Flashback Friday^4: Brack Friday Bunduru: Workers Need a Break

The Portly Politico5 Comments

It’s another Black Friday here in the United States, the day when retailers are finally in the red after convincing everyone to storm the commercial Bastille and buy flat-screen televisions at rock-bottom prices.  It’s intriguing to consider that our entire retail sector hinges on the successful execution of one day of sales to shore up an entire year of losses and (I will recklessly assume) corporate mismanagement.

I vastly prefer teaching music lessons, which put me into the black pretty much from the beginning of the year and throughout.  Of course, there are lots of other ways you can help me stay in the black, such as…

Seriously, my whole marketing tactic this Christmas season is “Give the Gift of Weird.”  Why give someone another scented candle they’ll shove into a drawer and forget about?  You can totally win your White Elephant gift exchange with a self-published book of unsolvable, absurdist detective stories.  Or help an oddball relative celebrate with a painting of a demonic-looking beast sword.

Release yourself from the shackles of predictable gifts that no one wants or needs!  Don’t risk setting fire to your house with some crappy candle.  Instead, be fire on Christmas morning with some wacky, one-of-a-kind gifts from yours portly.

You’ll also be giving those schmucks at Target a break, which they desperately need after sacrificing Thanksgiving to fulfill your insatiable lust for plastic knick-knacks.

With that, here is “Flashback Friday^2: Brack Friday Bunduru: Workers Need a Break“:

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TBT^256: It’s a Thanksgiving Miracle!

The Portly Politico2 Comments

I’m continuing the time-honored tradition of Thanksgivings past (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017) with the annual reblogging of “It’s a Thanksgiving Miracle!”  I wrote the original post (on the old blog) back in 2017, just a few days after I fell from a ladder and broke my wrist.  It was my lowest point in a number of ways, but I was grateful to be alive.

I’m thankful this year, too, although I am similarly in a bit a slump personally.  No matter—I’ve got a good family, a good house, a good dog, and lots of private lessons to tide over my insatiable lust for frozen pizza and LEGO sets.

My pastor has been working painstakingly through Philippians for some time now, and has been hammering home the idea of finding joy amid our situations, no matter how difficult they might be.  If the Apostle Paul could rejoice in a Roman prison, we can rejoice in the far less trying times of our daily lives.

Good stuff, even if it’s hard to live out.  At least today I’ll get to eat some turkey.

With that, here is “TBT^16: It’s a Thanksgiving Miracle!“:

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Myersvision: Last Tango in Halifax

The Portly Politico17 Comments

Audre Myers is perhaps my most Anglophilic contributor, probably even more Anglophilic than Ponty, and he’s actually from England!

As such, it was only a matter of time before she graced us with a delightful, tea-and-crumpety BBC dramady about rediscovering lost love in old age.

There’s something befuddlingly adorable and quintessentially English about two stodgy geezers falling in love.  Perhaps it’s the notion that we can always recapture some sliver of our misspent youths when in the throes of being in love.  Nothing quite so takes us back to the possibilities (and follies) of youth quite like tumbling head-over-heels for someone else, especially when they tumble into you, willingly and excitedly.

Two fogies canoodling also gives us some hope that it’s not too late for us after all—gulp!

With that, here is Audre’s review of Last Tango in Halifax:

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Trumparion Rising

The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s official:  God-Emperor Donaldus Magnus is running for President in 2024.  It’s a Thanksgiving Miracle!

We all knew this announcement was coming, but making it official seals the deal and ends any lingering speculation.

Here’s another announcement of far less significance or magnitude, but one of importance to yours portly:  The Portly Politico officially and formally endorses President Donald J. Trump in the Republican primaries and for President of the United States.

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Memorable Monday^2: Thanksgiving Week!

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Ah, yes—the glorious freedom of Thanksgiving Break.  Those of us in the education biz are spoiled with constant holidays, workdays, days off, etc.  Sure, I work twelve-hour days several times per week, and I can’t go to the bathroom whenever I want to (I’ve taught for hours with an urgent need for relief—you just get used to it) during the school day, but all this bogus time off makes up for it.  I can hold in my urine for a few hours in exchange for a week of indolence.

Back in the old days, we just got Thursday and Friday off for Thanksgiving.  Ah, what benighted times!  Around the time I was in high school—the early 2000s—school districts realized that everyone was taking off the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to travel (not my family, but those bourgeois ones with—gasp!—family in other States), so they granted us Wednesday off.

Naturally, everyone then started taking off the Tuesday and even the Monday before Thanksgiving.  Last year, my little private school relented, and ever since we’ve enjoyed the entire week off.

So, what is a portly pudge like myself to do?  Go to the doctor and the dentist, of course!  ‘Tis the season for getting in all of those annoying but necessary appointments.  I also desperately need a haircut.  Yours portly is looking more and more like Bigfoot every day.

But I digress.  We’ll be back with Monday Morning Movie Reviews in December.  There will be some original posts this week, but also quite a few reblogs—it is a week for rest, after all.  But The Portly Politico will still be hitting your inboxes every morning ~6:30 AM EST (or whenever the WordPress Happiness Engineers decide to post them, as apparently a simple “schedule post” function is too difficult to implement flawlessly; posting at 6:45 AM is not 6:30 AM, WordPress!).

