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.

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** 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!”

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.

We are, of course, past the Aughts here in 2024, but I never seem to get past the Oughts. I guess you could say I’m an oughtsalot, which reminds me of an old joke* that a friend back in college used to love. Regardless, there sometimes hangs over my head the sense that insofar as people might read my writing, it is incumbent upon me to occasionally write things that might nudge the world ever-so-slightly towards being better — which often means addressing the various awfulness of the day.

But I already posted a column about Gaza last time, and the awful news gets overwhelming quickly, and so of late my columns have been a little sillier. But sometimes a laugh makes things better too, right? Or as Shakespeare once said, “Laugh it up, Fuzzball.”**

And speaking of Shakespeare, he was the topic of my favorite column I’ve written since my previous post two months ago, so please enjoy some of

Shakespeare’s First Drafts

As usual, after I have finished all my paid work, I have just about enough motivation to keep up with writing my free semi-monthly newsletter and consequently this blog has been lying fallow.*** I sometimes think I “ought” to post monthly****, but obligations need to be to someone and no one is obligating me to write this blog*****.

But that’s as it should be. After all, what’s the point if it’s not going to be fun? It certainly “ought” to be.

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* “How do you titillate an ocelot?”

** Just saying, no one has ever seen Han Solo and Shakespeare in the same place.

*** And may as well have been bricked up. “Fallow, fallow, fallow, fallow, fallow the yellow brick road.”

**** Instead of just posting weakly

***** Maybe one day I’ll make enough money to afford to hire me to write my blog regularly, but right now I’m out of my price range.

Who knows what sign from above Milton was standing and waiting for* when he wrote those immortal words.

But let’s be real: At my age, I spend a lot more time sitting and waiting. And while I try to take a stoic outlook towards such things — definitely a benefit to my mental health and general happiness — I will admit that depending on the importance of the thing one is waiting for, stoicism can be difficult.**

I have the great fortune to live in a comfortable house with an Internet connexion and a partner I love, thus making the prospect of passing time not an unpleasant one. The result is that awaiting good things is a fardel*** easily borne. But awaiting a cessation of awfulness remains, well, awful. And it is in that spirit that I present my latest Godot-adjacent column:

Waiting For Ceasefire – a tragicomedy in one act

If it’s not too much of a fardel****, give it a read — it’s surprisingly short given how much bleak despair it packs in!

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* Probably the return of his stapler.

** Stoicism can be difficult regardless, but one must of course attempt to face such difficulties stoically.

*** Next time someone asks, “who would these fardels bear”, you can just pipe up and say, “Pretty sure I read a blogpost by a writer who happily bears some fardels.”

**** I’m trying to be literary by writing about fardels instead of fartels, which is the more usual humor writer topic. Also, let’s bring “fardels” back into the common parlance.*****

***** Also also, let’s bring “the common parlance” back into the common parlance.

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

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.

A classic quote (and scene) from the original Batman movie.*

Today, I find myself needing to figure out what to do with a lot of random thoughts. They are too many and too disorganized to put in my column regularly, although irregularly this week I have put them all in my annual Thanksgiving leftovers column that uses all of my disorganized random ideas. But generally, I have slightly higher standards for my column, and those random thoughts need to go somewhere else.

I had been putting them in a semi-monthly newsletter, because I believe a torrent of my random thoughts should always be opt-in, and for the past nearly two years, had been sending it out via a service named TinyLetter. Well, I was notified today that TinyLetter will cease to exist as of February, because the company that owns it (MailChimp) wants to focus purely on monetizing newsletters, and writing-focused newsletters have gone to SubStack, so most newsletters should fall in one category or the other and the midpoint of TinyLetter will no longer be supported.

My newsletter was never intended to be monetized; quite the opposite, it was intended to give me a space away from all my paid freelance writing to rant and ramble without worrying about writing how anyone else wanted me to. So MailChimp seems like a bad fit. But while my newsletter is writing-focused, my newsletter is also pro-equality, pro-trans-rights, pro-humanity, etc., thus making it a potentially bad fit for Substack, which as reported has a bit of a Nazi problem.

So I’m not exactly sure where my newsletter will end up***, but I will certainly be posting about it when I come to a decision — which I guess will happen no later than February. Meanwhilst, this is the lull month between Thanksgiving and Christmas that always feels like not real time****, so I bid you all a happy holiday season, a reason to finds things pleasin’, and not too much freezin’ and sneezin’.

* I love Michael Keaton as much as the next person**, but no, I mean the ORIGINAL Batman movie.

** I mean, obviously depending on who the next person is.

*** Or if it will end. Ulp!

**** Certainly, my clients rarely seem to book real time during this span.