TBT: First Day of School 202[6]

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Yesterday was the first day of classes for the 2026-2027 academic year. It is the first “first day of school” I have not attended in fifteen-ish years.

Instead, today is my first day of the school year. I’m now the part-time Chaplain for my school, and I only go in (usually) once a week, on Thursdays, for the morning Chapel service. The new headmaster will be covering today’s Chapel, so I won’t give my first devotional until next week.

It’s a little surreal being “back-to-school” in this new role—and without truly being “back” all the time. But I love it so far.

I had to attend a few of the back-to-school trainings and professional developments, and while my school is incredibly mild with that stuff compared to public schools, it was a confirmation that leaving full-time classroom teaching was the right move. Admin was scrambling to finalize the master schedule (in part because there is a new schedule this year), and one colleague had a substantial, last-minute change to his teaching load (fortunately, I was able to give him all of my materials for the course, so he should be good to go). Everyone is magically expected to be ready for this week, and it’s a testament to the kind of miracles teachers pull off that most of them probably were!

Avoiding that kind of chaos is pretty sweet. I’ve had a small dose of it, as the time for Chapel kept shifting around as the admin continued to make tweaks to the new schedule, but I’ve found that being proactive and trying to nail down details with them in writing and in advance goes a long way in the CYA department. Also, I don’t really have to work anymore, so I have ultimate outcome-independence. Being able to say, “no, I don’t think I will” is pretty liberating, albeit counterintuitive to an innate people-pleaser.

Well, here’s to doing the fun part of education with almost none of the baggage. Woooooooooot!

With that, here is 18 August 2025’s “First Day of School 2025“:

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gym equipment

Exercise

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Yours portly has had a lifelong aversion to exercise. Not physical exertion, per se—I grew up moving furniture around my parents’ Victorian house and still lug sound equipment hither and yon—but the idea of physical exertion for its own sake. Why sweat when you don’t have to?

Well, because it’s not “physical exertion for its own sake”; exercise serves a greater purpose in that it improves one’s health. The physical benefits of exercise are, of course, well-documented: weight loss and/or management; greater strength; increased stamina; better cardiovascular health; etc. The mental benefits are pretty profound, too: better sleep; better mood; better ways to sweat out the bottled-up rage of decades.

Still, even with all the alleged benefits, I’ve rarely been one to go out of my way to seek additional physical exertion just because—gasp!—it might be good for me. Exercise is hard. It’s sweaty and unpleasant. Especially when I was working full-time, I dealt with enough sweaty unpleasantness that, in my precious spare time, I preferred to stay glued to my computer desk chair than move around unnecessarily.

Naturally, that’s partially why yours portly is, well, portly (not to mention my unhealthy relationship with food—I’m a sensualist when it comes to eating mish-mashed leftovers). Living life as a larger-than-life bon vivant has its advantages, but it also carries some hefty baggage.

So I’ve been taking some small steps towards improving my overall physical (and mental) health. Dr. Wife and I take a long walk most nights after dinner. I’ve been doing that for a few months now. I enjoy walking, but as my older brother once told me (to paraphrase), “walking is good, but it takes a tremendous amount of time [to see any real caloric burn].” If Dr. Wife isn’t with me I’ll sometimes get in some brief interval running, but I’m not consistent with that at all.

What’s a portly bon vivant to do?

“Eat less, fatso”—hey, I heard that! But, yes, I’m doing that (imperfectly).

“Find exercise that works for you, tubsy”—ah, yes. A good solution. Well, walking works for me, but, as my older brother has noted, it’s fairly inefficient. Running is unpleasant (again, most exercise, for someone like me, is).

Dr. Wife, as usual, presented the solution in the way only an upper-middle class American white girl can: ride the Peloton.

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New Music Tuesday XX: “Chorale for Single Reeds”

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Sunday morning I jotted down another chorale—I’ve been on a chorale kick lately—and decided to experiment with 9/4 time. I really just wanted to see how composing for longer measures might affect the final product. I did find that my “grammar” changed a bit while composing in this unorthodox time signature, with more subdivisions of three popping up.

I exported the WAV from Noteflight and imported it into Audacity. There I applied a “Large Room” reverb filter; a “Wide Synth Pad” chorus effect; and a “Lush High-Ends” master effect.

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Lazy Sunday CD: 🐟Koi Dance🐟 Posts

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Koi Dance is out now on all streaming platforms and at https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com. It’s 90% off (!) with promo code koipond. That means it’s $1 for twelve tracks of great music (that promo code is also good for everything on the site).

As such, I’m featuring some posts related to Koi Dance (and the title track, “Koi Dance”):

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

jalapeno popper on hand

SubscribeStar Saturday: Jalapeño Poopers

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.

For those of you looking for Issue 3 of The Town Crier, here’s the embed; I’ll get around to creating a separate page for these issues soon:

The Town Crier Vol I Issue 3Download

Now, on to today’s post! —TPP

My younger brother sent me the following Tweet from the legendary X user Catturd ™:

His wife came up with the title “Jalapeño Poopers”; my brother asked me to write a blog post with that title. So, here we are! I’m never one to turn down some scatological fun.

But back to that Tweet (or are they called “Xes” or “Xs” or eXs” now?) from Feline Dookie Catturd ™: doesn’t it seem like we’re experiencing tons of diarrhea-inducing outbreaks in our food lately? By now, we’re all familiar with the infamous cyclosporiasis, which has had a whopping 0.1% of Michigan’s population glued to the porcelain throne, with around 22,700 cases nationwide. Nearly half—11,500—of those cases are from Michigan itself.

