SubscribeStar Saturday: Pulp Magazine?

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

One morning while driving into work I started thinking about short stories.  The Based Book Sale is running a sale on short stories and short story collections this week.  My book The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot is one of the collections in the sale, and I’ve purchased a couple of works from other authors (and will likely buy more).  $0.99 for a Kindle eBook is excellent.

Here’s the problem:  I don’t like reading anything over about 2000 words on a screen.  I will, but if I have the option to purchase a $10 paperback over an eBook, I almost always will, unless the work is fairly short and I can read it on the toilet (lol).  I don’t have a Kindle device, which might make the reading experience more pleasant, but I suspect I am a physical media man when it comes to long-form writing (a bit of an irony, considering I write almost exclusively for an online audience).

That got me thinking:  what if I created a fifty-page monthly fiction magazine in the spirit of the old pulps?  Something about 4″x6″ that could be carried in a bag or a large pocket, packed with short stories of various genres from up-and-coming authors?

Further, what if I paid those authors decent money, not just “exposure”—$50 at least per story, and preferably $100.  I could always toss in some stories of my own to keep my costs down, and it would be printed very cheaply on pulp-grade paper, probably entirely in black and white.  I’d commission artists to design the covers, which would be eye-catching (and possibly in color).  Then I’d mail copies to paid subscribers and distribute others through independent bookstores, comic bookstores, etc., on a consignment basis.

I asked Microsoft’s AI, CoPilot, how feasible it would be, and its answer surprised me.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Phone it in Friday CXXV: YouTube Roundup CLXXXVI: Randall Taters (ECU)

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Just a reminder that everything is still 90% off with promo code moving at my Bandcamp page.

Also, buy my collection of absurdist detective stories for just $0.99!

I thought that Eggcraticus, the egg-devouring supervillain, would be a duology.  How foolish I was—how could I deny the people more steamy Eggcraticus content?

But sometimes our favorite supervillains need a bit of a break.  Too much exposure to the cardboard terror of Eggcraticus might—gasp!—diminish his stature.

How, then, does one take a beloved character and expand upon his universe?

Simple—introduce his cool cousin from out-of-town:  Randall Taters.

With that, here’s more from the Eggcraticus Cinematic Universe (ECU) with its hottest new character:

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TBT^2: Support Culture, Not Political Machines

The Portly Politico4 Comments

This week I’ve really been banging the drum (really, really banging it) about folks on the Right supporting their fellow conservatives who create art—books, music, long-form essays, fiction, etc.  We are phenomenally bad about supporting anything that isn’t bog-standard conservative commentary (which is kind of what I used to do here on a more regular basis).

It was serendipitous, then, that when looking back for today’s TBT, I found this piece, which I’d reblogged from a prior piece.  In the original, I argued that donating to the RNC is a waste of money, and that dollars are better allocated to conservative creators.

I stand by that assessment.  Indeed, the intervening years have only deepened that conviction—the conviction for you to send your money to me (and other awesome conservatives), not Mitch McConnell.

With that, here is 27 March 2025’s “TBT: Support Culture, Not Political Machines“:

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Based Book Sale Short Story Sale Begins Today!

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Today begins a special sale of short stories and short story collections over at Based Book Sale, and yours portly’s collection of absurdist detective stories is in the sale.  Normally I’d link directly to The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot, but I’d recommend purchasing it through the sale so they can track sales figures accurately.  Regardless, the eBook/Kindle version is just $0.99 from now through midnight PST on Wednesday, 25 March 2026.

I’ve been writing quite a bit this week about supporting right-wing creators (including myself), and the BBS sale ties into that too perfectly.  Short stories are a particular love of mine, so I’m excited to see what enticing selections appear in the sale.

Speaking of supporting smaller, right-wing/conservative creators, the adventures of The Man from Historical Accuracy by guest author Sudo Nonym will return next week.  If you haven’t read this exciting story, check out the previous chapters below:

Also, he has two eBooks on Amazon (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link at no additional cost to you—TPP)!  I should have included in him in my posts from the past two days.  Forgive me, Sudo!

Happy Reading!

—TPP

Support My Right-Wing Culture

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Yesterday I encouraged readers to “Support Right-Wing Culture“; the thesis of my argument was that there are conservatives who create amazing art, but who languish in obscurity.  Meanwhile, we’ll complain that don’t have any cultural products compared to the Left while also paying for a DailyWire+ subscription so Ben Shapiro can buy another ivory kippah. (but, by all means, have a DW+ subscription, just also be willing to spend five or ten bucks a month on smaller creators).

Ben Shapiro doesn’t need your money or your emotional support (although his plummeting viewership may suggest otherwise).  His wife (like mine) is a doctor, after all.  Quite frankly, he doesn’t deserve it, either:  it’s pretty clear he hates the very people he purports to support.  However, conservatives are willing to give him $9 a month, but will balk at the idea of spending $9 a month to support a small creator, for whom that $9 could be extremely impactful.

But I digress.  Plenty of other people can (and have, and should) poke fun at Ben Shapiro.  My point here is to discuss ways we can build each other up—and build a lasting cultural legacy.

