Well, technically of humid air, but then it rained a lot and the air got fresher*.

Anyway, this month has been interesting, but I’ve already forgotten most of it, because I’ve been pretty busy. Not quite busy enough — need to do more recording tomorrow for the exciting project I was hired for last month — but busy nonetheless.

The biggest event of the month for me was probably the WordXWord Festival in Pittsfield, a week-long event celebrating the spoken word where some of the country’s best performance poets came to perform, and it was totally awesome. But don’t take my word for it, take my 600 words in a parody of Poe’s Raven. Which will probably be taken down a few days after I post this, but oh well.

My most recent column, rather than being celebratory, is a lot more depressing. However, I think it’s also something important to note that I really wanted people to read, and of particular interest to anyone interested in humor in general or politics, which I believe covers almost all of my readership, so I encourage you to read (and share?) my musings on The Death of Satire.

That column came out two days ago, and already I’ve had numerous new examples sent to me since then. I think it really is a disturbing trend. Almost as much as people making abnormally short blogposts that end abruptly**.

*More fresher? Re-fresher? Freshluggner? Good thing I’m not a writer.

**But I guess the footnotes can go on for a bit. At least, I can. What my column doesn’t mention about the WordXWord Festival is that I found out another local poet was also a freestyle rapper, and neither of us had ever known the other rapped. So at the afterparty for the festival, one of the more-famous-than-us poets announced this fact, and invited us both to the stage to do some quick freestyle line trading starting on topics of the audience’s choosing. This ended up being a $10 bill and Battlestar Galactica, the latter of which launched our rhymes into a series of delightful nerdery, and it was the most fun I had all month, and basically I thought of all of this now because during that freestyle session the other fellow said that his rhymes needed large footnotes, and I replied that my footnotes were the tallest, because I was the rap world’s David Foster Wallace. Granted I’m not actually the rap world’s DFW, I’m probably more the rap world’s Calvin Trillan, but anyway, I was thinking about footnotes, and so that’s why I told you all this, and wow, this sentence has gone on way too long, and I’m surprised you’re still reading, but nobody stops in the middle of a sentence, so I guess if I kept using commas to create an infinite pest sort of run-on sentence, you’d be stuck reading it forever, which would suck for you,  sort of like a vacuum cleaner, which nature abhors, abhors love men with nice abs, okay I’m going to stop typing now.

Or technically, Last Day In May Day!

It’s been an interesting month, with some good things, and various unfortunate events.* I did a lot of editing on the projects I was working on in April. The good news is that I can now add Fodor’s Travel Guides to the list of places for which I have written reviews, and I should have my next book about Rhode Island coming out before the end of the year.

Due to aforementioned unfortunate events, we’ve had very little gaming, although I expect that to change quite a bit in June. And the other bad news is that in spite of now having two fancy microphones thanks to the generosity of others, I can get neither of them to actually record without static on my computer. Which, now that I have finished my most recent editing commitments and have free time again, is becoming an issue. The answer may be that I just try to make some progress on doing things, and then record somewhere else if I have to.

Meanwhile, there’s still comedy. I am not only writing columns for posterity, but most recently wrote a column about what it’s like to write a joke. Which I’ve been thinking about because in addition to attending the occasional comedy open mic, I’m performing at the PAVE Chocolate Festival at the end of June, hosted by Rick Conety. It’s a family-friendly show, which means I can’t do any of my Rick Santorum jokes**. And while RBIT doesn’t seem to appear much in North County these days, we may have a few shows coming up at the Freightyard Pub on second Fridays. This, in combination with the first Thursday comedy open mic at Public, and the fourth Friday poetry slam at the Local, means it’s pretty easy to get out there and see me say ridiculous things, if that appeals to you.

*Life’s gifts have lately been lemony, and even a bit snicket.

**If your family isn’t politically homogenized, it’s possible that vulgarity and sex is more family-friendly than incisive political analysis. Which set of jokes is going to cause more tension in the car ride home?

Dear Folk That Read This Blog,

Don’t skip down, lest your mind feel pain. Just read this news post. Okay, we’ve read that? Good. Let’s move down.

Well, this past time span ain’t been full with good. That item that Seth uses when link with webs, read mail, post upon this blog, pore over site then site, some with pics with cats, that item died. Well, more true, that hard disc died. Alas. Disc tray went bust long past, fans have gone bust more past, long tale less long, that item died. Done. Gone.

