It’s been a pretty good month for my songwriting.

Last weekend I was invited to WordCamp Boston to rap at the conference (along with my friend 3rr0r). While pre-written songs were going to be fine for the lunch hour, the conference organizers wanted something special with which to end the opening remarks. And so, I wrote a custom rap about WordPress specifically for the conference. Said rap was performed the morning of the conference, but sadly due to some technical difficulties, the simulcast was not very clear. For that reason, I have now posted my WordPress Rap.

Speaking of new rap songs, this month also marked the release of Rhyme Torrents 9, the latest installment of new nerdcore music from the Rhyme Torrents community. The good news is that like all Rhyme Torrents releases, these albums are completely free and available for download in mp3 form. The bad news is that like all Rhyme Torrents releases, the songs vary wildly in quality. The good news is that because it’s all a free download, you’ll find it very easy to grab the full album, toss what you don’t like, and end up with some new, free, catchy mp3s for your audio collection. I hope that one of the ones you keep will be my contribution to this volume, “The Big Cheese”, which is where I profess my love for cheese in rap form. It’s on disc 2.

And just in case you thought that the only songs I write are raps, I’m still working on parody songs as well. Our recent senate special election in Massachusetts seemed to attract a national audience. And while I went out and voted against Scott Brown (for the reason I explain in this column), that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to celebrate his victory. Naturally, I figured the best way to do this would be by submitting a song in his honor to the Providence Journal, so regardless of whether you like or dislike Scott Brown, I think you will enjoy singing along with “Voted for a Centerfold”.

You’d think I would be. After all, I’m nothing if not a gourmet, or at least a gourmand. We’ve acquired a rice cooker and make our own Sushi, cook greek food like Moussaka and Pastitsio, Thai food like Pad Thai and Red Mango Curry, and pretty much anything else I could want to eat. Life is good, especially culinarily speaking. But old habits die hard*. And that pretty much explains why I was ill last weekend. Confused? You won’t be, after you read my most recent humor column.

Speaking of unwell Feds, Ron Paul doesn’t like the Federal Reserve. If you’d like to know why, you should read my book review of “End the Fed” in the USA Today.

“Not Well Fed”  is an anagram of “Letdown Elf”, which is inaccurate if it refers to the Elf in Scepter of Zavandor, a boardgame where the Elf character has propelled me to victory in my past two games. It is perhaps more accurate if it refers to my failure to play many RPGs lately, because I’ve been busy with other work. And, okay, boardgaming.

“Not Well Fed” is also an anagram of “Deft? Well, no.”  And this describes how I feel much of the time, especially recently with my failure to create any new raps in the past few months. I have ideas for another rap song or two, and I’ve got some lyrics written, but these things take time, and the goodwill of busy unpaid collaborators. Still, I hope to have at least something new in the rap arena before the end of the year.

Also, God to Verse online is now done. Over the course of a year, I posted all of Genesis, so it’s all there for you to read if you’re interested. The full five books will likely be published in print form at a future point in time, but that’s all that’s going up online. Meanwhilst, if you’re around North Adams on October 17th, you could see my improv comedy troupe perform at the Main Street Stage, where I “Often Dwell”.

*Thankfully, so far, so do I.

If you were to travel back in time and ask my highschool self what career I would have in the future, “Underpaid Rapper” probably would not have been in my first hundred answers. But sure enough, here I am, frequently rapping for insufficient remuneration. I suppose between my epic* limericks and my songs with Lex, the fact that I kept rhyming makes sense.

As with most things I do, it started largely as a joke.  I wrote an email to my favorite rap group at the time (Blackalicious), and ended up making a silly rap to send them. But then I ended up joining an online nerdy rapping community, and started rapping a lot more. I put up a myspace page and began writing raps for posterity. I started freestyling everywhere I went, from a humor conference in Ohio to the streets of San Francisco. The rap video I posted two months ago ended up winning a little contest. Last weekend my improv troupe was performing in Providence, and our most popular game is one I invented where we do the whole scene in rap form. Tomorrow I’m doing stand-up comedy at a local bar, and I generally end my set with a freestyle rap.

I’m still trying to freestyle about the news every week on my rap podcast, News In Rap. And later this month I’ll be heading out to a national nerdy hip-hop festival, to meet other nerdy rappers from that aforementioned online community and around the world. Somehow, rapping has become a large part of my life. It’s perhaps an odd place for me to end up, but I have to admit, I’m enjoying it.

