I have been enjoying myself lately, but also my outlook on the future has become extremely bleak. This may seem like an odd pairing, but I think it makes perfect sense as a natural extension of my philosophy of Existential Bliss: There’s no point to anything, so why not enjoy yourself? Now it’s just augmented by a bit of there might be no future, so why not enjoy yourself?

I was recently reading a sci-fi novel (whose title I’ll avoid spoiling to avoid this being a spoiler) where apocalypse was imminent, and half the planet was in turmoil and angrily rioting, and half was just pursuing hedonism, whether by peacefully enjoying quiet afternoons with their family, or by joining a massive orgy.

My own hedonism is certainly more along the lines of the former; I’ve bought myself a few video games* and am eating tasty food**, am trying to peacefully enjoy my days and write things, even while my ambition for fame has also dissipated. As if that weren’t contradictory enough, I may no longer desire fame, but I still want people to read and appreciate my writing. So if you’d like read about my thoughts on ghosting or the sinister plot of certain learning, that would be nice.

But either way, I hope you’re enjoying a pleasant apocalypse.

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*Final Fantasy XIII, Ni No Kuni, Monster Hunter World. They’re admittedly not new video games, but I used to have a 10+ year lag, and now I’m closer to 5 years. Well … actually I just looked it up and Monster Hunter World is 5 years, but the other two are 10 years. I’d defend myself, but this footnote is already too long.

**I was going to list foods here, but is that all footnotes are for, listing examples of things? Nay, the footnotes deserve better! To me, footnotes, let us rebel for justice!***

***Rebelling for justice is much easier in footnotes than in real life, but that’s probably a different blogpost.

I have (finally!) been playing through Dragon Age: Origins, a classic Bioware RPG that has been on my to-play list for years. I’m not very good at it, but luckily hobbies do not require skill to produce enjoyment. Jobs, on the other hand, often require skill to produce money, so I’m glad that I’ve been able to put my writing abilities to work for some good clients lately. For whatever reason, I really enjoy tackling dry or complex topics and explaining them in fun and approachable ways.

Arguably, that’s what I was doing in this recent column about return-free tax filing.* But my favorite column from the past month was probably my March Badness Tournament of annoying things.

Of course, April is National Poetry Month, and so I’ve been writing a poem a day.** So between that, the columns, and the freelance gigs, I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately. So I’ve also been trying to do more playing, hence the Dragon Age. People always say, “Work Hard, Play Hard”, but I’ve always preferred the idea of “Work Smarter, Not Harder”, so ostensibly my guiding principle should be “Work Smart, Play Smart”?***

I don’t know, maybe playing classic RPGs instead of a high-impact sport is playing smarter instead of harder? Although possibly getting more exercise would be smarter, since presently I mostly just walk. And my back hurts. That smarts. Guess I’ll walk it off.

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* Also arguably, I was just taking the next logical step after seeing John Oliver tackle the same topic.

** As opposed to Buckminster Fuller, who makes a dome a pay.

*** “Shop Smart. Shop S-Mart.”

For the past month, I’ve been besieged by an absolute torrent of spam comments. Over a thousand, easily, although I haven’t exactly been counting. But the upshot is, since I no longer have the brainpower to pore over every single comment, I’m just deleting comments in droves, so if you’ve commented on this blog in the past month and you are an actual human person annoyed that your comment never showed up, feel free to drop me an email. It’s nothing personal, it’s just bad timing.

I guess I’d have to describe the spam as a Minor Headache. Certainly not on my list of top 20 things wrong at the moment, and as 2022 has continued giving in its 2022 manner, I am trying to take my victories where I can find them. For example, I finally got around to starting up my bi-weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to in this form which I should really put somewhere more permanent on the site:

Meanwhile, I’ll just put it in my posts with no rhyme or reason. Well, I guess technically me being me, I’ve always got rhyme.*

Not much boardgaming these days, but videogame-wise in addition to continuing in Genshin Impact, I’ve recently started the delightful puzzle game Baba Is You, and it really requires some lateral thinking. I’m always a couple years late to these things because I want them on sale, but single-player games don’t go bad, and I’d still recommend it to people who want to experience cleverness.**

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* Well, most of the time. It isn’t a crime. Go suck on a lime.

