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Happy New Year! Hard to believe we’re in 2022. I still look back nostalgically 2012, which I consider a pretty banner year for yours portly. That was ten years ago, and a lot has changed in that time.
2021 was fairly eventful, too, with a number of firsts for yours portly. I was elected to Town Council (twice), wrote a book, hit 1000 days on the blog, got a dog, and made some great friends.
So, what does 2022 hold? How will I build upon the groundwork of 2021? And will I keep blogging every single day?
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The Portly Politico 
Haha, great photo of Murphy.
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Thanks! She takes some good pictures, not just the goofy ones where I highlight her long, pointy nose! Maybe using her picture for this post is my way of saying that 2022 is going to the dogs—ha!
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Happy New Year all. 🙂
That’s a great picture above. Dogs are happiest when they’re lying down in the grass on a sunny day – I imagine you’re off camera ready to chuck a ball for him?
I spotted your replies to me on yesterday’s feed. I’m very much looking forward to reading about life in America. It’d be good if Audre and Neo chipped in too. As for looking for variety, check out The Critical Drinker’s game and film reviews on Youtube. I remember thinking a while ago that it’d be great to start my own blog doing retrospective reviews of films and games but The Drinker does them way better so I don’t have to! 🙂
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Murphy is a girl dog. However easy mistake to make wiith that weird American thing of giving girls boys’ names and vice versa. Yanks eh?
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Yes, I am used to her name now, but I still wonder why the previous owner named her “Murphy.” My older brother teases me that I am big fan of _Murphy Brown_, haha.
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🙂 🙂 🙂
Easy presumption to make. Not only giving girls boys names but using a surname as a first name. And since Murphy is a girl. I imagine she barks at Tyler that if he wants the ball, he can fetch it! 🙂
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Ha! She will bark at me if she wants me to do something: take her out, find her Kong (usually lost under the couch or stuck somewhere), or just to pay attention to her. Very much like a woman, haha. Frankly, sometimes I’d rather she give me the silent treatment! ; D
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For the most part, though, she does is not a “mouthy” dog. She’s pretty quiet 95% of the time. I appreciate that.
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Yes, she LOVES sunning herself out on the grass (and rolling around in it, especially after a bath—d’oh!).
The Critical Drinker—sounds like my kind of YT channel! Check out Salt Factory and Strat-Edgy when you have a chance. I stumbled upon both of those guys recently, and love their super detailed retrospectives.
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Cheers, Port, I’ll have a look when I’m next on there. It’d be nice to get a mixture of different reviewers and retrospectives. Plus, it comes in handy when I want to play a game/watch a film that the mainstream critics have lauded; makes me think there’s something wrong with it if the critics like it and the YouTubers are brutally honest so it gives you, usually, the best and correct assessment.
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Great point: re: checking the critics against the YouTubers. I really like Red Letter Media for movie reviews.
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Another one to look at.
I wonder whether you remember Gamergate, the process by which gamers took a stand against the corruption of game journalists? They won the odd few battle but didn’t win the war, as you might have seen with the ratings and reviews from the mainstream on The Last of Us 2. To get the real reviews, you have to go on Youtube or other gamer (ie, actual players) related sites.
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I remember Gamergate quite well. I missed some of the early episodes of that long conflict, but my younger brother brought me up to speed. That was a major turning point, I think, in “our thing.” They might not have won the battle for accuracy in gaming journalism (I understand that a lot of these reviews of big studio games are basically paid for), but they had a big impact.
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