Q: Why is having Alzheimer's like being John Wayne Bobbit?
A: I can't remember.

It's been a pretty forgetty ("top 10 least popular drag queen names") week for me. I got my covid and flu vaccines on the same day, which ended up putting me completely out of commission (I'm always accepting more commissions, if you know anyone who needs speeches or lyrics) the following day. And I thus forgot various things I meant to do, such as calling my dad, writing this newsletter, and other things which I have now re-forgotten. (fivegotten?) It's easy to forget things (it's the lethe you could do).

A CLASSIC JOKE

Doctor tells a patient, "The bad news is, you've got cancer. The other bad news is, you've got Alzheimer's."
Patient says, "Well, at least I don't have cancer!"

This is a joke that I hope is still funny to me when I get cancer and/or Alzheimer's.

NEVER REMEMBER

The past fortnight included the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11th (I know, every year includes september 11th), which as usual spurred a lot of people to post "Never Forget" on social media and then live out those words. It often feels like there has been an inverse campaign for Covid, with everything BUT the social media posts. If I were an editorial cartoonist, I might be tempted to draw a side-by-side with someone in front of covid victims holding up a "Never Remember" sign.

Because in spite of the multiple orders of magnitude more deaths and many more non-fatal but still decidedly non-good outcomes (e.g. 17 million cases of Long Covid), it sure seems like society is not just determined to avoid any mitigation efforts beyond the absolute bare minimum of vaccines (and even that is still being fought by the current regime)("we're joining the War on Measles... on the side of Measles"), but also to memory hole all the human lives impacted by Covid in the first place.

I realize as one of the seven people still social distancing in 2026 I do not come to this topic unbiased but I am not saying that everyone should live like me. I am just saying there is a good reason that I live like me which might bear consideration:

BOARDGAMES ARE AWESOME

Yes, September means it is once again my favorite time of year, when Debbie and I compete in our annual Alphabetic Boardgaming Challenge, playing a boardgame for each letter of the alphabet. (This writeup is of minimal interest to anyone but boardgaming nerds, and zero interest to anyone but boardgaming nerds and people who like bad puns.)(Then again, I think that describes a good chunk of my readership, so I've included the link just in case.)

SOCIAL UNDISTANCING

While I'm still avoiding indoor crowds, the past few weeks have been a good opportunity for me to get out and catch up with some old friends outside. I saw an old friend from my gaming group, I saw an old friend from my improv troupe, I saw a new friend who I never knew, and if you're in town perhaps I'll see you! (the Seuss is loose)

This week's column is also about the advantages of occasionally existing outside of the Internet:

Let's Get Physical (media)

Yes, physical media is back! Not because it got any better, but mainly because digital media has gotten much worse. People are sick of having to click through 74 advertisements to watch a video or read an article, especially if that video or article turns out to be AI slop that's nothing but untrustworthy nonsense. Newspapers like this one offer slightly more trustworthy nonsense for you to read, in a form that can also be a hat.

As if ads and AI weren't bad enough, digital content is increasingly locked away. Sites are putting up heftier paywalls, and digital content keeps disappearing, sometimes even after you pay for it. Amazon deleted people's purchased copies of George Orwell's "1984", a book about the destruction of books. Pretty ironic, just like people who claim to champion free speech but then enact draconian censorship. (although possibly that's not so much "irony" as "lying"; nobody says, "he promised he'd help make things better and cheaper, and in just a few years he made everything worse and more expensive, how ironic!")

Soon Americans will once again be reading their ink-and-paper newspapers on the toilet, as god intended. But reading material isn't the only physical media making a comeback. CD sales have nearly doubled in the past few years. There were even a six-figure number of vinyl records sold last year, although admittedly half of that figure was Taylor Swift, whose fans would purchase her latest release even if it were a 200-pound bag of rocks that made music when you poured it onto the ground.

Still, with streaming companies charging more and locking away songs, owning media is becoming more popular. Increasingly, musicians are pulling their own music from Spotify even though they received millions of plays on the platform. I don't know why they'd just give up a $17 payday like that, but I guess success gives people different incentives...

Last week's Banner column:
50 Bad Foods To Discover

I FORGOT HOW LATE IT WAS

It's certainly past time for me to send this email and go to bed. As always, I thank you for reading, will be back in two weeks with another column, and if you remember one thing from this week's newsletter, that's probably one more than me. I don't remember anything unless I have something to remind me. I want a little reminder frog that will croak out all the important things I need to remember, but I couldn't get one, so everything will continue to fade from my memory.

Un-frog-gettably Yours,
Seth