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?

If you’re in a rush, I think the post title pretty much obviates everything I have to say here, but then again people in a rush aren’t really reading this blog to begin with. Anyway, as you may be aware, two decades ago in 2001 I started rewriting the entire Torah/Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) line-by-line in rhyming couplets. Interrupted by life, jobs, lack of motivation, and a couple other books, I finally released From God To Verse in 2010, in print form.

It was, and still is, my magnum opus: a complete line-by-line rhyming version of the entire Torah, including short rhymed chapter summaries in addition to the full text. To kick off the Jewish New Year, two decades after I started writing it, I am finally releasing From God To Verse in eBook format.

eBook-ified!

* I hired a copyeditor, and someone to format it all for ebook to make sure all the pages line up right and the Table of Contents is all hyperlinked to every single chapter. I even hired one more person, who I’ll tell you about in a future post in a few weeks. Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if I should have spared some expense, since given the low price, I am going to have to sell some hundreds of copies just to break even on financial outlay, let alone receiving any recompense for my time and effort.

** And I mean actually $5. I’m sure that I’m losing out on algorithm points by pricing things at whole dollar amounts instead of $4.99, but it always seems like such a gimmick designed to fool people’s brains. I realize it’s a gimmick that works, but I’m trying to be honest and straightforward about things, and thus, $5. This attitude is one of the reasons I will probably never be a huge commercial success.

*** [William Tell Overture] Buck-a-book, buck-a-book, buck-a-book book book, Buck-a-book, buck-a-book, buck-a-book book book, Buck-a-book, buck-a-book, buck-a-book book book, Buck-a-book… a-buck-a-book book book [/William Tell Overture]

The past few months have been some of my least favorite in recent memory, as mentioned in my previous post. When life gives you lemons, you can’t really eat them because of your acid reflux, so they sit around and dry out and get sort of gross but at least not as bad as other food that sits around.* Anyway, my point is that I am trying to find the good amidst the bad, and thus in that spirit I bring you this collection of short poems:

All poems written during (but not about) the pandemic!

This is a collection of short poems I’ve written over the course of the past two years, and while only a few of them are about the pandemic per se, I do think of this as my book of pandemic poetry. Because of that, I am pleased to note that I am publishing this book through India’s Cyberwit.net, who have agreed to donate half of the profits towards COVID relief in India. (Although of course you are welcome to just purchase through Amazon if you prefer.) So I guess you could say this is my first book that I hope does good, instead of doing well.

But while proceeds from the book may go to pandemic relief instead of me, let me hasten to assure you that the book itself is not all pandemic and is very much a distillation of me, which is to say that it is alternately pessimistic and hopeful, ridiculous and thoughtful, covers all topics from spiders to food to love, tries to be engaging and thought-provoking, and wants you to like it (but will continue existing as itself regardless).

That’s about all I can say about this collection of poems. It’s easier for me to write about my other books because the nonfiction is about other things. But all the important things I have to say related to the poems are in the poems, which are not really meant to be summarized, but to be read.

* What, just me?

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.

Sometimes people can be right without being helpful.

When I was younger, people told me that I should appreciate what I have and be more positive, and I’d probably be happier. Well, decades on, an older me very much appreciates what I have and is generally positive, and indeed I am much happier. But it didn’t help when people told me that because a) my childhood was not nearly as pleasant as my life now, and b) gratitude isn’t something you can bully people into.

You can force kids to say thank you, but that’s not gratitude. That’s ritual. Truly appreciating what you have has to come from within, and the more you try to push people into it, the less they are likely to appreciate it. Someone having a tough time does not want to hear “you should appreciate what you have!”. Even if it’s true, saying it is most likely to raise their hackles, when what we all want is lowered hackles*. There are some realizations or mindsets you just have to come to yourself. When everyone told me how to feel, all I felt was annoyed at them and resolved not to do what they want. But eventually life came around, I got older and wiser, and in my own time, began to very much appreciate my life.

So even though I could offer good advice and tell you that appreciation extends to individual relationships, and that appreciating your relationships for what they are rather than being mad at what they’re not will make you a happier and better person**, you have to decide for yourself to appreciate things. Admittedly I have the advantage of not working full-time, and a personal philosophy that combines existentialism with epicureanism. But as the pandemic has served as a mass memento mori, I think it’s a fine time for people to re-evaluate how happy they are with their lives, and if you’re very unhappy, something should change. Maybe it’s your circumstances, maybe it’s you!

I realize this post is light on jokes, so click the linked columns for some funny.

*I’m imagining protest signs reading “Lower Hackles Now!”

