Well, all the winter holidays are here, so what better way to celebrate than reading my column about your holiday horoscope? I’ve been having a grand time, attended a Solstice party tonight, performed at a holiday revue (did I mention I enjoy revue-ing?), and am looking forward to playing lots of board games over the next week, followed by hosting a number of old friends, the usual New Years parties, copious amounts of tasty food, and so forth.

For once, I may enter the new year hoping that it mirrors the old one for me, because I’ve really enjoyed 2008. But I get ahead of myself. We’re still in the tail end of this year, so I hope you all enjoy the holiday season, whatever holiday you celebrate. Including empty set. Which sounds like a weird holiday where people give each other matching gift-wrapped boxes containing nothing. Or maybe that’s Buddhist Christmas. Although that’d probably be one with everything, not nothing. I guess they’re linked, but Buddhist philosophy may not be the ideal topic for a humorous blog. I just mention it now and zen.

Also, there’s a new News in Rap posted.

Okay, it’s not Thanksgiving for another two days. But I won’t be posting anything for a few days, so I figured I’d send out my good wishes now. I hope your holiday is as good as my last few days have been. Improv went great. There’s a new pre-Thanksgiving podcast at NewsInRap.com, and new chapter up at GodToVerse.com.

Perhaps most entertaining to me is the article I recently came across where someone wrote about my WordPlay presentation from the other week. I’ve had various friends read the article, one of whom said it made me sound like a mad scientist, and one of whom said he wished it was written about him. Conclusion? One of my friends wants to be a mad scientist. But I already am, and I have to say, I’m good with that.

Time to go eat some ice cream… for SCIENCE!

My column from yesterday was about cliches. Yes, there should be an accent, but I’m too lazy to find it. For professional correspondence — and this is a trade secret — I tend to use Google to find a page with an accented e, and then just copy and paste that at the bottom of my document, to use whenever I need it with more pasting. But it’s 2am and right now, I’m not feeling professional.

The latest episode of my non-professional freestyled reporting is now available at www.NewsInRap.com. Tomorrow night (well, okay, technically tonight) I’m performing with the Royal Berkshire Improv Troupe at the local theatre, which is also not technically professional. And although I’m not a professional board gamer, I probably spend as much time gaming as one. My latest addiction is Dominion, which we acquired barely a few weeks ago. We’ve already played two dozen games,

Today I ate a pizza at a restaurant called “Hold the Anchovies”, and roughly 10 minutes after I ordered, while sitting at my table, it suddenly hit me: I can’t believe I didn’t order anchovies.

Inside my package of sliced turkey breast was a small plastic wrapped insert. After wiping off enough turkey grease to open the package, it was a tiny little sweepstakes card for merchandise from a company called “Fathead”. I opened it up to play, and sure enough, I didn’t win. But since this message was printed just above the company logo, it ended up saying, “Sorry, you are not a winner, Fathead.” I found this pretty entertaining, and feel this message needs to be slipped into more food products.

I have now crossed the 100 board game mark*. It is an awesome thing to realize we could play a board game every night and not repeat ourselves for well over three months. It is probably time to stop paying money for board games now, although I am still always looking to acquire good board games through trade and serendipity.

But what is a good board game? Well, why not read my most recent feature article about a fellow who wrote the book (well, a book) on game design. Basically, a good board game has good mechanics, and I tend to favor “German-style” games (aka “Eurogames”).

My computer was down for a few days earlier this week, but it’s back up now, and I’ve got a new episode of News In Rap for you. You can get lots of news, and impromptu rhyming, all in 10 minutes or so. What’s not to like?

Oh, you don’t like news or rhyming? I have a sweepstakes card for you…

*By which I mean, my collection has surpassed 100 board games. I would not want to cross 100 Board Game Mark, who sounds like a Dick Tracy villain.