Here, Seth uses last such item from 2006, webs seem SLOW, plus chat won’t load. Lame. Also, Seth took some pics that were kept upon that item, game pics with plan that some time next week (okay, more like next year), Seth will post revs with them pics plus cool game info. Well, that plan will fail. Alas.

Seth must make more game revs. Some very cool game have been seen here this past time span, only Seth won’t post revs, Seth just wait. Seth must make game revs full with true fact. With some game, Seth have just done play with pair. Game have been cool with pair, true, only full revs want full true game play feel. That will mean play game with more folk than just this pair. Can’t post them game revs till then. (Come game with Seth!)

Okay. This week, we’ll have some cool revs with game that will just play with pair. Both this game ain’t from this year, ain’t from last year, only both game seem damn cool, thus Seth will post both link here. (Good news: Game revs link won’t just have post with four, will have full long word. Phew!)

Roma: This fast game does some cool work, uses dice plus many card. Folk roll dice, play dice onto card slot that fits pips, then uses that card. Dice also lets folk draw more card, plus draw coin. (Coin lets folk play more card into card slot.) Card will gain mark, kill foes, plus much more. Lose your last mark, lose game. Bank lose last mark, them with most mark wins.

Read full game revs with pics plus more long word upon game geek site: Roma!

Aton: This more deep game will also have more easy play rule. (Eery!) Folk draw card that will show solo, pair, trio, four. Folk play card onto slot that lets folk drop some disc onto some area, take some disc from some area, thus disc made gone. Play disc upon some spot will have more good than just lame area spot. Once four then four disc have been made gone, each area will give some good unto them that have more disc upon that area. More good spot will give more good.

Read full game revs with pics plus more long word upon game geek site: Aton!

Hope y’all have nice fest, then what tiny rest from 2011 ain’t gone. “Lest auld folk Seth knew fade from head then can’t come into mind, lest auld folk Seth knew fade from head, plus days with auld lang syne…”

No, that’s not a typo. I don’t make tyops.* I’m talking about Woe. As in, Woe is Me. Or to explain more accurately, Mug of Woe, the hilarious new book of true embarrassing** stories, includes a story by yours truly. Also, their website has a spotlighted contributor each week, and this week it is me. So go take a look at the site for Mug of Woe, and if you’re looking for a “Chicken Poop for the Soul” sort of book, consider getting yourself a copy. (After you buy all of my books, if you don’t already own them. Priorities.)

Anyway, we’re now in August. I’ve always liked August, but I have to admit, August is a weird month. One of those months in the middle you sort of skip over in planning, because it’s neither summer nor fall. Well, I didn’t skip over it entirely. I played lots of board games. Yet more Scepter of Zavandor (a favorite), some Gates of Loyang, and some Nightfall. Speaking of boardgames, I am still writing both boardgame strategy and boardgame reviews.

But I’ll admit, I’m excited that we’re only one month away from the Fourth Annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge. Related to gaming, but unrelated to boards, I just have to say the announced always-online requirement for Diablo III significantly reduces the chances I’ll end up buying the game at full price. When I play D2 and BNet keeps dropping me, I can still play single-player instead. Worthwhile purchase. Without that option… not so much. (RMAH, on the other hand, I do not care about.)

Also I like cheese. The other night my partner made dinner and told me, “Yo dawg, I heard you liked cheese, so I put some cheese on your cheese…” I am a lucky man.

*I like that this is one letter away from “tyoops”, which makes me think someone is in the middle of typing a quick thank-you to someone when they accidentally knock a pile of papers off their desk.

***I would prefer an Otto-spell-checker, wherein a German man with a big bushy moustache looks over my shoulder and points to each mistake and says, “Das ist wronk!” (I am presuming that “wronk” is German for “wrong”, based on my knowledge of German that comes from bad action films.)

Heaven and Hell are on my mind tonight, like the angel and devil that sit over my shoulders and tell me to do things. Actually, angel and devil aren’t quite right. It’s more like the productivity cheerleader over one shoulder, and the other shoulder has a guy who just wants to watch Daily Show episodes online and play old video games*.

