One of my great pleasures in life is getting out to enjoy the natural beauty of the Berkshires, and yet for some reason*, it’s far too rare that I actually get up from my desk and wander about appreciating said natural beauty.

Still, over the past month or two I have been getting out now and then amidst the falling leaves to appreciate fall, and a few weeks ago I even had my path crossed by a deer followed by two baby deer, which is always fun to see.** With weather cooling down, I suspect I’ll be slightly less enthusiastic about walking as temperatures drop, but hopefully can still motivate myself to get out and appreciate the area.

It is a dumb thing about people that we’ll move somewhere that we talk up to others by citing great benefits of the area and then proceed to only take advantage of said benefits very rarely. Oh well. In lighter news***, with all the food recalls over the past few months I wrote a song parody about it:

50 Bad Foods to Discover

And speaking of my column, last week I ended up putting my entire column and not just the usual excerpt into my free non-paywalled newsletter, so if you’d like to learn something about the average American and read some bar jokes, take a gander.****

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* Inertia

** I’m trying to keep that sense of wonder and appreciation for the natural world and just feel happy when I randomly encounter baby deer on a walk. I guess I was fawning over them.

*** Or I guess technically, heavier news presented lightly? I dunno, if you eat the food you get heavier, but then if it makes you sick you get lighter, so it’s hard to say. People talk about the weight of a story but nobody gives you a story scale.

**** Take a gander, leave a gander. Take a gander at Ryan Gosling! Take a gander, then duck.

Summer is all but over, in the blink of an eye. It seems like just yesterday it was May*, and now here we are in September.

I had a slightly busy summer, or at least, busy enough that I’ve once again forgotten to update this blog (oops). First I was updating the second edition of one of my books, which will be released next year. Then I was busy not being interviewed about a book I didn’t write.

And then I had a bat fly into my office and flap around my head, which I very did not enjoy**. I know there are many much worse things going on in the world, but let me tell you, absolutely none of that is on your mind when a bat is flying circles around you and doing little dive bombs.

Still, all in all it was a pleasant summer with a decent amount of patio dining and seeing a few old friends. And as I recently wrote for the Williams Alumni Commentary, I am trying to appreciate my life for what it is, rather than comparing it to anyone else’s.

Now I’m about to go play some Slay the Spire 2 with an old college friend, which seems like a fine way to finish the evening. May you all enjoy the fleeting days of summer.

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* or at least, it would seem that way if you presumed I regularly posted to my blog every day. which would be an exceedingly foolish presumption, given my track record of only occasionally managing to make a monthly post.

** guaNO THANKS.

Now that the weather is warming, the bugs are out again, which means now that I’m finally excited about patio dining, it turns out that occasionally I’m the dinner.* Still, I am trying to maintain my excitement for the season as an endless wellspring of possibility.** I’ve caught up with a couple old friends I haven’t seen in too long and have plans to catch up with a couple more, which is lovely.

I’ve even managed to write one or two columns recently that aren’t about how terrible the world is, about things like how I’m failing to grow a hedge or why I disagree with everyone that says compromise is the secret to a good relationship.

Spring is also the season when food gets exciting, thanks to a farm share from one of our local growers (Full Well Farm) that ensures fresh veggies every week until the Fall.*** Just this weekend I’ve made myself a delicious chicken salad with an unlabeled bag of random spice that I found in a drawer****, and it made a tasty lunch with some farm-fresh pea shoots.

And in exciting (for me) news, I am on a comedy show this weekend for the first time in years. It’s a Zoom show, so if you have nothing better to do at 8pm Eastern on Friday June 5th, you can pre-register for a free ticket here and then enjoy the comedy online on Friday night.

Of course, if you never want to join another Zoom call again, you can always just keep up with my bad jokes in my free semi-monthly newsletter.

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* a simple typo can change dinner party to donner party

** hope-Spring’s eternal!

*** either the season, or the looming collapse of society as we know it, take your pick.

**** All my bold risk-taking tendencies have been diverted to the culinary realm. Is there a D&D prestige class for “Adventurous eater who doesn’t leave his house”?

