I am, generally speaking, not a vulgar person. However.

Longtime readers or even those just familiar with the tale of my disastrous email application know that when I start getting behind on my to-do list, the amount of self-directed vulgarity in my life increases proportionately. Well, since it’s now a week into November, and I haven’t posted here since September, you might guess that I’ve been a little busy. And indeed, I’ve noted that various creatively vulgar epithets have begun creeping onto my to-do list.

Sadly, every vulgarity accompanies a task, which means that until the tasks are completed, the vulgarity must also remain. Writing this blog post will, once it is done, allow me to remove a line from my to-do list, but it is not a vulgarity-laden line. Only certain tasks merit such treatment. Currently, the highest priority self-directed vulgarity* accompanies an all-caps admonition to pay the bills. Thankfully, this is a simple enough task, so that self-directed vulgarity can be disappeared** in short order.

Unintelligible vulgarity has also been on the rise for me in the past month, quietly mumbled in a half-asleep state as I stumble out the door to whatever event I’ve foolishly agreed to attend hours before I normally wake up. Last month, this was a poetry presentation for a National Day on Writing at a local school, where I got to open for the esteemed Taylor Mali****. This month, I’ve already been up slightly early to spend time with old college friends in from out of town, and will have to wake up obscenely early***** this Saturday, when I’ll be selling and signing copies of my new book in Pittsfield at Chin Bo Jok’s annual one-day holiday sale.

And, naturally, there is vulgarity in gaming. For me, this is largely confined to video gaming, as naturally one swears whenever one is killed.****** Conversely, in spite of always playing to win, I do not take my board gaming too seriously. So while I may be an addict who has already acquired another half-dozen new games in the past two months (Favorite so far: Louis XIV), I rarely swear at a board game. Even if I may utter a vulgarity when I see how much I’ve spent on shipping.

Speaking of shipping and shopping, within the next few weeks I hope to post a Holiday Gift Guide here for you all. And no, it will not just be a plug for my books*******. It will have a slightly larger variety of interesting items that make wonderful gifts. In fact, I should go add that to my to-do list right now. But I’m going to leave off the vulgarity.

* An insult that states that I have a tendency to copulate with certain non-human members of the animal kingdom

** I recently was linked to this lovely Stephen Fry speech on language that talked about the love of language as appreciation of the living nature of language, and especially in support of the verbing of nouns. I enjoy new permutations of words when their meaning is instantly clear, and I think using “disappeared” in the object-taking form falls into that category for me. It’s succinct***, and clear.

*** I mean, obviously not when I use it in this blog, which is rarely what would be called succinct. But it could be, is my point.

**** A fine fellow who is also quite interested in language, as you might expect.

***** By which I mean, more vulgarity is almost assured.

****** Those “Famous Last Words” books are probably wildly inaccurate, as I imagine a high percentage of people’s last words would be unprintable.

******* Although “From God To Verse” is pretty much the perfect Chanukah or Christmas present.

Yes, after only a decade or so in the making, I have finally released From God To Verse:

This is the first book I started writing, almost immediately after college. I don’t even know why; I just had the idea and decided to go with it, as explained here. Sometimes I get ideas for something I have to write, and then I do it. That’s why I’ve previously pulled all-nighters writing rhyming summaries of presidential debates. This book was a somewhat larger commitment, but if nothing else it stands as proof that you can accomplish big things if you are sufficiently stubborn. Besides, now if I attend a highschool reunion and someone asks me, “So, what were your 20s like?”, I can just hand them this book*.

But in case nobody hands you this book, and you want to know a little more about it, let me tell you: It’s a line-by-line translation of the Torah into verse. The whole thing, from the first chapter of Genesis to the final chapter of Deuteronomy. Every person who begat someone else, every cubit and measurement of the ark, everything. Nothing has been left out.

In fact, a few small things have been added for your convenience. First and foremost, the whole thing rhymes, and is written in a manner that will hopefully be easier and more fun to read than any previous translation. Secondly, in service to this goal, I’ve added a number of parenthetical explanations of things, because many of the names in the Torah make more sense if you understand their Hebrew translation. And finally, I’ve added a short, large-print rhyming summary of each chapter, perfect for parents or educators who would like to share a rhyming version of the Torah with children who will not yet appreciate the full text.**

So that’s what it is. You probably have a pretty good idea if it’s the kind of book that would appeal to you. If so, fantastic, you can buy it right here:

If you are not of a Judeo-Christian persuasion, it might well not appeal to you, but you probably know people who would appreciate it. I would be most grateful if you would send those people here***. Because From God To Verse is not on any store bookshelves to catch people’s eye, so the only way anyone will know about it is if someone tells them.

I was going to say “in other news”, but really, this is big enough news to be my whole post. This is the culmination of a whole lot of work over a whole lot of time, and I am excited about it. I hope people will enjoy it.

* And hopefully they will understand that I spent my 20s writing the book, as opposed to building an ark, murdering my brother, and wandering in the desert. Ah, ambiguity.