Also, I might be thinking of Heaven and Hell because today (July 31, 2011) is the scheduled date of the apocalypse, according to some very scientific calculations that I made up in a column titled Apocalypse Soon. Some say the world will end in ice, some in fire**, and if it ends in fire, you’ll want my tips for staying cool.

But the main reason I’m thinking of Heaven and Hell is because I experienced them both this weekend.

Friday was Comedy Heaven. Performing locally just a few minutes from home, my improv troupe and I put on a fabulous show, culminating in an incredible musical nightmare scene where a teddy bear came to life, poisoned the dog, revealed itself as a demon, and was killed by earl grey. And then I had a 10-minute set during the stand-up portion that went very well, everyone laughing at all of my jokes.

Saturday was Comedy Hell. As the opening act, I had 15 minutes of material prepared. I arrived at the (farther afield) venue to find the headliner had an emergency, and I was the whole show. I did 15-20 minutes of surefire material, and the audience was dead like Jerry Garcia. The only thing they’d responded to was my rap, so after a brief intermission, I came back and did a lot of freestyle rapping, but even that did not impress them. An hour after I’d stepped on stage, I’d exhausted all my material and my voice, and judging from audience reaction you wouldn’t think I’d outperformed the salad.***

I think any comedian has stories of comedy heavens and comedy hells. I sure hope to get more heaven stories soon. But I guess I better hurry up; I hear the apocalypse is today.

*Like Diablo2, while I wait for Diablo3 to come out. Oh, Diablo… maybe it is a devil on that shoulder.

***To be fair, burlesque is always popular, so people like to watch salad dressing.

June seems to have escaped me. Which makes me feel lame because it should not be that difficult for me to make one post a month. And yet, here we are. I suppose I could have done some backdating* and pretended I was on time, but June just flew by and I have to admit it.

To be fair, part of the reason is that I spent the last week of June in California at my brother’s wedding. You could read about my anticipation of the trip or even some of my trip highlights. But basically, the weather was consistently nice, there was copious tasty Mexican food, and my brother got married.

Now it’s back home, and trying to catch up on everything I’ve fallen behind on. Thankfully I managed to write the latter column while on vacation, and had finished my June submissions to the About.com boardgame site before I left, but I still feel like I wasn’t done with June yet. June could get 40 days, and that would be okay**.

Meanwhile, it’s not as if I’m starting July yet. Coming off the tail of a flight, I now have friends from afar in visiting for the 4th of July festivities.*** So it’ll probably be mid-July before I settle down and re-engage with the world around me. But in the meantime, there are copious amounts of food, friends, and fireworks, and two out of three ain’t bad.

*Not to be confused with Back Dating.

Well, we’re past the Ides of March. But I still had three or four Caesar salads* in the past two weeks, which were delicious. And unlike most other delicious things I’ve made of late (such as greek meatloaf), with the salads I even feel like I’m eating something healthy.**

Anyway, I have to say, this March has been a fairly eventful month for me. First, I mean that literally — March has been full of events. I did another presentation at a temple for God To Verse, attended a few different birthday parties for good friends, had the usual bunch of gaming events and random gathers. And I also had an enjoyably busy weekend where each day, I was quickly trying to create something to perform that night. Third Fridays of each month are now Comedy Night at Main Street Stage, and March’s edition saw me in the role of both stand-up comedian and improv comedy performer. I love improv because it’s made up on the spot, but I was still honing my stand-up act right before the show.

The next day was a poetry slam, and even though I was only going to be reading two poems, I always feel I should perform at least one new piece whenever I attend a slam. I’d had a vague idea for a while, but hadn’t managed to write anything new. But right before the event was scheduled to start, a bolt of inspiration suddenly struck me, and I realized what I wanted to do with my poem. Sure, I couldn’t figure out how to do it, but I could at least write about what I wanted to do, and thus managed to finish and print my poem and still arrive in time to enter the slam.

Sunday after some logistical snafus, I was slated to attend a friend’s birthday party, and suddenly had the idea that I should bake and bring something interesting. So once again, although it made me late, I did arrive bearing freshly-baked wasabi-sesame-ginger cookies.***

March has just been filled with things. I traveled to Boston and then Rhode Island, doing some research for another RI book. I decided that I have too much stuff, and need to stop acquiring random stuff. Then I ordered another box of board games, because they were on sale, and I’d wanted At the Gates of Loyang for a long time. (Perhaps I can justify that as research too, as I may soon be writing About Boardgames.) Before the month is out, I may go see a poetry reading by Marie-Elizabeth Mali and Taylor Mali, or even go on a bizarre expedition that combines RPGs with speed dating.

