With apologies to Ogden Nash, how can anything vincit omnia // when it can’t even beat insomnia?

I had basically no sleep two nights ago, and a sub-par sleep last night, and I am very glad that I had mostly already written my upcoming column and only had to put some final tweaks on it today, because my brain is not function* at 100% capacity.

I think the combination of high heat and early morning construction sounds certainly doesn’t lend itself to restful slumber, and I’m already given to weirder sleep schedules when my partner is away. At least I’m still managing to make myself tasty food. The other night I made a modified migas, because you can’t go wrong with Mexican cooking. We all want more tacos.

And today I made fried rice. Even though it had the red of Sriracha, orange of carrots and peppers, yellow of pineapple, and green of peas, the lack of the latter half of the rainbow means it doesn’t reasonably qualify as “Pride rice”, thus denying me the thematic segue I wanted for my most recent column, about how Pride Month is the American Ideal.

Although I guess I cheated and just did it anyway. And really, what’s more American than that?

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*And no, I didn’t even mean to leave off the -ing there. This footnote is being added retroactively** to explain that’s just how bad it is.

**This footnote is being added proactively, before I finish typing the above sentence.

Normally I would deal with the arrival of National Poetry Month by writing some sort of poetic blogpost, but frankly, I’m already writing enough poems at the moment. See, if you live in the Berkshires, you may be familiar with the annual WordXWord Festival in August. Well, the organizers of that festival have put together a blog and for National Poetry Month, they’ve asked a few different poets to write a poem a day all through April. And yes, I’m mentioning it here because I’m one of those poets, and I’m mentioning it now because I’m pleased with my most recent poem. But you should look through all the days, and all the poets, which include names you might have heard of like Taylor Mali, and names you might not have heard of but whose poetry you might quite enjoy nonetheless.

External accountability is a good thing for me. I’ve noticed that without it, my default is perhaps not to be very productive.* Left to my own devices**, I play a lot of games and don’t write as much as I perhaps ought. That’s why I’m delighted to have appeared in some publications this year. One of my poems appears in the first issue of Moral Relativism Magazine, which is a great joy to me since it lets me pretend that my philosophy degree is finally coming in handy. The poem itself is not readable online, but since 30 of my poems will be on the WordXWord site linked in the previous paragraph, I don’t feel too guilty.

And, while I very rarely write fiction, one of my short stories appears in the new Damn Faeries collection of short fantasy. So all of that is sort of nice for me, since it allows me to point to things I’m writing out in the world. Sure, I still have my local humor column, but I fear I may have alienated some of my readers with my April Fools column, a joke that ended up going slightly further than I thought it would.

Oh! And I almost forgot the exciting news — I’m now a contributing board game writer for About.com! The past few weeks here have been crazy, but going forward you can expect to see new articles from me on a weekly basis, on topics ranging from Settlers of Catan Strategy to Battleship Rules. At home, of course, we’re still playing all sorts of new board games, from Mines of Zavandor to The Golden City. So now in addition to thinking about games in all my spare time, I’ll be writing about them occasionally as well.

And I can’t help but end with a quatrain
Since it’s poetry month, after all,
And for four-lined rhyme schemes I have got brain,
Even if my metrical sensibilities were largely influenced by the work of the great Ogden Nash, whose metaphorical and versical presence over my work simultaneously casts a great light and an occasional pall.

* Last week I was very productive, but largely what I was producing was phlegm.

** Or even a single device, if that device is the Internet. “De Internet is device,” say the voices in my head.