Quick bulletpoint list of things:

-My new musical (co-written with Sam) opens this week! If you’re near Orlando, FL in the next week or so, you should buy tickets for the Fringe premiere of Punslingers: A Western Wordplay Musical!

-My column continues apace, most recently with my perennial advice column Ask Dr. Manners, and a Les Miserables parody about the AHCA which I called Speaker of the House*

-Gaming-wise, recently I played the underwhelming Power Grid Card Game in the cardboard world, and have been sucked into Mobius Final Fantasy in the videogame world.

-My old house, which has recently had all beautiful hardwood floors newly refinished, is still for sale. If you are or know anyone who might want a lovely old Victorian in the burgeoning town of North Adams, MA, just blocks from town and Mass MoCA, for under $70,000, you should look at this listing.

But what I really had on my mind lately was something else. And the something else made me think of an old Emo Phillips joke that in one UK survey, was voted as the funniest joke of all time. Obviously that’s setting your expectations far too high, but anyway, here’s Emo Phillips at his finest. And what made me think of that joke was the fact that I was about to get into an argument with someone I mostly agreed with, on Facebook. And sometimes when I do that, I feel bad for arguing with people I mostly agree with, when people spouting horrible ideas that I vehemently disagree with seem to be in abundance lately, and yet I do not tend to end up arguing with them. I think this is because I do not suspect that they would be open to dialogue, and that there is little to be gained by shouting at people who think I’m an idiot and should be ignored. But when friends of mine say something I have a minor disagreement with, I see an opportunity for discussion grounded in mutual respect.**

Still, the end result is that the bulk of my argument time is spent disputing people with whom I align to a fairly large degree on major issues, while vast swaths of humanity are spouting horrible garbage which I simply avoid rather than engaging. This is weird and/or a failing on my part and/or indicative of something.

*Much better than the first title I thought of, which was “Master of the Health”

**Although as it turns out, my success rate on Facebook is probably 50/50 at best. And may not be best.