperlinked to every single chapter. I even hired one more person, who I’ll tell you about in a future post in a few weeks. Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if I should have spared some expense, since given the low price, I am going to have to sell some hundreds of copies just to break even on financial outlay, let alone receiving any recompense for my time and effort.

** And I mean actually $5. I’m sure that I’m losing out on algorithm points by pricing things at whole dollar amounts instead of $4.99, but it always seems like such a gimmick designed to fool people’s brains. I realize it’s a gimmick that works, but I’m trying to be honest and straightforward about things, and thus, $5. This attitude is one of the reasons I will probably never be a huge commercial success.

*** [William Tell Overture] Buck-a-book, buck-a-book, buck-a-book book book, Buck-a-book, buck-a-book, buck-a-book book book, Buck-a-book, buck-a-book, buck-a-book book book, Buck-a-book… a-buck-a-book book book [/William Tell Overture]

The past few months have been some of my least favorite in recent memory, as mentioned in my previous post. When life gives you lemons, you can’t really eat them because of your acid reflux, so they sit around and dry out and get sort of gross but at least not as bad as other food that sits around.* Anyway, my point is that I am trying to find the good amidst the bad, and thus in that spirit I bring you this collection of short poems:

All poems written during (but not about) the pandemic!

This is a collection of short poems I’ve written over the course of the past two years, and while only a few of them are about the pandemic per se, I do think of this as my book of pandemic poetry. Because of that, I am pleased to note that I am publishing this book through India’s Cyberwit.net, who have agreed to donate half of the profits towards COVID relief in India. (Although of course you are welcome to just purchase through Amazon if you prefer.) So I guess you could say this is my first book that I hope does good, instead of doing well.

But while proceeds from the book may go to pandemic relief instead of me, let me hasten to assure you that the book itself is not all pandemic and is very much a distillation of me, which is to say that it is alternately pessimistic and hopeful, ridiculous and thoughtful, covers all topics from spiders to food to love, tries to be engaging and thought-provoking, and wants you to like it (but will continue existing as itself regardless).

That’s about all I can say about this collection of poems. It’s easier for me to write about my other books because the nonfiction is about other things. But all the important things I have to say related to the poems are in the poems, which are not really meant to be summarized, but to be read.

* What, just me?