*** By which I mean, this blog entry, as opposed to my house. I’m not at all opposed to meeting new people, but having many random people show up at my house unannounced might be less convenient for me, especially if they showed up before noon.

So, remember last month when I said that my book would be out by now if there weren’t unforeseen circumstances? Well, sure enough, I did not foresee the number of delays in the printing process. I will say, in my defense, some of the delays were not my fault. For example, an error in the production process at the printing facility. On the other hand, some of the delays were my fault. Such as the fact that I decided to add a table of contents. And a running head*.

But I am really hoping to have the book actually released by the end of the month. (Then again, I was also hoping to have the book released much earlier than this, and that didn’t happen.) On the other hand, the past month or so has been absolutely wonderful for me. The previously mentioned WordXWord Festival in Pittsfield took place, and not only did I get to see a lot of wonderful poetry, but I also won their poetry slam. We’ve been cooking up all sorts of delicious and interesting food, ranging from Thai curry to baba ghannouj, and I have sure enjoyed eating it.

And best of all, September was the month of my annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, an event of absolutely no interest to those of you who are not at least partially obsessed with boardgaming. For my fellow gamers, though, feel free to read through my summaries of the 26 games we played last weekend. For my non-gaming readers, let me hasten to assure you that you will find that link incredibly boring.**

Other than that, things continue apace.***  I’m still writing my column, contributing the occasional book review to the USA Today, have an improv show this weekend, and am eagerly waiting to be able to post my book release announcement. Hopefully next post, although I don’t want to be too expectant*****.

* I am, of course, more of a punning head. To quote the great Samuel Johnson, “I should be punished, for every pun I shed, do not spare a punny shed, of my punnish head.”

** I briefly considered linking you to the Shopping Penguin song instead, but I’d have to go to the page to find the link, and then I’d be singing it all day tomorrow.

*** Which is sort of a weird word, when you think about it. Things could continue at the same pace. But “a” pace? What if they suddenly continue at a really fast pace? Or a really slow pace? I’m practically pacing just going through the paces**** in my head.

**** “Oh, the Paces You’ll Go!”: One of Dr. Seuss’s many rejected titles, along with “Green Eggs and Jam”, “The Cat in the Hut”, and “One Fist, Two Fist, Red Fist, Blue Fist”.

***** One of my favorite ideas for a far-too-convoluted pun involves angry workers on strike outside of a factory, spitting at the factory while lamenting their lack of  hourly pay, yelling, “We expect a rate!”

No, not a reference to my music video for Dump Stat, delightful though it is. Of course, I believe there is a magic to rhyme itself, but in this case the two topics are separate.

On the Magic front, recently I’ve been wondering if the way I think about money is related to the way I think about Magic. For example, it’s so easy to make my money disappear; it practically happens without any effort on my part.* But what I was actually thinking about was Magic: The Gathering. See, I’ve always felt that any serious gamers can’t help but look at the world sometimes through the lenses of the games they play the most. And while Magic has roughly a bajillion rules**, the one that has always stuck with me is upkeep.

In the game of Magic, upkeep is something you have to pay at the beginning of each of your turns, and it sucks. It can be anything from life to cards, but is most often mana. Mana that you have to keep paying each turn, and thus can’t spend to cast the really cool cards in your hand. And sometimes there’s even cumulative upkeep, which just gets worse every turn, until attempting to pay for that spell makes it impossible to do anything else.

This is how I view credit card debt. I have avoided getting a credit card largely out of fear of this kind of upkeep, and a supreme dread of credit card debt. And I found myself wondering whether as a group, those who had played Magic seriously were less likely to find themselves in credit card debt that those who had not.*** I don’t think anyone’s going to commission a serious study, but it is something I’m curious about.

Enough of that! Let’s talk about rhyme. Rhyming is fun, that’s why I do it all the time. And just last week, about an hour away, I was performing at the BTF’s Cabaret. There was magic and rhyme, in the form of MacBeth, interspersed with a few bits of rap from Seth. And you might think, “Why tell me about that show? It already happened, so it’s too late to go!” And that’s technically true, but if you haven’t heard, this week Pittsfield is hosting WordXWord. And on Tuesday the 24th at this spoken word festival, you could go and see poetry from the best of fools****.

And speaking of***** rhyme, the book I’ve been working on since 2001 is FINALLY almost ready to release. Yes, God To Verse will, barring unforseen circumstances, be available for purchase on Amazon within a few weeks. Expect a post early in September with lots more details and exhortations for purchase. Meanwhile, please ignore any rumors you may hear about my sub-standard nutrition being again the subject of a column in the Washington Post, and trust my humor column to provide you with accurate information on my commitment to nutrition.

* More accurately, without sufficient effort on my part, it disappears right quick.