** Which I hope describes most people reading my blog. I’d feel a bit put out if someone was like, “Oh no, I hate cleverness, that’s why I read Seth’s writing!”

While I am fortunate that Debbie and I remain relatively healthy and happy, the past few months have been sub-optimal even aside from the cold weather and global pandemic. So far, 2022 is not winning any prizes*. But, here we are, I’m still writing things and playing games and life goes on.

Probably my favorite column I’ve written so far this year was this bit of Political Theater, although since I never know if people are actually seeing my columns, sometimes it feels like I’m just talking to myself. In an attempt to change that, and beat the Facebook/Twitter algorithms in order to get my column into the hands (eyes?) of people who want to read it, I’ve started a tiny newsletter. So if you’d like an email every couple weeks with my latest columns and other writing and thoughts, you can sign up here:

https://tinyletter.com/RisingPun

I haven’t, uh, actually written a newsletter yet. But once there are people signed up I’ll feel pressured to do so. And ideally that will make me send updates more often than once every month and change, not that I’m comparing to anything in specific. *glares at blog* *blog glares back at me* *Friedrich Nietzsche glares at abyss*

Anyway, not much boardgaming aside from a couple games of Goa the other week, but on the videogaming front I played through a few runs of Griftlands and found it a surprisingly compelling mix of RPGish story and Slay the Spire-style roguelike deckbuilder.

My blogposts so rarely have those clever punchline endings like my columns do. I wonder if there’s a way for me to fix that… the Aristocrats!

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* aside from possibly, “Second Place, 2020 Look-Alike Contest”. First prize went to 2021, naturally.

Well, it’s soon to be Thanksgiving, and as I discuss in my latest column, it’s important to use the appropriate Thanksgiving prepositions. I have many people to whom I am thankful—friends, family, and clients—and although I try not to only express this appreciation annually in November, it’s not a bad time to take stock. I lucked into a pretty nice life, and as long as I remember to appreciate my favorite people and enjoy gaming (rather than wasting time angrily replying on social media), things are good.

Speaking of gaming, we played through the little 5-game campaign of Blackout:HongKong, which reminds me that Alexander Pfister is on my top boardgame designers list and I should really get more of his games given how much I also enjoy GWT and Mombasa. Currently playing Hallertau, another big Uwe Rosenberg farming game but only 6 rounds instead of Agricola’s 14. Also pretty good. And on the videogame front, I finally finished Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite, the former of which didn’t thrill me, but the latter I quite enjoyed*.

And today I noticed that my poetry book has its first official review** on the Amazon page for The Disapproval of My Toaster, so that’s exciting. Almost as exciting as Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwiches! I can’t wait.

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*Admittedly, neither quite compares to the experience of playing the first game fresh with zero expectations, but that was many years ago and we were all younger and more innocent.

**Also pleased with another unofficial review from a friend: “So excited to have this insightful, funny, raw, introspective and poignant book of poetry!”

Which is to say, this week I want to share some review and reaction blurbs on my book of short poems, The Disapproval Of My Toaster. Here are some things that readers have said about the book:

“I love your poetry book”

“all too real universal truth about people”

“I really love a lot of them (and don’t hate any!)”

“full of existential dread and maudlin musings”

“I quite like it, like a lot a lot”

“fun and thought provoking”

“This book of poetry, the clever word play, the punch of honesty that cuts into the social structure of our new world of trauma and distance.”

…that make the whole world say, “Wow, Seth, you do not have a good singing voice, maybe you should just write the songs and let someone else sing them.”

Noted. And indeed, that’s what I’ve been doing. Freelancing is always feast or famine, and after a few weeks with hardly any work (during which I finally beat the Witcher 3 DLC, as well as Transistor), the past week or two things have picked up again with an interesting array of gigs, my favorite of which was to write a song parody for a corporate client. Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to share said parody*, but it did get me in a parody-writing mood which explains my latest song parody column, The Day That Facebook Died.