Suffice to say, March may only be three days longer than February, but it has certainly felt very full.

*Oddly, the only popular dictator food. Nobody ever orders a Hitler sandwich. I suppose you could argue that the Earl of Sandwich should count, but he wasn’t really a dictator. Although now that I’m thinking about it, perhaps they should make dictator tots.

**Which of course isn’t entirely the case given the copious dressing and cheese. But I guess since there’s some lettuce, I am technically eating something healthy.

***My own recipe, of course. Where by “recipe” I mean “vague idea of three ingredients I wanted together in cookies”.

I tend to dislike Facebook, but I’m on there nonetheless to avoid missing out on local parties only invited online, so I try to post something occasionally. Unlike working up a blog post here, which at least ostensibly ought to contain some sort of actual content, Facebook posts are tiny and so call for people to be pithy*.

I was thinking above love recently, I think because I had written a poem or two about it for a poetry reading the other week. The poetry reading itself was great fun, both because the featured reader was Taylor Mali (who is always a delight), and because my poems were generally well-received.**

Anyway, while thinking about love, I came to a conclusion about myself which I felt was an solid little Facebook update status. “Seth Brown loves very wisely, but not well enough.” And then I realized that while some people would understand my intent to present a reversal of Othello’s quote as an explanation that I feel I have chosen very excellent friends indeed even if I sometimes do not show my appreciation sufficiently, on Facebook it would probably sound to most people like, “Seth Brown likes awesome girls but is bad in bed.”***

I didn’t actually have anything to say about a marrier, but I wanted a double pun post title and now feel compelled to follow through with it, so I will do something unusual for this blog and dip briefly into the realm of the political. I saw talk of the 2010 Texas GOP platform on other blogs, presumed it must be either exaggeration or a fringe group. But no, I went to the official Texas GOP site, and indeed along with the expected mix of ideas I find supportable, ideas about which I am apathetic, and ideas with which I disagree, lie some truly horrible ideas, many of which could be eliminated from the platform and simply condensed into, “Gay people are illegal,” which would save lots of time rather than having individual laws that ban sodomy, ban partner benefits, ban restrictions on discrimination, and make it a felony to perform same-sex marriage.

I think every half-century or so, there’s a group we treat like dirt in this country and then eventually America slaps its collective forehead and says, “Oh, they’re people too, so I guess treating them like sub-humans should probably stop and we should give them the same rights as people.” And then we pass some laws, and while we don’t eliminate discrimination entirely, we at least give it a good kick by removing it from our laws, and then decades later we look back with shame at how we treated that group of people… all while mistreating the next group.

If you think about it, it was almost a century ago (give or take a decade or so) that we gave women the vote. Women! They don’t even have a penis! How will they push the levers? Alright, fine, women are people, but what about them black folk?**** You wouldn’t want to drink from the same water fountain, would you? What? They’re people too? Okay, sure, but these gays, you can’t let them visit each other in the hospital or fall in love and have families like humans, right? Are you kidding me THEY’RE PEOPLE TOO?!?

It’s a slow and painful process, but I try to remain optimistic. I have little doubt that in 50 years, we’ll have accepted gay people as people, and look back with shame as we always do on the attempts of so many to legislate discrimination. I don’t know what new group we’ll be dehumanizing then; I only know I’ll be in favor of their rights too. I hope by then I’ll be funnier about it.******

*”Girl, you are theriouthly pithy.”

**As usual, the painstakingly pre-written poems were met with mild approval, while the instantaneously composed freestyle poetry received a much more hearty ovation. I realize that many people can write poetry and fewer people can freestyle poetry, so the latter is more impressive, and I’m always glad that people appreciate my work in that area. But there’s still something weird about the poems you spent a long time working on getting quiet polite applause, and the poem you didn’t bother working on at all but just made up on the spot getting much more thunderous applause.*****

***Cause of death: Suicide. Reason: Top Google result for own name.

****The history of anti-black discrimination in this country is perhaps slightly more beset, because first the country had to be convinced that blacks should be free rather than slaves, and then they had to be convinced again later that they should be people and not just free.