As a hilarious long-term April Fools prank, our government started an unnecessary war* in Iran to drive up prices for oil and gas, and consequently everything else also. This is pretty funny if you are a wealthy oil baron or gas company CEO who is seeing excellent return on investing in donations to Donald Trump; I suspect they are laughing all the way to the bank.

Of course, for those not in that group, the joke’s on us** and there seems to be an endless series of additional unfunny punchlines. And I’m realizing that only talking about our unfunny world may not be ideal for a humor writer.

So, here’s a recent column that’s pure non-headline-related silliness: March Dadness Tournament

Weather is finally warming up a little, but even if it’s not warm warm, I’m basically happy as long as it’s not frozen. Which coincidentally is exactly how I feel about the leftover pad thai I’m eyeing*** for dinner.

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* Of course, half the time they still deny it’s a war, it’s just a light dusting of spending billions of dollars to attack thousands of targets, bombing some schools, blowing up critical infrastructure, lots of Iranian deaths and some US military deaths, preparing for more boots on the ground, and destabilizing the region to the point it has severely throttled international trade by mostly shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. Y’know, peace stuff.

** which you probably realized when there was federal interference in that green energy project in your state that was all set to proceed. “Solar, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, good night...”

*** or technically mouthing for dinner. I’m not the Corinthian or anything.

The world continues along with its various terrible, to the point where just promoting love and kindness is a political act of some controversy. But I maintain my quiet life and write my free quiet newsletter* and have enough other writing to work on this weekend that I’m ending this post here and getting back to it.

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*no ads! no autoplay! no audio!

My back still hurts a little from repeatedly clearing all the snow out of my driveway, but mercifully it was cold enough to remain as powder snow, since we all know there’s nothing worse than ice.*

In case you were also tired of shoveling snow and wanted a song to express your frustrations, I have assembled a quick guide on how to write a parody song, complete with lots of suggestions for songs you could be singing for morale while shoveling your driveway.**

Meanwhile it remains very cold, so I bid you all warmth.***

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* (insert your own litany of curse-words and gestapo references here)

** or ideally, while shoveling my driveway, which would certainly be excellent for my morale.

*** unless you are part of the racist pedophile regime, in which case, I bid you posthumous warmth.

Beyond my favorite truth (and foundational moral principle) that People Are People, there is the fact that vast swathes of fiction across all sorts of media — books, movies, videogames — involve a ragtag diverse group striving for coexistence struggling against a cruel despotic force that wants to kill and/or subjugate everyone else.

Been reading a lot of fantasy novels lately and that’s the plot of more than one. Watched one of the recent Star Trek reboots last week and that was the plot. Just started playing a new video game last night called Metaphor: ReFantazio and the narrator dreams of living in a fantasy world where peaceful coexistence leads to shared prosperity, but unfortunately in reality the various races are being attacked by weird tentacle monsters called “humans”*.

Thousands of stories have been written about this struggle** because it is a universal one: the struggle of people who want peace and prosperity for all, against the despots who want to annihilate everyone who isn’t them. And spoiler: the despots who want to subjugate everyone are never*** the good guys.

May everyone be treated like they treat other people in 2026.

oh, and p.s. here’s a christmas poem about hhs/cdc.

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* which is the kind of subtlety you’d expect from a game named METAPHOR.

** of peaceful coexistence vs despotic aggression, that is. although for that matter, thousands of stories have been written about weird tentacle monsters. so, maybe millions of stories about humanity vs. tyranny. not changing it now or it would invalidate this footnote.

*** with the few obvious exceptions being films famous for being made by nazis or being propaganda for the klan

I regret to admit that because I am weak, I am still on Facebook*.

I am aware that it is a terrible site, it is owned by a sociopathic billionaire who is content to let his algorithms serve up rationalizations for genocide alongside 15 billion scam ads per day and that in an ideal world I wouldn’t use it.

Likewise, my partner still orders things from Amazon regularly even though Jeff Bezos has taken the Washington Post from one of the world’s most respected newspapers to a fulfillment of their motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness”.

