Lazy Sunday CXXXVI: YouTube Roundup Roundup I

I have a YouTube channel.  It’s hard to gauge these things, but it seems to be doing well.  My subscriber count has risen from around thirty last summer to—at the time of writing—fifty-six.  By the time you read this post, I’ll have close to 100 videos.  I’m not sure how many views I’ve garnered, but it’s decent for a tiny channel like mine.

So, in the spirit of promoting my channel and being lazy, here’s the first three installments of YouTube Roundup at your fingertips:

Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening/Viewing!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Back to the Mountains, Part I

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.

Three years ago my family took a trip to the mountains around Burnsville, North Carolina, to celebrate my older brother’s fortieth birthday.  I wrote about it extensively in my book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Stories (currently just $12.68 in paperback).  The area is truly lovely, and is very accessible from South Carolina.  Ever since that celebratory trip, I have been eager to return.

The long MLK Weekend—which yours portly extended by burning a personal day—offered the perfect opportunity to get back there.  My travel-loving flight attendant girlfriend and I were super excited to hit the road with Murphy for a few days of hiking, exploring, and good eating, and scored an excellent deal on three nights at a cabin/barndominium in the mountains.

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

Some of the links in this post are links through the Amazon Affiliate Program. If you make any purchase through these links, a small portion of the proceeds go to me, at no additional cost to you.

TBT: More Mountain Musings

Over MLK Weekend my girlfriend and I took the dogs up to around Mount Mitchell, high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia.

I love the mountains.  The mountains are in my blood, and although my home is the coastal South Carolina, every so often I need to baptize myself in the solitude and ruggedness of the Appalachian Mountains.

This trip was not my first to this region.  I went there four years ago to celebrate my older brother’s fortieth birthday.  Here’s a bit my travels during that trip.

With that, here is 21 September 2020’s “More Mountain Musings“:

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Memorable Monday: MLK Day 202[4]

I’m on my way back from a much-needed trip to the mountains, and I’m phoning this one in, folks.  It’s MLK Day here in the United States, which is like getting a bonus day of Christmas Break right after being off for however long it is.  It honestly feels a bit frivolous so soon after Christmas and New Year’s, but I’m sure it’s what the Reverend Doctor would have wanted.  He was, after all, a notorious libertine.

What would MLK have become had he lived?  My suspicion—a sad, jaded one—is that he would have gone the way of race hustlers since.  I do not think he was a race hustler, but I think he was starting to trend in that direction with his view on poverty, and for a man who clearly took advantage of his power to engage in some truly heinous sexual escapades, it’s not a big leap to assume he’d go full on Creflo Dollar eventually—or, more likely, full on Al Sharpton.  Yikes!

Regardless, his “dream” of a nation based on judgment of character and not skin color has not exactly come to fruition.  I mean, it did for about thirty years.  Ever heard of Lando Calrissian?  It seems like we had a good run from roughly 1980 until about 2010.  Now we’ve gone from trying to treat everyone as equals to privileging certain races over others.  Isn’t that what all those 1960s radicals fought so hard against?  Yet they’re the very ones celebrating the new apartheid.

Well, whatever.  I’m just a honkey enjoying a weekend in the mountains.

With that, here is January 2020’s “MLK Day 2020“:

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Lazy Sunday CXXXV: Best Myersvision Posts of 2023

After giving Ponty some love last week, I decided to do one more edition of Lazy Sunday highlighting the best-performing guest posts of 2023.  This time around, it is our dear Audre Myers, author of the Myersvision series of posts, enjoying the limelight.

Again, the usual notes:  these are not necessarily the best posts qualitatively—although they are quite excellent, as is all of Audre’s writing—but merely the Myersvision posts with the highest views.  Note that all of Audre’s writing deserves more clicks and views, so get to it!

  • Myersvision: Hoarders” (55 views) – Audre’s review of the A&E series Hoarders, which is such a sad but fascinating show.
  • Myersvision: ‘Ode to the PB&J’” (51 views) – Ponty somehow does not like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, so I asked Audre to set our boy straight with this bit of whimsical doggerel.
  • Myersvision: Theme Music” (35 views) – When she’s not waxing lyrical about sandwiches, Audre praises the great television theme music of our age.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Nativity Bricks Nativity Build and Review

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.

Back on Epiphany (6 January 2024) I built a Nativity from Nativity Bricks, a company that makes Christian-themed LEGO® knock-offs (I also composed an Epiphany-inspired original piano composition).

Nativity Bricks Nativity - Complete

The build was very good, and the quality was as close to LEGO® as I’ve seen from knock-off bricks. Seriously, I was blown away with how excellent the pieces were, and how intuitive the instructions were to follow. Most of these cheap copycat building blocks are just that—cheap. But Nativity Bricks’ pieces actually felt like LEGO® bricks. Even Mattel’s attempt to compete with LEGO®, Mega Bloks®, don’t stack up (no pun intended—hey-oh!).

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

Some of the links in this post are links through the Amazon Affiliate Program. If you make any purchase through these links, a small portion of the proceeds go to me, at no additional cost to you.

Phone it in Friday XLVIII: YouTube Roundup IV

Shockingly, I haven’t done an installment of YouTube Roundup since August 2023.  Since then, I’ve uploaded a ton of content, so it’s time to catch up on some videos.

I’ve selected three videos for this YouTube Roundup, all of a different type.  There’s a piece of music; a toy construction video; and something completely frivolous and fun:

Before we get to the videos, though, you should definitely subscribe to my YouTube channel.  I know for many readers, “subscribe” is a dirty word—God forbid we support our favorite content creators!—but trust me, it’s totally free to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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