Category: Reblogged

TBT^4: SimEarth

The Portly Politico27 Comments

May.  It’s the superfluous final month of school.  There’s not enough time to cover any new content, but too much time to launch right into exam review.  The result:  an odd limbo in which neither students or teachers wish to dwell.  It’s the time of year when everyone is in on the game of modern education—we’d all be better off doing and being somewhere else, but we’re still going through the rituals of an industrial-era factory.

Naturally, with summer looming, I’m getting the itch to do some gaming again.  Since finishing Disco Elysium a few weeks ago, I have not played any game deeply.  I did purchase Planescape: Torment, the spiritual ancestor of DE, but only managed to get in about an hour of playtime.  One of my students asked me earlier this week about Stardew Valley, which I played religiously for about two weeks in probably 2013.  That’s a modern classic I want to dust off soon.

As for the ostensible subject of this post, my forays into SimEarth have been nonexistent since those halcyon days of May 2020, when America’s love affair with The Virus was in full swing.  Being cooped up in the house got me nostalgic for the classics, but I need to revisit the planet simulator soon.

Big plans for the summer.  If I play all these games as planned, my eyeballs might fall out.

With that, here is 11 May 2023’s “TBT^2: SimEarth“:

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Lazy Sunday CXLVII: Mothers

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It’s Mother’s Day here in the United States.  I’m excited to celebrate with my awesome Mom today, as well as my sister-in-law, who is also an awesome mom.

In the long annals of TPP history, it seems I’ve only written one Mother’s Day-related post, and haven’t really written about mothers at all.  Considering I’m a single man, that’s probably not surprising; it might be weird if I had written more about moms.

As such, I’ve just got two posts to share this Sunday, and one is definitely a stretch:

Happy Sunday—and Happy Mother’s Day!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT^4: Egged Off

The Portly Politico5 Comments

In a better, vanished era, eggs were cheap.  At one point, you could get eighteen eggs here in South Carolina for around $0.89-$1.19.  I’m not talking about the 1980s; this was four or five years ago.

Fortunately, it looks like chickens might soon be legal in my town, thanks in part to the efforts of yours portly, but mostly because everyone is feeling squeamish about cracking down (no pun intended) on “illegal” fowl in the city limits.  Hopefully I’ll have a full report next week.

Let a thousand eggs scramble, I say.  People need relief.  Cheap eggs and abundant fertilizer can only help.

With that, here is 4 May 2023’s “TBT^2: Egged Off“:

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Lazy Sunday CXLVI: Ultra Laziness

The Portly Politico2 Comments

In the past week I’ve had three posts that were, essentially, non-posts.  In an effort to get back on schedule while also embracing this recent bout of exhaustion-induced laziness, I’ve decided to turn this weekend’s installment of Lazy Sunday into an absurd metacommentary on not writing real blog posts:

  • “No Lazy Sunday Today” – Lazy Sunday somehow got even lazier.
  • “Nothing New” – There’s Phone it in Friday, then there’s nothing at all.  This post was right in between; at least, it was something about nothing.
  • “A Quick Update” – the most substantive of the lot.  See—I’m ramping back up to more real posts!

Have no fears, readers—I’ve just been extremely busy at work.  I’m talking ten-to-fifteen-hour days, everyday, since last Monday.  I took time Saturday to clean and get my house and vehicle in order, and made sure to take a very long nap.  Just gotta get through one more hump this Tuesday and things settle down quite a bit—for now.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT^2: Go to Church

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Church can be a beautiful thing.  Indeed, it should be—it’s the Body of Christ!  But many Christians are quitting church for various reasons.  The Age of The Virus gave everyone a taste of how the heathens live; unfortunately, too many Christians enjoyed it and dropped out of church almost entirely.

Perhaps the worst thing churches—and schools, and governments, and hospitals, and businesses, etc., etc., etc.—did during The Age of The Virus was to shutter their doors.  Churches should have been the last places to close down; during a pandemic, people needed access to their churches more than ever before, but the churches followed the world.  They’re suffering as a result now.

Granted, church attendance was on the decline In the Before Times, in The Long, Long Ago, before The Age of The Virus brought its authoritarian terrors.  The Plandemic was just the excuse to stop attending—“for safety!”—and it seems that many folks were not eager to return.  That’s a shame.  A church community provides so much, and while we can and should study Scripture on our own, we are part of a body.  An ear that hears but has no brain to process it or arms to react to the hearing is pretty useless.

