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

While this January has certainly felt interminable, as I allude to in my latest musical parody-filled column “NOW That’s What I Call 2025!” (filled with everything from Madonna to Mary Poppins; you’ll love it), today marks the final day of the month, after which time will keep moving forward*.

This comes as no small comfort, at a time when so many things seem to be moving rapidly backwards instead. I find myself, not for the first time, thinking about Franny Choi’s poem “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On”. Of course, while the world may go on regardless, it will certainly go on better if people band together to mitigate the destruction wreaked by fascist-aligned forces. At this point in my life I have one primary political belief and moral principle, which as I have mentioned before is this: “People are people.”

This is my yardstick for evaluating other political/moral/religious belief systems, and while there are plenty of good reasons to dislike the current regime, the largest source of my antipathy remains their eagerness to classify large swaths of people as not-people whose lives hold no value. But these living, breathing human beings are incontrovertibly** people, and that would be true even if they didn’t also enrich our world with art, science, and hard labor that underpins our entire agricultural sector.

While I always do my best to avoid making things worse, I am no paragon of world improvement. Aside from my writing, I occasionally donate or contact my representatives when spurred by guilt or an overwhelming need to feel like I’m doing something***, but more often I simply provide comfort/solace/support/amusement to the people saving the world.

So if that’s you, I hope my writing**** has provided you with at least one of those things. And if that’s not you, obviously I can’t throw any stones, but I hope you’ll at least join me in not making things worse and occasionally making them better, because even darkest days will eventually go the way of this dark, cold January.

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* at least, if past experience is anything to go by.

** not that it stops the bastards from continuing to controvert it.

*** both this week, though admittedly not super-frequent, as you’d expect from someone whose typical day is “sit at desk, think about stuff, maybe write things”

**** which you can get delivered to your inbox semi-monthly with my free newsletter.

Thanks to the holiday that keeps on Giving, it’s a week of delicious leftover sandwiches*. In spite of being someone who likes a lot of diverse foods, I’m also quite content to eat Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches for a week straight. It’s a comfort food, and probably in my top 10 sandwiches**.

What, you don’t rank your favorite sandwiches? I find it’s useful to do if you need things to be thankful for. Hooray for sandwiches! Also, people always talk about favorite books and movies, and I think sandwiches deserve their moment in the sun***. Maybe it’s just the way I was bread.

I wrote some new Thanksgiving songs in my latest column. Well, “wrote” may be the wrong word, since it was more that I rewrote some classic hip-hop songs with new Thanksgiving lyrics. Regardless, if you’d likewise like to have the earworm of RunDMC talking turkey and Ice Cube telling you about pie, I welcome you to enjoy:

A Hip-Hop Thanksgiving

Heading into December with a head full of hip-hop and a belly full of turkey, and certainly there are worse ways to go. The past week has, let us say, not been short on frustrations, but all in all I remain very fortunate, very aware of my good fortune, and very appreciative of my partner who keeps minor frustrations from being major ones — both by helping me keep things in perspective, and by being generally good at technical and logistical things in a way that I am not.****

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* rye bread, mayo, cranberry sauce, turkey, stuffing, and ideally sweet potato but we’re all out so I’ve been making do with mashed potato.

** the Reuben remains the King of Sandwiches, and my second place would probably go to the Monte Cristo.

*** unless it spoils the mayo

**** I pretty much put all my points into wordsmithery, and anything not involving words tends to be outside the realm of my expertise. Where by “expertise” I mean “competency”.

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** (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!”

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