Most notoriously, Taco Bell, which is already known for its diarrheic properties, had lettuce infected with the dookie-inducing spores. Dr. Wife and I eat at Taco Bell almost every Sunday after church, and I forbade any lettuce for at least a couple of weeks after Taco Bell sent out a reassuring e-mail that they’d removed the offending lettuce from their supply lines. Believe it or not, I trusted Taco Bell/Yum, Incorporated; I didn’t trust their franchisees to toss the old lettuce (although I think we’re in the clear now).

Now that other staple of Mexican cuisine, the spicy jalapeño, is spreading salmonella across the land. In looking at the map in this New York Post piece, it seems that Minnesota and Colorado have the highest number of cases, with large swaths of the Midwest suffering from the highest concentrations (there are even “5 to 6” cases here in South Carolina).

Granted, the total cases according to that map are around 345 nationwide—probably fewer than people who just have run-of-the-mill loose stools and diarrhea from eating too many clean jalapeño poppers at any given moment in the country. Additionally, there have been no deaths yet, and even the dreaded cyclosporiasis seems to be responsible for only two. That’s two too many, of course, but as far as devastating outbreaks go, that’s not screaming “nationwide panic,” even if the news coverage seems to be leaning in that direction (granted, I wouldn’t be ordering any salad in Michigan anytime soon).

What I’ve noticed, too, is that the news cycle’s hysteria is not “taking” the way it usually does. Sure, it could be because the numbers are, nationally, fairly low. It’s also possible to avoid consuming contaminated foods to some extent, whereas a communicable disease is a bit harder to guard against.

I think, however, that there is something different going on here.

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

🐟Koi🐟 Dance Splashes Up Mogadishu Matt

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Mogadish Matt, Somalia’s #1 Libertarian and a longtime friend of the blog, shared a bit about Koi Dance (out today on all streaming platforms and on Bandcamp; 90% off with promo code koipond) on his blog, Free Matt Podcast:

Guest Highlight: The Portly Politico

Thanks for the shout-out, my grizzled friend!

Also, I’ll be hosting a listening party tonight (Friday, 7 August 2026) at 8 PM EST; join here.

Thanks again, Matt!

—TPP

Koi Dance Write-Up at Existential Ergonomics

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Thanks to Erin at Existential Ergonomics for this awesome write-up of my new album, Koi Dance (out today on all streaming platforms and on Bandcamp; 90% off with promo code koipond).

https://existentialergonomics.wordpress.com/2026/08/07/a-new-release-from-tyler-james-cook-koi-dance/comment-page-1/#respond?page_id=23342

I’ll also be hosting a listening party tonight (Friday, 7 August 2026) at 8 PM EST; join here.

Thanks again, Erin!

—TPP

It’s a 🐟Koi Dance🐟 Bandcamp Friday!

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Koi Dance is out TODAY, Friday, 7 August 2026, on all streaming platforms and at https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com!

It’s 90% off (!) with promo code koipond. That means it’s $1 for twelve tracks of great music (or 8⅓ cents per track).

That promo code is also good for everything on the site, including a full discography purchase. That means you can get thirty-one (31) releases—almost all of which include tons of original artwork, scores, videos, essays, etc.—for $9.70 with promo code koipond.

Look at that cute little koi!

To put that into perspective, if you purchased every release on my Bandcamp page individually, it would cost $194. Purchasing the full discography (just click on any release to see the option to purchase my full discography) comes with a built-in 50% discount, so that brings the cost down to $97.

Use promo code koipond, and the price plummets to $9.70. That’s less than any one of my albums at full freight. It’s less than a small pizza. It’s less than two cups of coffee.

But if you buy just one release—or even just stream one release—make it Koi Dance. It’s my best release in awhile.

Also, I’m hosting a free listening party to the entire album tonight, Friday, 7 August 2026, at 8 PM EST. You can join in on the fun and conversation here: https://tjcookmusic.bandcamp.com/live/koi-dance-listening-party

Finally, it’s Bandcamp Friday, which means Bandcamp waives their usual 15% cut of sales, making it the absolute best time to support your favorite pudgy composer—me!

I love this album cover!
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TBT^65,536: Back to the Grind 202[6]

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Teachers at my school reported back this past Tuesday. While I am no longer teaching full time, I also had to go in for a day of professional development and training. Unlike my full-time colleagues, I am not present for the various registration days, when kids come in to get their textbooks and what-not.

It’s a tad surreal, but I’m not complaining; I rather like working from home most days. I’ll soon be sharing my weekly chapel sermons/devotionals here, so stay tuned.

One thing that will be an adjustment is not putting together tests, quizzes, handouts, slides, and the like. I was compiling all of my materials for World History for the teacher who is taking that class on this year, and it was a massive folder. The sweet lady who is taking over my Music Ensembles—she is an accomplished singer-songwriter and will do a great job—and I have been coordinating on how to prepare for concerts, etc. I created a Google Drive folder for her with lead sheets and tabs and what-not from the past fifteen years, and it ran to 800+ files. Granted, some of those are *.doc files that I then converted to PDFs, but that still comes out to around 400+ unique files—quite a bit of music.

It’s kind of wild to consider how much sheer content a teacher, especially a history (and, apparently, music) teacher produces. One of my former colleagues and friends once compared us to content creators: we’re basically churning out multiple fifty-five-ish-minute podcasts or YouTube videos every day. I’ve likened it to being an overworked cruise ship entertainer without access to the buffet: you’re giving several performances a day. In education, though, the cruisers are more weekenders out of Orlando with Carnival, not a five-night voyagers on a classier line like Royal Caribbean.

Well, here’s to seeing what this new role and school year hold. Classes resume on 12 August 2026—in six days—and then we’re off!

With that, here is 7 August 2025’s “TBT^256: Back to the Grind 202[5]“:

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