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 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.

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 spite of always being delighted to go for a walk with a friend, I have never been what you would call a “people person”*. Indeed, in the past half-decade I’ve become more of a hermit than ever, building up my own tiny bubble to be just the way I like it, as a refuge from the ever-more-distressing larger world.

But, sometimes needs must, and over the past few months I’ve found myself talking to more random people. At the farmer’s market while I’m picking up vegetables. Or at the National Press Club, where you can see my acceptance speech** (I’m at 2:12:24) for winning their 2024 Angele Gingras Humor Award.

And this general engagement with the world is probably a good thing. Perhaps it signals a slight lessening of despair, a willingness to cast my gaze beyond my bubble and look at the world again. Or at least, a willingness to stay up way too late last night with the Harris-Trump debate transcript and summarize the whole thing in the style of Edgar Allen Poe, in a very timely piece I am calling:

“The Raving”

It’s a beautiful day outside, so perhaps I will engage with the world even more, or at least engage with my lawnmower to briefly mow the front lawn. But I leave the side lawn wild, because it attracts the little animals that I love to look at out my desk window. As it turns out, that’s probably my favorite way of engaging with the world.

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* Technically, I can’t say whether YOU would call me a “people person”, but it would be only slightly less inaccurate than calling me a fashion template or a sports expert.

** This speech features a “Chekov’s gun” joke*** where the setup is on the mantlepiece and then is picked up halfway through, and I am gratified that the audience liked it.

*** Not to be confused with a joke about Chekov’s gun. “Captain, the audience is approaching, set phasers to Pun!”

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.

One pretty much has to be wary these days given the state of the world; unease is pretty much the baseline existence. Even amidst pleasantness, I can be out enjoying some unseasonably warm weather, and then stop to think “Why is the weather unseasonably warm?”*

And yes, a lot of the constant wariness is political, but everything is political these days, from what you eat and drink, to what you read, to certainly my two most recent columns, whether I’m writing about Black History Month or the increasingly distressing killing spree of Johnny Murderface.

These remain the proverbial** “Interesting Times”, and certainly anyone following the news regularly is already exhausted and doesn’t need me to recite*** a litany of ways in which things are bad. I am attempting to stay afloat and find the good, which for me has largely been good food and video games. My mother reminds me that her method of finding the good is to do good, but she has always been a kinder person than I am.

Not that I never do good — indeed, I always hope that my columns might infinitesimally bend some people’s thoughts towards a better world — but I’m much more cognizant of the old airplane maxim****, “In case of high pressure, put your own mask on first”*****, and the global forecast continues to call for ceaseless high pressure for the foreseeable future.

But I’ve got Shepard’s Pie and a Gamepass subscription, so tonight I’m doing okay, and perhaps later this week I should try to do something pro-social.

* Insert your own meme picture of a goose chasing me while asking this.

** Is a curse a proverb? I can’t really call it curseal Interesting Times. I only wish they were cursory.

*** Unless I was doing it in rhyme or something. Maybe in April.

**** “Surely you can’t be serious!”

***** People’s refusal to put on their own mask on at all is another reason things seem high pressure