Month: July 2023

Ponty’s Pen: The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Video games used to be a bit of a niche—a large and popular niche, but a niche nonetheless.  Sure, our mom loved playing Dr. Mario on our old Nintendo, but that was about the extent of it.  Video games were largely for boys, who grew up into men.  Those men rebought the classics when they became available digitally, and continued to fuel the development of new games with their hard-earned dollars.

Of course, video game companies sensibly sought to expand their market share.  They developed more casual games to attract older gamers and more women.  The Nintendo Wii marked a major shift, as the kinetic style of the console made it popular among many demographics, most notably the elderly.  Nary a retirement home or assisted living facility lacked a Wii, with which geriatrics could play virtual tennis and bowling.

All of that is wonderful.  More gamers means more games, and it means broader acceptance of video games as a fun, harmless pastime (in spite of the ludicrous stories that insist on linking video games to violence—malarkey!).

Lately, however, video game developers have followed in the footsteps of film and television, making a mad push towards increasing “representation” in games.  This development is premised upon a number of false premises, such as “women are objectified damsels-in-distress in games,” which ignores Princess Peach, Princess Zelda/Sheikh, Lara Croft, and many other “strong female” protagonists or supporting characters in game.

That obsession is linked to another false premise:  that in order to enjoy a video game (or movie, or book, or other work), we must see carbon-copies of ourselves in them.  According to this reasoning, a black kid can’t enjoy a Mario game because Mario is an Italian-American plumber, not an African-American one.

As Ponty so eloquently points out, video games are frequently a form of escapism.  We don’t want to be ourselves; we want to be a burly barbarian, or a sneaky thief.  When I play roleplaying games, I don’t play a six-foot-one, two-hundred-fifty-plus pound nerd with bad eyesight; I typically play a short rogue or bard character, pilfering loot from NPCs’ homes.  I’d never burgle a home in real life, and the game doesn’t make me want to do so; rather, it gives the thrill of being a second-story man without any of the terrible consequences for either myself or the victim.

Regardless, gaming, too, has been a major front in the Culture Wars, going back to Gamergate in 2014.  Nearly ten years on, we’re still fighting similar battles.

With that, here is Ponty’s essay “The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry”:

Read More »

TBT^4: Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Don’t be alarmed:  it’s Thursday.  I’ve “thrown back” to this classic edition of Phone it in Friday twice before, and even though The Age of The Virus is now over, it’s worth remembering the massive social and economic costs that came from the years of lockdowns.

The line from the Left now is, “oops, sorry, we overreacted, but we can let bygones be bygones, yeah?”  Forgiveness is important, but it’s also important to realize how self-righteous busybodies with an untrusting faith in “science” berated all of us into wearing diapers over our faces and putting kids in online classes for two years.

Masks don’t work.  If you can smell a tangy fart through an N95 mask, viruses can get through.  About the only sensible advice anyone received during The Age of The Virus was to wash our hands regularly.

Yet we turned our civil and medical liberties over to a handful of unelected “public health” bureaucrats based on the flimsiest of information.  Granted, those first “two weeks to flatten the curve” were scary, because we knew so little, but in hindsight, it looks like an attempt to see how much the American people would put up with before we revolted.  The answer, sadly, was quite a lot.

One other note:  I appreciate doctors for their training, though my faith in them has always been equivocal at best.  But the real problem seems to be nurses and public health officials.  The former is a profession that seems to attract its fair share of self-important nut jobs, and who hasn’t known a nurse who insists she knows better than the doctor?

The latter are people who couldn’t hack it as either a doctor or a nurse, so they got a relatively new degree (I first heard of people majoring in public health only about fifteen years ago) that somehow grants them enormous power to curtail individual liberties in the name of “public” health.

That’s a scary Pandora’s Box:  where do we draw the line?  I imagine there are all sorts of personally harmful but socially benign health choices that deviously creative public health officials could spin into activity that must be stopped in the name of “public health.”  Even when we knew that masks did nothing—I remember folks saying, “Well, the mask doesn’t protect you, but it protects other people,” which makes no sense at all—it was always couched in terms of helping other people.  It was the same way with The Vaccine—“if you don’t get this shot, you’re endangering others!”  Malarkey.

With that, here is “TBT^2: Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus“:

Read More »

Guest Post: The Year Before the Year After Next Year

The Portly Politico2 Comments

This week is unofficially “Ponty Week 2023,” as good old Ponty/Always a Kid for Today sent me three excellent pieces over the long July Fourth week (his third will pop this Friday).  It’s great to see one of our most steadfast and lively contributors back on the blog.

It’s interesting to think that The Age of The Virus, which so dominated our lives and thoughts for nearly two years, now seems like a distant memory, a bad dream best forgotten when one wakes up, returning to one’s senses.  That is certainly how the worst of the self-proclaimed public health czars and czarinas hope we will regard it:  a well-intentioned nightmare that we needn’t talk about any further.  They know they eroded civil liberties, wrecked the economy, and made anyone without a diaper on their face feel like crap, all over a highly survivable virus.  Better to sweep all that under the rug and let bygones be bygones.  Forgive and forget, right?

We can forgive individuals—we all had family members who hysterically insisted that flimsy paper masks would save us from ourselves—but we should never forget the heavy toll of our public health tyranny.  As Ponty points out, they’re going to try it again, and it’s going to be worse next time.

It is perhaps a bit conspiratorial (and even hysterical on my part), but I sincerely believe The Age of The Virus was a test-run for the End Times Beast system.  Just as people willingly lined up for The Vaccine, which was promised to be the ticket to a normal life, people will line up to take the Antichrist’s Mark so they can continue shopping at Niemann Marcus.  What is one’s eternal soul when there is a sale on capris?