They say there’s “no ethical consumption under capitalism” because everything you buy supports someone terrible, but there are still some places that especially deserve a lack of support. I quit Twitter not too long after Elon Musk turned it into a nazi hangout with an AI that declared itself Mecha-Hitler. Still not playing the newest Harry Potter game even though I have free access on Gamepass, because I don’t wish to support JK Rowling**.

Likewise it was easy enough for me to cancel my Washington Post subscription, not to host my free newsletter on Substack, and generally not to spend in a way that supports the worst people when there are many readily-available alternatives.

But Facebook is the only way I’m in touch with large numbers of my friends, and I’d miss it if I weren’t there. So there I remain, and I only boycott the easy stuff. Which is why I think of it as only a boycott, and not a mancott.

Not to imply I’m not old. In fact, in a recent column I point out there’s very little difference between me and a man from 1920***. I wouldn’t trade though; I’d miss the Internet too much.

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* given my sedentary lifestyle, I’m still everywhere.

** and, let’s face it, also because I’ve already got an extensive backlog of other games so it costs me very little to have the courage of my convictions in that case.

*** except that he’s probably dead, and I’m not dead YET.

The present moment* is filled with a lot of not-great, and unfortunately I find myself with minimal ability to mitigate it. What I can do, which is not nearly as helpful but hopefully still at least a little helpful, is to offer explanations.

For example, President Trump has denied writing the innuendo-laden** birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein that bears his signature. Many critics argue that he is simply lying and obviously wrote it, but my recent column lays out some alternative explanations.

And as our country increasingly begins to become more dystopian, I am far from the first one to notice that in many ways these developments were predicted by classic dystopian science fiction. However, I may be the first one commissioned by a music director to write her some mid-song lyrics explaining the particular parallels which she then put into a lovely Science Fiction song (for which I definitely recommend the closed captioning to catch all of said lyrics)

I considered a tortured metaphor*** to couch my current gaming as explanation, but really it’s just my preferred escape from the everything. This month marked my 18th annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge with Debbie, a lovely September tradition that provides some metaphorical light in endarkened times. And meanwhile I started Hollow Knight: Silksong, a game at which I am clearly not good enough but so far continue to persist anyway because I refuse to give up.****

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* aka the decade that 2025 has been so far

** albeit, not terribly subtle innuendo. “HELLO, WE SHARE A WONDERFUL SECRET AND IT’S ABOUT ENJOYING PEOPLE WHO DO NOT GET OLDER AND ALSO I HAVE DRAWN AN OUTLINE OF A FIGURE IN CASE THERE IS ANY CONFUSION TO WHAT I REFER”

*** “We have ways of making you a mynah bird!”

**** probably useful energy to have roundabouts now

One of the side effects of living in a time of media abundance is that while there’s no shortage of decent media to consume, it raises the bar for great media a little higher.

I was watching a movie a couple months ago, and while it was a perfectly decent action film, I found myself unsatisfied because it was so damned movie-ish that even though it was engaging, the beats were predictable and it left me feeling sort of meh. Likewise had that experience with some video games recently; Avowed was a pleasant AAA RPG with good combat, but the overall experience was so familiar and similar to other massive RPGs that it instantly faded into apathy.

Thankfully, the newest game I’ve picked up is the much-ballyhooed* Expedition 33, which is an early favorite for Game of the Year. And it presents a unique and engaging story that has really wowed me, even though I’m only a few hours in.** So hooray for that.

Also in better than average news, one of my recent columns seems to have spurred multiple laudatory letters to the editor, which I am very excited about because overcoming the apathy barrier with positivity instead of negativity is rare***, so it was very gratifying to know the column resonated with people. Maybe it will also resonate with you:

Will Work For Food (Eagle)

Will Work For Food (Banner)

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* I don’t know if anyone even says ballyhoo anymore, but if they did, they’d say it about this game.

** Apparently AI searches suggest that you should play Expeditions 1-32 first for more backstory, a suggestion marred only by the fact that they don’t exist.

*** For me, or really for any non-famous person. No, a newspaper column does not make me a famous person. Frankly, I’m surprised you’ve heard of me.