** Creature: Serrated Bajillion. 2/2. Tap to cause Wizards of the Coast to drastically revise combat rules yet again.

*** People who foolishly went into debt to feed their Magic addiction notwithstanding.

**** By which of course I mean yours truly, though I don’t mean to praise myself unduly.

***** But no longer in. Because it’s a sin. Damn, I can’t win, I really mean it. Anybody want a peanut?

This book has been in progress for roughly a decade, and as of Fall 2010, is finally available. I hatched the idea during my senior year of college, and began working on it the fall after my graduation. Various interruptions, from full-time employment, to writing the other books below, to home-buying, conspired to keep me from finishing.

Finally, after a decade, I am done

My book, From God To Verse, is a line-by-line translation of the Five Books of Moses into rhyming couplets. Sure, it took me a while to finish and publish, but good things come to those who wait. I haven’t left anything out, not even a single name from the endless genealogies and begats. What I have done is made the language more accessible, added parenthetical explanations in some places, and put in short chapter summaries. Oh, and made the whole thing rhyme. That was the hard part.

It’s a little scary to realize that I’ve spent nearly a third of my life writing this book. I look back at where I was when I started it, both as a person and a writer, and am amazed how much I’ve done in the meantime. But while I have written three other books, this is no doubt my magnum opus (literally, “big penguin”). For anyone who wants to share the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy with others, or rediscover them yourself, I strongly encourage you to try my rhyming translation.

I guess because I try to write something here once a month, it’s fair to say I post periodically*. But perhaps that is insufficient. I was reading Greta Christina’s blog, and she mentions that if a blog doesn’t post every week or two, she won’t bother following it.** Sadly, I have enough difficulty just working up an interesting post once a month. And I really have no desire to turn this blog into a Twitter/Facebook realm where I update you about what I’m eating (grapes), what movie I just watched (Funny People), and what I’m doing right now (praeteritio).

What’s worse, when I do have an idea worth writing about, I often turn it into a column instead. Whether I am thinking about politics, sex, or religion, if those thoughts manage to get beyond the obvious*** or the simple one-liner observation**** to the point where I feel my ideas are worth sharing publicly, I will probably try to make them at least slightly humorous and then work them into a column. And while my more political columns like the three I just linked may not be as laugh-out-loud funny as my more zany columns, I still feel they are important and worth sharing, and enjoy having them appear in my local newspaper. Which I guess is another periodical posting.

That’s two guesses in as many paragraphs, leading me to believe… that I’m not quite sure of myself.*****  Perhaps it’s the stupefying humidity; there’s nothing else that quite gives you that feeling of having your wisdom drained.******  But I wanted to read some philosophy tonight, so I sat down to look at a bit of Kant… and found that my brain was completely unwilling to parse it. I’ve written numerous papers about the categorical imperative, but right now, I can’t even read about it. I can’t even summon up the energy to make a Kant/can’t joke. But there are so many ellipses that you could say… I’m posting periodically.

* Although it’d be even more fair if I were writing articles about the table of the elements.

** On the bright side, this means I could insult her here and she’d never read it. “Hey Greta: your blog may be incredibly well-written, often insightful, and filled with thought-provoking posts, but the blog title isn’t terribly creative. Take that!”

*** Sex is fun!

**** People end up getting screwed in all three!

***** At least, I think that’s what it means.

****** Although an encounter with a Lamia can be very similar. Pretty sure that humidity can do more wisdom damage than 1d4, though.

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.”

May 42 be the answer to life, the universe, and everything? It sure might. May 42 is also today’s date, as I once again slide past my goal to post one blog update per month. In my defense, I’ve been slightly busy. I tried to solve this by reading productivity tips, but my most recent humor column will show you how well that went.

I attended a nearly week-long family reunion, where I was reminded that parts of my crazy are very clearly inherited, even if other parts of my crazy are obviously my own creation. I had another book review in the USA Today, about a book called Merchants of Doubt. It’s about those scientists who say that things like smoking, acid rain, and global warming aren’t health hazards. A dense read, but interesting, if depressing. I’ve also recently done a number of restaurant reviews for the Berkshire Eagle. Now I just need someone to hire me to review board games and comedy, and my life will be complete.*

Meanwhile, my board game playing certainly has not slowed down in any way. I got to try two Vlaada Chvatil games, Galaxy Trucker and Space Alert, both of which were wacky fun. Space Alert was also wacky stressful trying to coordinate with 5 people in real-time, making it both a perfect teambuilding game, and something I enjoyed less than I could. I really want to try his new game, Dungeon Lords. Meanwhile, I’ve recently acquired La Citta and Notre Dame, the latter being a game we played at a friend’s wedding last year and has been on my want list for a while.

In other news, I’m in hot water. Or rather, my hot water was in hot water, as both my water heater and washing machine ceased to function. I wonder, if I could only replace one, would it be better to wash clothes in the machine with cold water only, or with hot water in the sink? Since I can’t shower in the sink**, I decided to replace the water heater first.

*Although hopefully not in the same sense that I complete the books and games I review. That’s the trouble with certain words, you could look at a dead person*** and say, “Well, his life is complete.”

**At least, according to the management at Applebee’s.

***Technically this is easier at some jobs than others.

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?“.