**Whereas the inverse oft leads to complaints about friend-zoning and can make you a huffier and bitter person.

I realize in spite of talking about how my blog is for me and not to promote writer me, my last two posts have both been career-based. Well, sometimes that’s what’s on my mind. Also, the fact is that over the course of this pandemic, I’ve been gaming much less than usual. Obviously stopped attending game nights elsewhere, but also found that the pandemic sapped the desire to play complex boardgames for me and my partner at home, so for the past year it’s been the occasional card-based game like Innovation or Shards of Infinity, but rarely anything heavier.

Well, this month I got my second vaccine dose, and that along with the end of a big freelance contract and the end of the cold winter meant that my brain was finally up to complex boardgames again. So I ended up grabbing a game that had been on my wishlist for a while: Blackout: Hong Kong. I had high hopes for the game, since the designer Alexander Pfister had designed some other games I love — Mombasa and Great Western Trail — and at this point has joined the elite pantheon of designers whose track record for me is so good that I’m always interested in anything they’ve made. I think the best other examples to spring to mind are Carl Chudyk and Vlaada Chvatil*.

Anyway, so far we’ve played two games of Blackout: Hong Kong, and our scores in the second game nearly doubled our scores in the first game, which suggests that we are making rapid progress in learning how the game works, even if I very much do not understand what a good strategy is yet. But I do understand that I like the game and its crunchy interlocking mechanisms, and that’s the important thing.

On the video game front I have finally started Witcher 3, which I prepared for over the course of the past 3 years by reading all 8 of the novels, most of the graphic novels, watching the Netflix show, and playing the first two games. It is, as promised, pretty good. Also currently on Steam sale until mid-next week, for anyone who wants to see what all the fuss is about.

I think during most of the pandemic my brain was just not in the right space to invest in an epic RPG, but I hope that as Spring progresses I can return to some of my favorite pastimes like complicated games and walking with friends. It’s been a long withered timespan; perhaps this spring can finally bring some renewal.

*Vlaada, a.k.a. “the John Turturro of boardgame design”

One of the downsides of the pandemic times, aside from all the sickness and death, is that it’s very easy to forget how to be a person. I was suffering this especially acutely last night, when in the throes of feeling run-down after my second vaccine shot, I may have exchanged a series of emails with a client culminating in him requesting an invoice for the work I’d just completed and me floundering around feeling embarrassed as I realized that we never actually set a price. Pandemic brain does not help.

This of course raises* the question, “Why on earth would someone trying to market themselves as a high-end professional freelance writer make a public post about forgetting to set a price in an email to a client?” Well, I really don’t mind revealing that I’m a big ol’ imperfect human. I figure as long as my writing is always on-point and on-time, people won’t mind if I’m a ridiculous person with various personal foibles.** Clients are, after all, hiring me for my writing, and not my ability to be suave at a cocktail party. At least, I sure hope so, for their sake***.

If the mantra of last century**** was “the personal is political”, then perhaps this century’s mantra is, “the personal is business”. Of course, it’s always been true that networking exists and people don’t just hire companies, they hire people. But now more than ever, the lines between personal and business have been blurred, smudged, and otherwise all but erased. Social media from people who run a business is always an advertisement, not a person. Lots of people’s business model is selling themselves and their personality, from Twitch streaming to OnlyFans. Today, I read an interesting article about how personal branding ruins people’s lives, and it has only strengthened my resolution to remain a person who happens to be good at writing professionally, rather than a professional writer who is always being a professional writer 24/7.

Coincidentally, I came across that article just days after my latest humor column delved into the importance and difficulty of making human connections, which has of course been especially difficult these past two years. I don’t have a conclusion, per se — another example of being a flawed human who just thinks about things and isn’t always artfully arranging things to neatly support a conclusion, because I’m not paying me enough to do that — but I think especially as the Internet means that we know more and more about people, it would be a terrible mistake to expect/require people to be professional automatons all the time. Being human isn’t a bad thing — even if our new robot overlords may say otherwise.
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* NOTE: It does not beg the question. Begging the question would be assuming the conclusion when arguing your premise. Please do not use “begs the question” when you mean “raises the question”. Yes, I’m pleading here. Don’t question the beg.

** Note here that foibles means, “often does silly things and is occasionally awkward in social situations, as detailed in his columns, poetry, and stand-up”, and not, “is rude to other people and denigrates them based on race/sex/etc.”, the latter of which is not a foible but a severe character defect which is a great reason not to hire someone.

*** Especially if it’s a cocktail party with Japanese rice wine.

**** I mean, it’s still exceedingly relevant here in 2021, as you might suspect from the earlier footnote. I’m just saying it was coined last century.