Month: March 2024

TBT^2: Inspector Gerard eBook is Coming 1 April 2021 (Out NOW in Paperback)!

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It’s hard to believe that I released The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot three years ago (well, almost three years ago—give it another couple of weeks).  It was my first foray into self-publishing, and it was a fun experience.  I still need to go back and edit some of the embarrassing typographical and grammatical errors in the book, which I will get around to doing eventually.

Since then I’ve released a second book, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.  It has not done as well as Inspector Gerard, but at the time of writing, Amazon has it marked down to $11.16 for the paperback version.  That is a steal, as the list price is usually $20, so it’s 44% off.  It’s actually a pretty good book.  Of course, I’m biased.

This week is testing for middle school students at my school, and it was during this same testing week in 2021 and again in 2023 that I slapped together my books.  There’s something about having that extra hour or two a day without my Middle School Music Ensemble class that makes it feasible for me to compile and edit my writings into book form.  I am currently working on my third book, Offensive Poems: With Pictures, but I’m not sure if I’ll manage to get it written and edited this week, even with the extra time.

Still, I hope that by the time you’re reading this post that I’ll have put a dent into it.  The biggest challenge is going to be converting all of the hand-drawn pictures into a digital format.  I imagine the formatting of the entire book will be a huge headache, but it’s just a matter of making the appropriate sacrifices to Microsoft Word and Kindle Direct Publishing.

With that, here is 23 March 2023’s “TBT: Inspector Gerard eBook is Coming 1 April 2021 (Out NOW in Paperback)!“:

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McDonald’s: A Vision of Our Dystopian Future

The Portly Politico11 Comments

Ever since The Age of The Virus, I’ve noticed a general decline in the quality and value of dining and amenities.  Every restaurant, hotel, airline, and putt-putt golf course used The Virus as an excuse to trim out all of those little “extras” that we did not consider as such, those little dashes of additional service or product that made visits to these places memorable.  Things like peanuts at corporate steakhouses, or regular cleaning of your linens at hotels (apparently, towels aren’t even a given anymore).  Meanwhile, prices at all of these businesses have increased, far outstripping “official” inflation numbers.

We all know that is true; furthermore, we all know it already.  But what if we look at the lowest common denominator, the dregs of these businesses?  What if we look at fast food?

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Open Mic Adventures LXXIII: “Blue Mage”

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On 2 May 2024—the day that is exactly twenty-six weeks, or halfway, to Halloween—I’ll be releasing Four Mages, a color-coded collection of fantasy-inspired instrumental music.  I’m really excited for this release (which consists of ten tracks, not just the four mages of the title), and I hope it will capture imaginations with its whimsical, mysterious, fantastical feel.

The first piece I composed for the album is today’s feature, “Blue Mage.”  I then immediately composed “Red Mage,” its companion piece, which I will feature next week.  Honestly, I like “Red Mage” better, but “Blue Mage” captures the more mystical, esoteric side of this album.  “Red Mage,” on the other hand, is more lively and whimsical.

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Lazy Sunday CXLII: Murphy Vids, Part I

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I’ve been posting videos of Murphy to my YouTube channel, and they’ve been catching on quite nicely.  It seems that narrating my fat dog’s antics is an easy way to distract people from their bitter ennui for a few seconds—or, you know, people just like cute dogs.

Whatever the case, I’m never one to work harder than necessary, so I’ve been posting compilations of Murphy’s videos to this humble blog.  Now I’m sharing the first three of these posts here.

“Where are the links to the videos, Port?” I hear you cry.  Reposting them here defeats the point of Lazy Sunday.  So click on the original posts and find three succulent videos each—a total of nine toothsome morsels of canine cantankerousness:

Happy Sunday—and Happy Viewing!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Advanced Funkification

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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.

My forays into avant-garde, self-indulgent composing continues unabated.  While I have not been able to do as much of it the past two weeks, I did manage to jot down some funky grooves.

I made it out to open mic night this past Tuesday, 12 March 2024 for the first time in a very long time.  It was a serendipitous evening:  two of my former students were in attendance, both on their respective college’s spring breaks.  One was busking his way from Maine down to Savannah, Georgia, before heading back up the East Coast—a very interesting, albeit exhausting, adventure.  The other was decompressing in a more traditional fashion, rusticating at his parents’ place while recovering from a very difficult semester.  My jaundiced eye picked up right away that he is burned out.

So is yours portly.  My Spring Break can’t get here fast enough, but it’s still two weeks in the future.  I have hit that point in the school year where the neediness and learned helplessness of modern teenagers is wearing on me, and while I love all of my students, I’m ready to have a few days of not seeing them.

But I digress.  During open mic, I popped open my music journal and, in some bits of staff paper not covered over with notes from lessons, jotted down some funky lines:

“Open Mic Funk I” Original Manuscript, 12 March 2024
“Open Mic Funk II” Original Manuscript, 12 March 2024
“Open Mic Funk IIII” Original Manuscript, 12 March 2024

During a blessed half-day Wednesday (during which we had intermittent parent-teacher conferences in the afternoon), I plugged these rhythms into NoteFlight, and managed to arrange three groovy tracks.

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

Phone it in Friday LV: YouTube Roundup XI: Bull Terrier Edition, Part III

The Portly Politico6 Comments

My humble YouTube channel has been thriving of late (112 subscribers at the time of writing, largely due to Murphy‘s popularity.  It turns out people love dogs—who knew?

So I’m keeping a good thing going and continuing my Attenborough-esque “documentaries” of Murphy’s amusing habits.  Here we’ll see her at night, at home, and in the early morning.

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TBT^16: Nehemiah and National Renewal

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Ah, yes—Nehemiah.  One of my favorite books of the Bible.  What’s not to like?  A group of scrappy underdogs work together against the machinations of their enemies to build a wall.  They do it by trusting God.

When I first wrote this post way back in 2019, my most religious readers were quick to point out that, while I focused on Nehemiah building the wall, I skimped out on discussing God’s Role.  It was a fair, if slightly self-righteous, criticism.  Without God, there would have been no rebuilding of the wall.

That’s an important point:  without God, any “national renewal” would be fleeting, if it were possible at all.  Thank you to my slightly self-righteous readers for reminding me of that fact.

With that, here is 30 March 2023’s “TBT^4: Nehemiah and National Renewal“:

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1900 Days

The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s hard to believe, but yours portly has been blogging daily (albeit with some occasional placeholder posts) for 1900 consecutive days.  That’s 5.2054794520547945205479452054795 years, according to my calculator.

It’s been a fun 5.205 years.  We’ve laughed.  We’ve cried.  We’ve disagreed.

What started as a thirty-day challenge to myself—before I even knew “Bloganuary” was a thing—has morphed into a long, strange trip.

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