Other than that, things have continued much the same, with more writing, gaming, and eating tasty food. Sure there are ups (we’ve just started our 14th annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, where Debbie and I play a boardgame for every letter of the alphabet), and downs (I’m only just recently recovered from a somewhat irksome back injury), but basically I’m still here existing as best I can during a pandemic; hope y’all are managing to do the same.

*Because I’m a ghostwriter you can trust to stay ghosty, which is why you should hire me.

** This isn’t even a real footnote. By reading this, you’re cheating, you cheater. Maybe you should scroll down and buy one of my recent books to restore your honor.

If it seems like I’m not only posting more often than usual, but also releasing cool non-column things more often than usual, you’re not wrong! That’s because the combination pandemic, climate crisis, and political hellscape* has served as a massive memento mori to remind us that tomorrow is in no way guaranteed. So I should probably try to do some of those things I always planned  And thus my past few posts where I’ve finally put out my first book of short poems, and finally put out an eBook version of From God To Verse.

Today I’m also pleased to share another cool non-column thing, which is that one of my stories that I told at a story slam has been animated by Mary over at SketchMyStory, so if you want to see a stick-figure Seth become stranded with an ancient warrior god and tasty baked goods**, you should absolutely check out my episode of SketchMyStory.

Which is not to say I’m not still writing things! Whether it’s satire about America’s foremost Anti-Vax Spokesperson, or my column about the time I accidentally squandered a life-changing opportunity, I continue to put words in order. Now that I’ve released two books in the past two months though, I may calm down again with the publishing. Like my brief spate of submitting poetry to many journals last year, it’s fun to get things published when I’m reminded that life is fleeting, but usually afterwards I realize that life also has no meaning, and that goes double for publishing books.***

But being alive is still great, I absolutely prefer it to the alternative, so to that end… get vaxxed if you haven’t already, wear a mask, avoid crowded indoor spaces, and try to survive the pandemic so we can see how the climate crisis goes!

* I’m at the Pandemic! I’m at the Climate Crisis! I’m at the combination Pandemic and Climate Crisis!

**I mean, if you have to be stranded, I definitely recommend having tasty baked goods.

*** Can you believe that nobody wants to hire me as a motivational speaker?

That is, I suspect, when things will get better. The past month has not been great for me, between the water damage to our home, the resultant heaters in our house during the hottest month of summer, and my injuring my back yesterday to the point where I didn’t get much sleep last night because it still hurts too much. All in all, not the best.

Which is not to say there have been no bright points in the past month. I did start writing satire for a new site called Brain Caffeine, so if you’d like to read some articles with titles like “All State-Mandated COVID Restrictions To End, Announces Governor Leeroy Jenkins” and “World’s Climate Scientists Fucking Told You So“, please do so. Just be aware that compared to my more thoughtful Pun Also Rises columns, these tend to be more of a Hobbesian description of human life.*

But soon — hopefully before the month is up, but definitely by early September — I will have a few more cool things to share with you.

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* They are nasty, brutish, and short.

As a comedy fan, one thing I’ve always noticed is how many comedians get less wacky and more philosophical over time. From George Carlin’s stand-up to Woody Allen’s movies*, you can chart an arc of their career and see how wonderfully silly the early stuff was, and how that slowly morphed into a layer of comedy wrapped around something they wanted to say.

Perhaps it’s because I was born old, but I feel like I’m already there. Sure, I’ll write the occasional humor column that’s pure silliness, like my latest on Cool Tips to Beat the Heat, but more often than not these days I’m writing with something to say. I don’t want to classify this as a personal failing, nor as a good thing; I’m simply noticing that same shift I once lamented in other creators of humor, I’m now noticing in myself, and perhaps at a younger age.

In an effort to keep myself young**, I am still playing video games. Most recently God Eater 3 with a few friends, which is a more casual Monster Hunter that suits me well. I’ve also been playing Sushi Eater every Wednesday when our local sushi joint has 30% off their nigiri menu, which does very little for my fading youth, but is tasty. Oh well, no use carping*** about it.

* not that you should watch any of Woody Allen’s movies, or at least not in a way that benefits him

** in lieu of exercise

*** although I can make puns on any topic, the one topic where I always hesitate is fish, because I always feel like a pale imitation of Kip Addotta’s masterwork Wet Dream.