So—go to church!

With that, here is 27 April 2023’s “TBT: Go to Church“:

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TBT^4: The Joy of Spring

The Portly Politico2 Comments

We’re enjoying a glorious Spring here in South Carolina, much like the Spring of 2020, which inspired the original in this chain of posts.  Other than a few bitterly cold and brutally hot days on either end of Easter, it’s been very pleasant—cool in the mornings, warm in the afternoons, with low humidity.  The nice weather and Pokémon Go have gotten me out in God’s Creation more than usual, and I’m enjoying its beauty while it’s still tolerable to do so.

With that, here is 20 April 2023’s “TBT^2: The Joy of Spring“:

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Lazy Sunday CXLV: Murphy Vids, Part II

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My fat dog Murphy is the gift that keeps on giving.  Well, actually, she’s a huge drain on my financial and temporal resources, but, hey, who can put a price tag on love?

But back to that gift giving comment.  Murphy does bring in the views to my YouTube channel, which—like most of my artistic endeavors—would probably be a massive flop if I didn’t have a cute, sassy, ornery dog to showcase to the content-hungry masses.

So, here are the three latest editions of Phone it in Friday featuring my lovable, stinky bull terrier, Murphy:

Happy Sunday—and Viewing!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

TBT^256: End the Income Tax

The Portly Politico5 Comments

It’s that time of year again, when yours portly yells impotently at the clouds and demands the end of the income tax.  Unlike prior years, yours portly actually got his taxes done relatively early (if you count early March as “relatively early”), and while I owed both Uncle Sam and the Great State of South Carolina a pound of flesh, I ended up getting away with only paying $54 total—woooooot!

Still, the annual ritual of telling the federal government how many miles I drove to music lessons and what I paid for WordPress is an odious and obnoxious reminder that the federal government dominates our lives and our personal information.  I recognize that taxes are a necessary evil, but let’s focus on the “evil” part of that equation.

I don’t know what the solution is, and I think the Republican Party has spent far too much time quibbling over the placement of commas in the tax code instead of fighting the necessary cultural battles in our nation, but tax reform should be a no-brainer.  Here’s the Portly Proposal:

  • Tax all income at 10%
  • Don’t tax interest earnings in savings accounts

That’s it!  Easy.  Cheap.  Everyone pays the same percentage.  Maybe—maybe!—have a carveout for people who earn, say, less than $20,000 a year—they pay, say, 5%, or even just 1%.  If people want to withhold from their paycheck, fine.  But there are no surprises—if you earn $2000 in March, you withhold $200.  At filing time, all that would be done is confirming you’ve paid your amount; if you overpaid on that first $20,000, then you’d get a refund.

Even that is more involved than I’d like, but it gives a bit of relief to the working poor.  Otherwise, no deductions, no carveouts, nothing.  There’s still an incentive to save, since no one pays for interest earned on savings accounts.

Yeah, yeah—you want to write off your $300,000 mortgage.  No.  Sorry—let’s not incentivize people to borrow huge amounts of money so they can save forty bucks on their taxes.

With that, here is 13 April 2023’s “TBT^16: End the Income Tax“:

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Lazy Sunday CXLIV: Four Mages, Part I

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Last week I released Leftovers II, and in just a few weeks I’ll release my next album, Four Mages (2 May 2024).  If you’d like to hear my latest release, you can do so here:

Readers might have noticed some of the colorful mages popping up over the last few weeks on this blog.  I’ve posted three of the Four Mages so far (“Black Mage” is coming this Tuesday, 9 April 2024—stay tuned!), so I thought I’d share them with y’all this Lazy Sunday:

  • “Open Mic Adventures LXXIII: ‘Blue Mage’” – “Blue Mage” is a duet for oboe and bassoon, built upon a mysterious whole tone scale. The piece is written in 5/8 time, further lending to the mystical feel of this magical journey.
  • “Open Mic Adventures LXXIV: ‘Red Mage’” – “Red Mage” is a mischievous and playful duet for oboe and bassoon. It is the companion piece to “Blue Mage.” The piece has a playful, mischievous feel, and I love how it sounds very much like it’s from a fantasy JRPG soundtrack.
  • “Open Mic Adventures LXXV: ‘White Mage’” – “White Mage” is a bright but flowing solo for flute with celesta accompaniment. A piano could be substituted in place of the celesta. It has a delightful Final Fantasy vibe.

Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments: