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.

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

Although it in no way balances out any of the awful and inhumane things going on in the world currently*, I did receive a very welcome and unexpected piece of mail today: My first royalty check, for my Mahjong book which I wrote over a half-decade ago.

The check may have been small**, but it represents a book of mine finally “earning out” and bringing my cut of sales higher than the initial advance. In spite of having written over two dozen books at this point, this is the first time I’ve ever gotten a royalty check.

Over half of my books were ghostwriting for other people, so I have no royalties there. Another few of my books were self-published, so there was no advance to begin with. Most of my other books were for independent presses who did a limited run without massive distribution and the books didn’t stay in print for long, so it was hard for them to earn out. And my only other book for a massive publisher was a Work For Hire arrangement, so I didn’t have an ownership stake on which to receive royalties.

But here a mere six and a half years after writing a book, it has finally earned out. I’m not convinced this qualifies me to call myself a Successful Writer***, but between this and last year’s National Press Club award, I am willing to call myself “doing okay”, which is frankly pretty dang amazing in 2025.

In addition to receiving awards, I also give them out — my latest**** column offers some anti-societal technology awards to everything from the microwave to generative AI. I think no one will ever top Hayao Miyazaki’s description of AI art as “an insult to life itself”, but I figure I can at least add to the discourse while also sticking it to the microwave*****.

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* dear world: please stop being awful and inhumane

** envelope-sized, conveniently

*** no cap? yes caps!

**** not that late; still made deadline

***** and to think most people only ever stick things to the fridge

In a way, I guess most of what we do is filling a need. Me writing this, because I need to post something once a month. Me writing it quickly, because I need to go eat dinner soon. Working, voting, Me writing things for other people, because I need money. What can I say, I guess I’m more needy than I thought.*

You can get more details in my latest (until tomorrow) newsletter about Doing the Needful, where I discuss things like voting (fellow Americans: please vote if you haven’t already!), because the next week or two will probably be very stressful.**

I, as usual, will be managing that stress with large amounts of video gaming and tasty food***, because those are my needs. But I have other needs as well, such as clean and drinkable water****, which is why last month I wrote a column against the clear-cutting of our local forest. Of course, they don’t call it that, they call it “forest management”, because they’d like you to believe they’re just Friendly Forest Flatteners.

They don’t think we “need” all the trees we have, but what is a need anyway? I recently had two poems published on Mecella, one of which asks us to consider what things are really Necessities.

And I don’t have a universal answer. Everyone has to find their own, naturally, although at the moment my second-biggest need is probably to find a way to stop doomscrolling for the next week until the election. My biggest need is food, which I shall go consume presently to celebrate autumn.*****

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* Baker argument: “You’re too kneady!” “I just want you to stop loafing around!” “You mean you want my dough.”

** I was going to say “for Americans”, but since American foreign policy continues to have an outsized affect on the world, I suspect it’s stressful for many non-Americans as well.

*** Yesterday I managed to burn the roof of my mouth, and not even with pizza. It remains one of life’s more stupid injuries, taking something that it way too hot, and then not just touching it, but inserting it into your face hole.

**** So picky!

***** Of course, what I really need is for fascism to likewise have a delicious fall.

Back when I had a handcoded blog instead of WordPress on my site, I’d have to manually put up each entry and write the date for it. I say “have to”, but in a way it was also “get to”, because I would occasionally post things with dates like “September 47th” when I realized it was October already and I hadn’t made a post since August.

So yeah, a whole lot has happened in the past month and a half, although admittedly still nothing bigger in my personal life than winning the National Press Club award, about which I am still quite chuffed. The Eagle even printed a letter to the editor* about it.

But on a national scale, the political news has certainly seen a massive shift of late. Back in July I was still writing about the corrupt Supreme Court and writing them new patriotic songs, and now that feels like at least a year ago because suddenly the democratic ticket for president is Harris/Walz, and voter enthusiasm has been ignited now that one of the two options for president isn’t an octogenarian**. Tim Walz is the first VP pick in a long time who was a teacher, and that pleases me because the big commonality between all the teachers I’m friends with is that they truly care about other people****.

Well, and they actually act on it. I ostensibly care about other people, but can’t even be bothered to finish my

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* This now verifiably confirms that my column has at least one fan, which is always nice to know.

** Some of my favorite people are septuagenarians*** and octogenarians, but doing the job of president ages you rapidly. Look at pictures of Obama at the start and end of his presidency.

*** Yes, I have a predilection for sesquipedalianisms. I’m allowed.

**** Also that they’re generally creative people who are underfunded and overworked; be nice to a teacher today!

I am proud to announce that I have won the National Press Club’s 2024 humor award*.

As I told my editor, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate my 20th year of writing “The Pun Also Rises”, which I’ve been doing for near-on half a lifetime at this point.

It has made for a pretty good weekend for me, a much-needed antidote to, y’know, the rest of the news, which seems like a cavalcade of bad that we can’t do much to change.**

Still a humor writer can’t just rest on his Laurel and Hardys, so I want to share my favorite column from last month, which is a Private Equity FAQ.

Of course, if you’d like to keep up with my latest columns and have links to each new column emailed to you along with my rambly blather — and who wouldn’t?**** — you can always sign up for my free email newsletter.

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* Technically the “Angele Gingras Humor Award”, but do you know who Angele Gingras is? I mean, you will if you read the Eagle writeup I linked, but it seems weird to open my post by naming someone you’ve never heard of. “Hello friends! Today reminds me of Edgar Winterbottom, which means it’s a very good day indeed.”