Even if I am wrong about that particular claim, The Age of The Virus was certainly a trial run to see how obedient we’d all be.  The answer, sadly, was, “very.”  Sure, we had some ructions after the first month or so of the “two weeks to flatten the curve,” but most Americans went along sheepishly with the dictates.  Yours portly wore his mask as little as possible, but even I took two shots of The Vaccine (not because I wanted to be “normal” again, but because I didn’t know any better at the time—and I should have!).

Ponty argues that inquiries into The Age of The Virus in Britain serve no purpose other than to strengthen the regime the next time around.  I think he is only missing one point:  these inquiries remind us, the sane, about what they did to us.  We should never let them get away with it again.

With that, here is Ponty’s “The Year Before the Year After Next Year”:

Read More »

Open Mic Adventures XXXIX: “(I’m in the) Business of Love)”

The Portly Politico4 Comments

After a brief hiatus, I’m back with more tasty jams.  I’ve dedicated this summer’s open mic excursions to performing my “deep cuts,” which is a bit of a misnomer, as most of these tunes have never been “cut” to  a recording at all!  Fortunately, I need constant content to feed the insatiable appetite of the YouTube beast, so it gives me a good excuse to play these forgotten pieces.

I wrote “(I’m in the) Business of Love” back on 7 February 2019, one week out from Valentine’s Day.  The song is about the woes of a “beta male provider” who is just looking for a little “transactional romance.” Is there any topic more tragically postmodern than that of the “nice guy” finishing dead last in the reproductive sweepstakes? This song is a humorous exploration of that phenomenon.

Read More »

Monday Morning Movie Review: Guest Post: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Good old Pontifex Maximus has returned from self-imposed exile with a trio of posts, all of which I’ll be posting throughout this week and the next.  The first of these is a dual movie review of two remake/sequels of the 1995 classic Jumanji, a flick that was both fun and terrifying to a then-ten-year old yours portly.

The film was remade/reimagined in 2017 as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and followed by a sequel in 2019, Jumanji: The Next Level.  Ponty gives both films a thorough treatment, and readers will be pleasantly surprised to know that, unlike many reboots of classic IPs from the 1980s and 1990s, these films don’t flounder.

With that, here are Ponty’s reviews of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle andJumanji: The Next Level:

Read More »

Lazy Sunday CCXI: Greatest Hits Recap

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

I’m really embracing maximum laziness lately.  Sure, I’m being productive around the house and what not, but the week after the Fourth has proven to be one of the slowest of the year.  It’s been nice.

So, after a week off from most new posts, I’m making this a particularly lazy edition of Lazy Sunday:  I’m going to recap the four “Greatest Hits” posts from last week:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Chicago

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.

Here at The Portly Politico, I like to roleplay as some kind of Jeffersonian country squire, overseeing my little homestead while contemplating the grape harvest.  As much as I love living in a small, country town, yours portly is not immune to the allure of the big city.

Naturally, I have little desire to live in one, and most certainly not the one that is the topic of today’s post.  However, there is a vibrancy and energy to large cities that is intoxicating, especially for those of an artistic bent.  Cities can be cesspools of crime, homelessness, and progressive politics, but they also pulse with an electric creativity and a sense of hustle—everyone is working hard to survive and create in a sea of humanity.

Granted, I don’t want to live in an overpriced shoebox, isolated by the sheer size of that very sea.  Some people thrive in that environment, while others should probably live on forty acres in the woods somewhere.  The rest of us are somewhere in the middle.  Most Americans don’t want to live like lab rats in an urban playground.

All that aside, cities are cool—the seats of civilization, as Milo once argued.  Despite its crime-ridden reputation, I think Chicago, Illinois makes for a good illustration of cities as the centers of art and architecture—of civilization.  After all, what is a civilization but the expression of its cultural achievements?  Few cities exemplify achievements in architecture more than that great epicenter of nineteenth-century America, Chicago.

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

TPP’s Greatest Hits, Track IV: Tom Steyer’s Belt

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

After MAGAWeek2023 and my extended time out of town, I’ve decided to take this week to rerun some classic hits from the extensive TPP back catalog.  Most of the posts are those with very high view counts, though I am presenting them in no particular order.  TBT will proceed as usual, and regular posts will resume Saturday, 15 July 2023.

With that, here is 30 September 2019’s “Tom Steyer’s Belt“—the most viewed post on the blog:

Read More »

TBT^2: Big News: TPP is Going to the Dogs

The Portly Politico8 Comments

It’s hard to believe, but I got my old dog, Murphy, about two years ago.  She was eight at the time, and now is ten.

She’s a stubborn old girl, but I love her.  She is a chunky lady, and enjoys spending her time gnawing on a rawhide and hanging out with me.

Murphy’s recent bloodwork shows that she is in good health, although she and I both need to lose a few pounds.  Otherwise, she is my sweet chocolate chunklet (as I call her), and she’s been a good first dog.

With that, here is 21 July 2022’s “TBT: Big News: TPP is Going to the Dogs“:

Read More »

TPP’s Greatest Hits, Track III: Napoleonic Christmas

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

After MAGAWeek2023 and my extended time out of town, I’ve decided to take this week to rerun some classic hits from the extensive TPP back catalog.  Most of the posts are those with very high view counts, though I am presenting them in no particular order.  TBT will proceed as usual, and regular posts will resume Saturday, 15 July 2023.

With that, here is 23 December 2019’s “Napoleonic Christmas“:

Read More »