To that end, I highlighted a few creators yesterday (note that a lot of the links to come are Amazon Affiliate links; I receive a portion of the purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you):

There are several other creators I failed to mention yesterday; to wit:

And that’s just a start!  There are people who are really trying to create new, original, cool stuff.

I’d like to think I am one of them.  All of the folks mentioned above are far more talented and driven than yours portly, but I’d like to think I have created some unique culture in my doughy life.  So, here are some of the ways you can support my contributions to right-wing culture:

  • Buy my stuff in the Based Book Sale short stories sale, starting tomorrow, Wednesday, 18 March 2026 (they’ll be $0.99 each from 18-25 March 2026)
  • Buy my music on Bandcamp using promo code moving to take 90% off your purchase
  • Download my instrumental piece “π” for free (just type in “$0” when “purchasing” and put in your e-mail address)
  • Check out my YouTube channel (and like, subscribe, and comment—all of which are free ways to support the channel)
  • Buy my books (and write a review—it takes only a few minutes and helps a lot)
  • Subscribe to/follow me on Substack (for free or with a paid subscription)
  • Subscribe to my SubscribeStar page (for as little as $1 a month, which is probably too cheap)
  • Share blog posts (including this one) to your friends, family, etc.
  • Stream my music (on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, and more)

Almost all of those items can be replicated for the other creators mentioned herein.  None of them take very long.  Many of them are free!

It doesn’t take much.  I know money is tight and we’re probably staring down the start of the Third World War (or everything fine will be in another week—no need to panic), but everyone can afford five bucks a month to support a creator.  Sacrifice one meal out and you’ve saved enough buy a couple of books or Substack subscriptions.

We conservatives need to step up and actually support—financially, morally, and culturally—our own people.  The Left has built entire institutions to propagate their worldview, such as it is.

We don’t have to let them have a stranglehold on creating cool stuff.  There is more to life than grilling and Kid Rock concerts and Ben Shapiro’s nasally commentary.

So dig deep and do the bare minimum to support the creators in your life (and, if you see fit, me, even though I just lectured you).

God Bless!

—TPP

Support Right-Wing Culture

The Portly Politico9 Comments

From time to time, I’ll read essays that argue, essentially, that the Right is terrible at creating culture.  If anything, we simply mimic what the mainstream culture is doing, but like most copies, our versions are poorly-executed and lame.  The prime example of this phenomenon is contemporary Christian worship music, which takes the aesthetics of the blandest power pop and changes “baby” to “Jesus,” all set against a synth-string pad and a bunch of sus2 chords.

The thesis is correct—to a point.  We are pretty bad on the Right at supporting good cultural output.  I think there are a few reasons for this failure to support our own creators:

  • We view all secular institutions with skepticism (as we probably should), so we dismiss high culture and academic output as inherently tainted (as we probably shouldn’t)
  • We are excessively focused on dollars-and-cents practicality and, therefore, fail to see the benefits of the arts, which are often not realized in ROI (thus, megachurches that look like Dollar Generals instead of real churches)
  • We are too focused on the political and the minutiae of policy (“what should the marginal tax rate be for people earning $200,000 a year?”) instead of focusing on broader cultural movements
  • We like everything dosed out in digestible soundbites and spicy memes, not long-form works that require time, patience, and attention

There are likely more, and I think some of the above are more relevant than others.  For example, the fourth point paints with too broad a brush, perhaps.

But these points are generalizations, and we can derive a good bit of Truth from generalized observations, even if “Not All Conservatives Are Like That.”

The ultimate problem is that we’re not looking in the right places for culture that is pure, good, beautiful, virtuous, and true.  That kind of cultural output is not getting the attention it deserves, even though it is creating work that is timeless.

There are artists, writers, poets, painters, etc., creating work that is great.  There are creators on the Right who are not staging WWE-style funerals or hawking Kid Rock as the alternative to the Left.

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Lazy Sunday CCCLXXX: Musical Instruments

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Between the SCISA Music Festival, my little saxophone gig, and playing with my old Yamaha PortaSound PSS-50, it’s been a week for musical instruments of all stripes.  As such, I thought I’d look back at those very same posts:

Now, go out and make some music!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: SCISA Music Festival 2026

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Another SCISA Music Festival is in the books, and it’s a bittersweet occasion for yours portly, as it’s the last one as a music teacher at my current school.  I’ve been taking kids to Columbia, South Carolina for the SCISA Music Festival every year since 2012 (except for one year when I had to stay on campus for our reaccreditation visit, and during the COVID year, when we hired a judge to adjudicate our pianists on campus).  My Instrumental Ensembles, whether in the “Small” or “Large” categories, and either High School or Middle School, have earned Gold medals every year since 2013 (the High School Small Instrumental Ensemble in 2012 earned a Silver for an instrumental rendition of “The Circle of Life”).

