[Seth Says] Almost Fun!
I would like to see a company sell candy bars the size of a full-grown human, and call them Really Fun Size.
Making candy very small doesn't make it fun. Of course, if you really want fun, you should go to a Chinese noodle restaurant. But like everything else that's good these days, fun is in short supply. Which ironically means that even this newsletter, rather than bringing you a Really Fun Size amount of fun, will be bringing you a Fun Size amount of fun, which isn't overly fun. (Let's see how many times I have to say fun before it stops feeling like a word. Fun fun fun! Hello? Sorry, thought it was my telefun.)
Interestingly (at least to me) funny sounds like it would just be the adjectival form of fun, and indeed that's the derivation of the word, but as language is ever evolving there's now a vast chasm between our common uses of fun and funny. Which is sort of funny (funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha)(Lake Funnehaha). Anyway, hopefully etymology doesn't bug you. (And hopefully entomology doesn't word you.)(I realize that doesn't sense or even grammar.)(I like verbing nouns.)
ANYWAY
As I've mentioned in previous newsletters, I'm not always writing about The Ceaseless Awful because it's in the firehose news feeds and people occasionally like a break with a nice joke, so I've tried to have some lighter and fluffier columns. And I honestly intended for this week's column to be light and fluffy as well. It even starts out with some amusing commentary on the weather. Oh, and the entire thing is in rhyming couplets, for National Poetry Month. Super fun, right?
Alas, as I kept writing I couldn't help but write about what was on my mind (because I'm aligned more train-of-thought in rhyme, happens all the time), and thus our theme for this week of "Almost Fun". Anyway, if you'd like some fun rhymes about a somewhat less fun world:
You'll note that my column isn't called "The Fun Also Rises". (And, I mean, just as well.)
A NON-RHYMING POEM
In lighter non-news, I have been doing my usual poem-a-day writing for National Poetry Month and while most of them are neither fun nor funny, I hope that at least some of you might enjoy this poem I wrote last week:
"Deeply"
Physeter Macrocephalus
Otherwise known as
The Sperm Whale
Can communicate over distances
Of thousands of miles
With just a few clicks
And without using the InternetTheir powerful echolocation
Allows them to feed
In darkened waters half a mile deep
By producing short clicks
Sometimes a thousandth of a second
Which bounce off of their prey
So the whale can swim towards them
Clicking more frequently
To more precisely navigate
To a tasty squid dinnerTheir clicks can reach
A volume of 235 decibels
For comparison
A jet engine is 150 decibels
And is much less effective underwater
It is no exaggeration to say
The mighty sperm whale
Is the loudest animal on earth
But a close second place
Is my neighbor with his fucking leafblower
IN THE MEANTIME
Aside from the rapid collapse of democracy things are going pretty well; just finished some leftover larb gai (I'm the Larb Guy) (or as Billie Eilish might sing:
I'm a hungry dude type
eat a buncha food type
looks like it's been chewed type
sorry to be rude, bite
something nice, cool
chicken ground with spice, you'll
need some powdered rice, fool
on lettuce, I might drool...
I want larb gai. (duh)
)
(putting an entire song in parentheses was a mistake. also this isn’t part of the song. the fact that I had to clarify that confirms that putting an entire song in parentheses was a mistake.)
...and on the video game front I've just started Octopath Traveler II (Sadly not called Sexdecpath Traveler) on my own and MechWarrior 5 with a friend. And tomorrow Debbie and I will get takeout and watch Wheel of Time and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
THIS CONCLUDES OUR BROADCAST HOUR
I thank you as always for reading,
Back in two weeks with column you're needing.
In the meantime, be well,
In this almost-fun-hell,
And now this newsletter is retreating.
Q: How is retreating like kicking ass?
A: It's an advance to the rear.
Saving That Joke For Posteriority,
Seth