[Seth Says] April Showers Bring...

...less body odor.

I think that's true only because it rolls more than falls when it lands in the hills or mountains. Anyway, today it's raining again, which I guess is still an improvement from a week or so ago when it was snowing. Snow what, you ask. Didn't she hang out with the dwarves? a) No, you're thinking of Frodo, and b) I meant so what, who asks about the weather? Well, you did. Or imaginary you did. Or imaginary I did. Nothing is real.

At least, it often feels like nothing is real, as news all happens at a remove, the pandemic continues while also continuing to be treated as if it didn't exist... but many of us also continue while continuing to be treated as if we didn't exist, so empathy is a possibility. Sadly, not for a significant portion of legislators, but I guess that's more a topic for next issue. This issue, we should cover my most recent columns.
 

So, last month I bought a dumb little video game on Steam called Vampire Survivors. It is small and dumb with bad graphics. I wrote a little positive review of it, because it is the fun kind of dumb. And somehow, this review quickly rose through the algorithm and became the most popular thing I had ever written. Which is ridiculous. I mean, obviously I want my writing to be famous, but this was sort of The Wrong Famous.

Also worth noting is that this week's column above contains an old joke that I am still surprised they let me put in there. Of course I didn't even try to include the punchline, but everyone knows the punchline, and thereby knows that you're not allowed to put it in a newspaper, but I put the joke in the newspaper anyway! I'm a rebel. Rebel rebel. Give me your hamburgers. Or is that robble robble?

Anyway, April continues to be National Poetry Month, and so even as the month winds down, I have this rhyming column to share with you. It's funny, I love rhyming, I rhyme all the time (I'm miming a lime!), still freestyle to myself on occasion, do rhyming columns, etc. And in spite of all that, I rarely rhyme when it comes to
 

Or at least, the poem-a-day thing that I do every April. Here's a short one that I wrote a few days ago:

 

     "The Work Week"

Same shit, different day
Different shit, same day
Same difference, shitty day

 

 

Someone asked if this was an indictment of myself since I am now self-employed (or Seth-employed), but no. In spite of not always loving every second of my job -- for example, I was feeling pretty unenthused last night at 3am about having to finish writing up a big article about construction project management plans -- I do enjoy my job overall. Heck, I even came up with some good stuff about the construction project plan. 

They do say the author isn't always the narrator, and in this case that's sort of true, since the narrator is anyone who has a daily job that grinds them down with misery, which does include the me of 17 years ago stuck working in the customer service office of a dotcom, but the me of now isn't the me of 17 years ago, which I appreciate. I also appreciate those who hung out with the more miserable me of a few decades back.

 

It's funny, when I was very young, I played soccer. And my first year on an official local team (these were all sponsored by local businesses, not just 1 team per town), my team was very good and ended up being top of the league and getting trophies. I was very not good. And then as the years went on, I ended up on different teams, and every year I got a bit better, and every year my team got a bit worse.

(I should add here that I was never "good" at soccer, but we were all still kids and since I was playing defense, 80% of that was just about being in the right place at the right time. So while my athletic ability certainly never rose to the lofty heights of "above average", I developed an ability to put myself between the ball and the goal, and in many cases that was sufficient. 9-year-olds mostly can't do fancy footwork tricks to zip the ball over and around you.)

Anyway, by the time I quit soccer forever, I was no longer one of the weakest players on my team, and we were a terrible team who lost most of our games. And sometimes I feel like the arc of my whole life has been similar; I grew up in the 80s and 90s when the world was awesome, it was post-duck-and-cover and pre-school-shootings (not preschool shootings, although I certainly wouldn't put it past our gun culture. America!), basically the world was great. And I was miserable.

And then as the decades have progressed, I feel like the world has gotten worse in various ways, and my life has gotten better and I've gotten happier. And now we're at a point where the world is objectively very fucked up indeed, with the climate crisis, the pandemic, global geopolitical fuckery, state and national discriminatory political fuckery, writers who keep saying fuckery when you don't care for the repeated vulgarity, etc., etc.  And in spite of all this, the past decade has absolutely been the happiest time of my life.

I'm not sure I had a point.
 

Sometimes all we can do is try to improve ourselves and the world around us in a small radius. And when the world is on fire, finding improvement and happiness is all the more important. (although not throwing gasoline on the fire is also very important.) So expect another newsletter with two new columns in two weeks, and meanwhile I hope this newsletter has brought you a smile, as you reading it has brought me a smile, and smiles to go before I sleep, and smiles to go before I sleep.

Stay Frost-y,
Seth