Because we are not a traditional concert band, there’s a good bit of “tech” that goes with the group.  Essentially, my Music Ensembles are large rock bands, often with multiple guitars, basses, pianos/keys, and whatever other instruments happen to be enrolled in the class.  One year, I took an ensemble that consisted of the following mélange of instrumentation:  piano, electric piano, viola, alto sax, euphonium, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, electric bass guitar, and ukulele.  It was one of the oddest mixtures, but it worked.
This year, my High School Ensemble featured the typical guitar (all electric), keys, basses (three of them!), and drums, but also alto sax, violin, clarinet, and guzheng.  The last of those is a traditional Chinese stringed instrument.  We incorporated all of that into a cool arrangement of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic “My Favorite Things.”
That selection itself came about as a result of organic creativity.  I was stumped as to what piece to pick for the High School this year, until one of the students came for an after-school lesson and asked to sightread some jazz piano pieces.  We found a Jamie Aebersold book with a number of pieces, including “My Favorite Things.”  He had immense fun playing it.
Just a day before, my older brother had texted me a lengthy live recording of John Coltrane playing the piece.  It seemed serendipitous that my student was also drawn to the piece, so I decided we’d try it as a group.
It began to morph from there.  Our alto saxophonist is phenomenal, and I worked out an odd little “Middle Eastern” scale for him.  Essentially, it’s an E Phrygian scale, but instead of a G natural as the third interval, it’s a G#; to wit:  E F G# A B C D E.  That raised third creates a really interesting interval.
My guzheng player and I also collaborated.  He is a delightful international student from China, and he will often practice during my afternoon planning.  The guzheng typically uses a kind of “open” pentatonic tuning, so he contrived a unique blended tuning in order to get the pitches he needed to play the melody.  I told him that I wanted the piece to sound like “East meets West.”

It all fell into place from there.  One thing I will miss about teaching music in a group is that very process of collaborative creation.  The molding of our arrangement felt like a musical conversation that unfolded gradually, each element falling into place at its appointed time.  The process was truly magical.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Phone it in Friday CXXIV: YouTube Roundup CLXXXV: Hornpiping on a Yamaha PortaSound PSS-50

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Just a reminder that everything is still 90% off with promo code moving at my Bandcamp page.

While packing up for the big move I found quite a few fun little items and mementos:  old notebooks from my childhood; photographs with friends in our doughy youths; doodles from former students who now likely have families of their own; bits of music I’d composed.  One of the coolest finds was my old Yamaha PortaSound PSS-50:

This little keyboard has been in my family for as long as I can remember.  I’m certain it was my older brother‘s keyboard, but through years of use it became “mine” in that way that childhood items do among siblings.  The keyboard is likely just a few years younger than me, which would mean it’s been around for nearly four decades.

And it still works—well, mostly.  The keys from the first F through the first D no longer play, but every key from Eb up to that third C work beautifully.  It runs on six AA batteries, which I apparently changed out recently, because I was jamming on this little puppy before packing it.

In my early, lo-fi-because-I-didn’t-know-any-better days, I recorded quite a few pieces with this PSS-50 plugged into my brother’s Crate guitar amp with an old computer microphone dangling in front of the amp’s horn (I’m going to release those recordings one day).  In the super early days, I’d record separate WAV files using Sound Recorder, then combine them using the same software, hoping everything lined up properly; Adobe Audition 1.5 smoothed that over for me, though.

I still remember some of the classic voices on this keyboard:  “26” cues up an “Electric Guitar” sound which has this amazing distortion to it while still sounding clean enough to use melodically.  The default “00” is a “Trumpet” that, to me, is the standard sound any synthesizer should have.  Indeed, there is a more robust Yamaha synth from this era that someone donated to the school years ago, and “Brass 1” is the default voice when starting the keyboard.

That yellow “Demo” button played an instrumental version of the song “Venus.”  My older brother changed the lyrics to “Booty, Booty, Booty, Come Home,” which he said was the theme song for my band, which he initially named “Booty and the Bootettes” before changing it to “Booty and the Flaming Booties.”

As you can see, dear reader, this keyboard and I share a lot of history together.  If it ever stops playing entirely, I’m going to have to write to Yamaha to repair it.  They’ll probably have to bring their last remaining 1980s consumer mini-keyboard specialist out of retirement/cryogenic freezing to do so, but I want this little guy handed down to (God Willing) my little guys!

So it was that I picked ol’ PSS-50 up and improvised a little hornpipe using “17”—“Reed Organ”:

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TBT: Short Sax Starter Pack Recommendation

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Note:  this post contains several Amazon Affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.

My students and I are back at the SCISA Music Festival this morning, and yours portly has a saxophone gig tonight.  As such, it seemed like a good time to look back at my “Short Sax Starter Pack Recommendation” post from 12 March 2025—one year ago today!

The thrust of last year’s post was that, for under $400, you can purchase a decent—not great, but serviceable—alto saxophone.  Indeed, I’m playing at this very same saxophone tonight:

Here are the updated prices for the items I listed last year; remarkably, the price is lower than a year ago; however, Slade seems to be phasing out the horn, as there is only one sax available at the time of writing:

Grand Total:  $290.67 (down $33.18 from the typical price in 2025) before taxes

With that, here is 12 March 2025’s “Short Sax Starter Pack Recommendation“:

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