*****I always accidentally read that phrase as “Thunderous Applesauce”, which would be a great name for a rock band.

******I’m reminded of one of my favorite old tales about discrimination. A very bigoted (let’s say, Texas GOP) family offers in patriotism to host some soldiers for a dinner, but writes in the letter to the Captain “No Jews, please.” On the appointed night, there is a knock at the door, and 8 black soldiers are there. “Oh no,” says the matron anxiously, “there must be some mistake!”  “Not at all, ma’am,” says one of the soldiers with a smile. “Captain Goldberg never makes mistakes.”

Last week I was a featured reader at a small poetry reading in Pittsfield called “Outspoken!”. They had asked me to come perform to help celebrate National Poetry Month, so I freestyled a few poems and read some of my own work. Some of my poems really work much better spoken than written, but in honor of National Poetry Month, I’d like to share one of my short poems here:

************************

“Land Shark”
by Seth Brown

There is a knock at the door
I look through the keyhole and see your
gleaming white teeth
so shiny and so numerous
“who is it” I ask
and you tell me that you are
an encyclopedia salesman
but
I do not believe you
because encyclopedia salesmen do not have
so many teeth, so pointy and sharp
and where are your encyclopedias
have you already sold them all
or are they held by the arm that I can see in your mouth
opening this door may be a bad idea
but you have offered me a discount encyclopedia
and I cannot resist

***************************************

In other news, my improv troupe has performances on April 24th and May 14th at Main Street Stage in North Adams, so please come see us if you’re in the area and looking for something fun. (Conversely, if you are not in the area and looking for something boring, I recommend this list of the rotation direction of airport luggage carousels around the world.)

Writing a humor column is an interesting thing. It’s tricky to hit the sweet spot. For me, I am most proud of a column when I feel that it provides people with interesting information and educates them, while at the same time making them laugh. And so if you were to ask me what was my favorite column I’d written recently, I’d have to say that it was the one about the Ides of March.* Another decent one which at least touched on the theory of relativity was Einstein Time.

More often though, I find myself oscillating between the overly silly (Candy!) and the overly serious (Roman Conservative Party). And usually these types of columns follow in close succession. If I write something that I deem “not funny enough”, then I often go extra zany in the next week or two. And if I write something that’s pure silliness, I tend to obsess about making one of my next columns really informative or otherwise grounded.

Outside the column front, I’ve been trying to do a bit more musically. The other night I got together with the inimitable Lex Friedman for an online songwriting session, so maybe if he STOPS HAVING BABIES, we’ll co-write some new funny songs this year. I have three other humorous collaborations all on hold because my musicians are too busy to meet with me, one funny collaboration on hold because I was hesitant to start another large project until I’d finished one of the many I have running, and one serious music collaboration on hold because it turns out I have trouble writing serious music.

With silly music, I just have trouble recording it, but I really enjoy coming up with ideas. This is why I may have done a little terrible voice work for this week’s RNZB Songfight.*** And I always like making up instant music as part of my improv troupe, which is especially fun since it seems like our musical games are often the most popular. In fact, we’ve got a show tonight (3/20/10), but the chance of you reading this in time to show up are pretty slim. If you wanted to know about future shows ahead of time, you should probably follow RBIT’s Facebook page.

*I’d wanted to title this post as a pun on “The Ides of March”, and have a list of bullet points to the effect of, “I’d like you to read this column”, and “I’d love to have my improv troupe perform more often”, but how do you pluralize “I’d” in a title with punctuation? I tried to make it, “The “I’d”‘s of March”, which looks completely terrible, and then “The I’ds of March”, which is bad in a different direction, and “The I’d’s of March” splits the difference and is still awful. And thus, I decided to scrap that whole idea and call it, “The Inconvenient Punctuation of March”.** But then I figured, why not flip it around?

**Also, why the hell would punctuation go inside the quotes when it’s not part of what you are quoting? The American system is part of the march of inconvenient punctuation. I consciously choose not to put punctuation inside the quotation when it’s not part of “the thing being quoted”. I’m not bad at writing in AP style, I’m just an Anglophile using superior British punctuation rules.

***I have to admit, it’s still cool to me that I am now entering songs in Songfight, many years after interviewing them for “Think You’re The Only One?“.