(this column has nothing to do with rap. God to Verse, on the other hand, could certainly be performed over a rap beat if someone wanted to.)

* by which I mean many stanzas in length like an epic poem, rather than epic in the modern internet parlance that means full of win**

** although they were also full of win

The problem with only updating bi-weekly is that by the time I get around to posting, I have a bucket of links. I will, however, do you the service of not posting the flash game to which I am currently addicted, as it is nothing but a humungous brainless waste of time. If you’re going to think about video games, reading my articles about People in your WOW Guild and Video Game Drinking Buddies will be much faster, and much less addictive.

Anyway, this blog has been slightly less storied than my WSO blog, perhaps because at that time I didn’t have many links to share. Back in those days, I wrote about the various ways in which I’d managed to fail at cooking. But I’ve consolidated the best of those old blog stories into a single column. Back then, just out of college, was the first time I was out of work. It’s vaguely similar to what I’m doing now, only I had no experience freelancing, no resume, and few books under my belt. Still, even back then I was working on God To Verse. This week’s portion I think is a good example of what I’ve tried to do in terms of explicatory work; the bible is filled with passages like, “She was in labor for seven days with her son, so she named him Mohar”, and it doesn’t make sense unless you know that “Mohar” was Hebrew for “week of pain”, so I’ve got little parenthetical bits to explain all of that.

The big link of the fortnight, however, is the video contest I’ve recently entered. See, I’ve been doing a lot of rapping at local performances, but I don’t have any sound equipment. So when I heard there was a contest to win a free microphone, I figured I should enter. Annoyingly, I don’t think the rap I entered is as good as the freestyles I perform locally, but it’s still a video of me rapping so you should feel free to take a look. (Thanks go to the inimitable Daniel Beck for videography.)

Oh, and in case I forget to post again before then, my improv troupe will be performing on Saturday May 9th at Barrington Stage in Pittsfield. Come out, and I guarantee a good time!

Well, I’m back from my week-long sojourn in Western lands. It rained for at least half of the time I was in California, which was sub-optimal. Still, it was a pretty good vacation, and I even wrote a column about it. The column doesn’t mention that I went back to Chinatown and got steamed BBQ pork buns from as many bakeries as I could. So tasty; I may have to learn how to make them.

In other news that transpired while I was away, some people in India are working on a new soft drink that sounds udderly ridiculous. Don’t believe me? Read my other column.

Last night was our improv show at the Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. Although a concurrent  local comedy show stole some of our crowd (our previous show there was nearly a full house), I still thought it went quite well. We debuted a new game I invented called “Rap Psychiatrist”, where I am a rapping psychiatrist who helps other troupe members with their (audience-suggested) mental issues. I think it went quite well, and once the other folks in the troupe get better at rapping, I think it will quickly become one of our most popular games.

Finally, people sometimes ask me why I play board games all the time, and why I’m happy all the time. Well, the answers may be linked.

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!

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.

Me!

If you read my column today, you’ll find out that I’m the featured reader tomorrow at Papyri Books. After that, I’ll be performing at the Red Room and probably freestyle rapping in a manner not entirely dissimilar from the News In Rap podcast that I just posted. It would seem to the untrained eye that I have a penchant for self-promotin’ and linkin’, but that’s only because it’s true.

Apparently the RSS feed on this page has stopped working. I’m not sure why, but I guess if you’re reading this, it’s either finally fixed itself, or you don’t need the RSS feed anyway. I will continue poking around and trying to fix it so you can get Reliable Seth Stuff.

Speaking of which, like clockwork, here’s my column from yesterday. I’m still a little sad about that, but I think I made the right choice. Also, now that the presidential debates are over, I’m converting my freestyle rap podcast to a more general news format. I’ll be trying to post one episode a week at www.NewsInRap.com, so go listen to last night’s episode and hear me rap about the news as I read it so you don’t have to.

Well, that’s it. I’ve now summarized in rap the last of the 2008 presidential debates. Like last time, I sat down at my computer with the transcript of the debate, put the beat on repeat, and rapped. For almost a half an hour. You can hear this epic freestyle that covers all the important points of the debate right on my podcast page.

I guess I’ll need a new plan for next week’s podcast…