** Unless you have enough money to bribe*** a Supreme Court Judge to change it.

*** Sorry, I meant to “gratuity” a Supreme Court Judge.

**** Most people, technically. But that just means if you do subscribe, I’ll like you better than I like most people.

I no longer have a sense of time.

For years I haven’t known what day it is, aided by the fact that as a freelance writer my work is largely unrelated to the day of the week*. But I think the pandemic really kicked that into overdrive, and that combined with the natural acceleration of time due to aging**, means that I often not only don’t know what year it is, but certainly don’t know how long ago things were.

This is not an uncommon experience; many people my age feel like the 90s were just one or two decades ago, and can simultaneously feel that 2015 was so long ago that it feels like a whole other lifetime.

Regardless, one of the things about getting to this age is that many things actually were 20 years ago, as I mentioned about starting my relationship 20 years ago last month, and as I now reflect that 20 years ago this month marked the release of my first published**** book. It was, of course, a great pleasure and thrill for me to finally feel like I had a book out in the real world, published by a company (Barnes&Noble) people had even heard of, no less.

But also, the book was a collection of weird groups and the intro was all about how weird isn’t bad, you just have to find your people. The good news is, finding your people has become a lot easier these days, thanks to the Internet and whatnot*****. The bad news is, an increasingly-large swath of the country seems to believe that not only is being different bad, but that it needs to be attacked/destroyed/outlawed/erased to the point where even learning that other people exist and lead different lives and have their own joys and struggles is now controversial.

This is a damn shame, and is also largely opposed to what I’ve come to realize is my primary moral principle: “People are people.”****** Not terribly complex, but surprisingly unpopular. Still, if you’re going to live by a moral code, you could do worse. Of course, there are those who hold themselves above other people, like some kind of superman, and that reminds me that my latest column is a little Superman parody that is my favorite thing I’ve written in a while:

The Adventures of GovernMan

I know, that bird joke in the opening is ridiculous. But what can I say; bad puns are my kryptonite.

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* Notwithstanding my column deadline, natch.

** I have often thought that our experience of time accelerates at a steady rate as we age, and that there must be some analog to the calculable acceleration of gravity (9.8 meters per second, per second) to account for how time seems faster every year. Maybe years go by 9.8% faster every year? I don’t know, I’m no Einstein.***

*** Although on occasion people have remarked upon the similarity of our hairstyles.

**** Technically I think I wrote my first book in 3rd grade for a Young Authors contest, I believe it was about dinosaurs and preceded the book of birthday poems I also wrote in elementary school as a project. But I certainly wouldn’t call either published.

***** The glorious powers of whatnot are truly unmatched.

****** Consider it a condensed paraphrase of a Terry Pratchett quote I can’t seem to find about how most problems start when someone decides a certain group of people are lesser and shouldn’t really be treated like people with full rights.

I enjoyed a very low-key New Year’s Eve. I got to go for a walk with a few old friends in the afternoon (always a delight!), and now I am back home and my big excitement for the evening will be opening a fortune cookie.*

This is good, actually. Having established that most eventful excitements these days are negative ones, I have arranged my life to be one of quiet contentment, which is very good for me as a person, albeit not very good for me as a blogger.

Still, one advantage of being a writer is that I always have something new to share. My last column of 2023 is very well-spiced with puns, so please enjoy my Season(ing)’s Greetings. My newsletter is also moving platforms, due to the impending closure of Tinyletter, so if you’d like to get an email every two weeks or so with my latest column and various rants and rambles (with silly jokes in parentheses), then you can subscribe to my new Buttondown newsletter here:

That will sign you up for semi-monthly nonsense*** labeled “Seth Says (Parenthetical Digressions)”, which as you’d expect, will include me saying things and then digressing quite a bit. Lest I digress overmuch here in this more concise blog, I will simply bid you all a happy new year, and now I’m off to listen to my new year’s song.

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* eating the fortune cookie will be less exciting. Which doesn’t say much for fortune cookies, given my that my general appreciation of eating cookies has oft caused people to confuse me with someone blue and furry.**

** although it could just be the lack of shaving and occasional depressed mood.

*** but, like, the fun “this weasel is wearing sunglasses” kind of nonsense, and not the “can you believe this messed-up world” nonsense. Because yes, I can believe the messed-up world, and I do not like it.

It’s difficult to get to the stars.

The other month I subscribed to PC Gamepass in order to finally play Psychonauts 2 (great game, even if I still prefer the original), and then I realized that Gamepass subscribers can play Starfield for free. I definitely want to play Starfield, so I downloaded the 120 gig pre-install. But it requires 16 gigs of memory, and I only had 8.

My computer was having memory crashes anyway, so it seemed like a fine time for a memory upgrade at my friendly local shoppe. Things are running more smoothly since upgrading, but it turns out Starfield also requires an SSD, while I still have an HDD. So I put in an order for an SSD, and that should also improve the speed of my computer for all my other activities.

And good thing, because Starfield will have to be delayed, since it also requires a newer graphics card than I have, and unlike more memory and an SSD (both of which will be a boon to my regular computer use), I really can’t justify* a new graphics card on my old computer. At least the memory and SSD should be transferable to a new computer when I finally upgrade.

Meanwhile, things should be slightly faster while I’m browsing the web. And speaking of which, don’t miss my latest newsletter and column about spiders.**

*I mean, of course I could justify it by saying there’s a climate crisis and covid and we could all die at any time so shouldn’t I be playing the best and newest video games? It turns out, potential imminent demise is an easy way to justify lots of things.

**Hey, there’s a spider on your back! I guess maybe if that was true for one person reading this, at least the warning wasn’t in vain.

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