So, curl up with a good book, your favorite device, and some classic TPP leftovers—the best part of Thanksgiving!

With that, here is 23 November 2021’s “Memorable Monday: Thanksgiving Week!“:

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Lazy Sunday CLXXII: Myersvision, Part I

The Portly Politico26 Comments

Good ol’ Audre Myers—if it weren’t for her and Ponty, I’d have to actually write something now and then!

Audre e-mailed me about a month ago asking if she could could contribute reviews of television (i.e., Netflix) series, not just films.  Naturally, I agreed—enthusiastically!

Since then, she’s been churning out these little gems on the regular, and there are more on the way.  I dubbed the series Myersvision, and this Sunday we’re looking back at the first three installments:

  • “Myersvision: The Final Table” – A high-end, international cooking competition with chefs and judges at the peak of their craft?  Sounds like something I’d watch while eating a bowl of Spaghetti-Os.
  • “Myersvision: Baking Impossible” – Continuing along the food themed, Audre’s second submission was a baking show that combines baking and engineering.  Might we be driving on gumdrop roads soon enough?
  • “Myersvision: Blown Away” – This show sounds like it’s something The History Channel would air, but way classier—and glassier—hey-oh!

Happy Sunday—and Happy Viewing!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Floozies

The Portly Politico2 Comments

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.

Ah, women.  Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.

Literally—without women, the human race would cease to exist.  That many of them are shirking their God-given gift to do so—and a disturbing chunk of those want the Molochian freedom to slaughter their own children—does not bode well for the future of humanity, at least not in the West.

Modern women have bought into a narrative that the path to true fulfilment lies in eschewing marriage and motherhood in favor of a career in graphic design.  Rather than tending to their man and their children, they’ve been duped into thinking it is somehow better to keep some strange man’s calendar, or to dedicate their most (re)productive years to maintaining the social media accounts for some megacorporation.

Of course, men—who perhaps shortsightedly permitted such rights to be extended to the fairer sex—bear all the blame for when things go awry.  There are “no good men” left, meaning something equivalent to “there are no men earning six-figure salaries who are willing to wife me up after spending my twenties riding the carousel of one-night stands and non-committal flings.”  Some men take advantage of this sexually-liberated situation to bed unsuspecting floozies, but many of those same women believe they’re “living their best life” by engaging in multiple sexual liaisons with strange, predatory men.

But expecting women to recognize their folly and to restore themselves and our culture is unreasonable.  As Jack Nicholson’s character said in 1997’s As Good as It Gets, when asked how he writes women so well:  “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.”

In that same film, however, the same character tells former babe Helen Hunt “You make me want to be a better man.”  Do modern day floozies still inspire that drive to improve, to build, to conquer?  Forget Helen Hunt; are there are any Helens of Troy out there?

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

Ponty Pans: Halloween Kills (2021)

The Portly Politico25 Comments

Halloween might be over—noooooooo!—but the Halloween film franchise will never die—or End, as the latest installment claims.  If you’re like Ponty and myself, you try to watch at least the 1978 John Carpenter classic at least once a year, preferably on Halloween.

Unlike Ponty, I haven’t seen the plethora of sequels, besides—of course—Halloween II (1981) and the unusual Halloween III: Season of the Witch.  I’ve also seen the “soft reboots” since 2018, thought I haven’t seen Halloween Ends (2022) yet.

As Ponty points, I, like many others, will.  I’ll also see Halloween Ends Again or whatever comes out next.  Heck, I’ll probably see Halloween Ends Again III: Season of the Witch: The Musical, with an original score by Andrew Lloyd Webber, including that annoying Silver Shamrock jingle.  These franchises know how to hook in suckers like yours portly, who will never hesitate to drop a $1.25 RedBox coupon to sample some tasty trash.

But I digress.  Ponty asked to take a stab—no pun intended—at reviewing 2021’s Halloween Kills, a film I reviewed last November.  Ponty assiduously avoided my review, so it’s interesting (though not entirely surprising) that we walked away with some similar reflections on the film.  “Evil dies tonight!”—ugh.  How could anyone miss that braying mantra?

Regardless, Ponty’s review goes far deeper than my own, delivered with his own brand of acerbic and longsuffering wit.

On a lighter note, he also includes some pictures from his and Tina’s Halloween festivities.  Well done on the decorations, Tina!

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 2021’s Halloween Kills:

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TBT: Resist the Black Pill

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Life has been kicking yours portly hard lately, and the lackluster midterm elections affected my mood more than I realized.  What I neglected to remember—what I always forget!—is that despair is a sin, and we shouldn’t wallow in its murky depths.

We can’t let discouragement get the better of us.  We have to do the difficult thing and keep fighting.  I still am done with national politics—it’s become meaningless kabuki theatre, like the bogus Roman Senate under the Caesars—but I’m not giving up hope on my country.

Of course, what I think of as “my country” might be quite diminished from what it once was.  Increasingly, I’m thinking of myself as a South Carolinian first and an American second.  That’s how it was in the 1776, 1783, and even 1789 (the ratification of the Constitution).  I’d rather most decisions be made at the State level, anyway.  If we must have a Caesar, let him at least be a good one, but no government—not even a strongman one—can fill the moral void of a decadent people.

Only Christ can save us, and He Will, if we let Him.

With that, here is 17 July 2020’s “Resist the Black Pill“:

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