Category: SubscribeStar Saturday

Delayed SubscribeStar Saturday Today: Migraine

The Portly Politico1 Comment

SubscribeStar Saturday is going to be delayed today, likely until tomorrow.  Earlier in the week I came down with a mild stomach virus.  That morphed into what may have been a mild fever—I’m not sure—and, around Thursday, sharp, stabbing pains on the right side of my head.

I thought I was suffering caffeine withdrawals, as I stopped drinking coffee after Thursday morning when I suffered some lingering side effects of the stomach bug, and also because I was struggling with terrible acid reflux that night.

After treating my caffeine addiction with some Diet Pepsi (which I called my “methadone treatments”)—and then returning to a weak couple of cups of coffee this morning—failed to resolve the issues, I began to despair.  Every thirty to sixty seconds I was getting sharp, painful stabs just above and behind my right ear, and even ibuprofen, that wonder drug, failed to have any effect.

Finally, my dear mom suggested I probably had a migraine, and I needed to lie down in a dark room.  That almost immediately provided blessed relief after nearly forty-eight hours.  I am typing this brief post with “Night Mode” enabled in Windows 10, which cuts the harsh blue light, and wearing sunglasses; I have not experienced a single “spike” while typing it.

Hopefully I’ll be back on the mend tomorrow—which I’ve been saying everyday since Tuesday.

Thanks for your patience.

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Graduation Day Wisdom

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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.  NEW TIER: $3 a month gets one edition of Sunday Doodles every month!

Today marks graduation for the private school where I teach.  For the first time in my teaching career, attendance at graduation is option for faculty and graduates, except for “essential personnel.”  I’m The Sound Guy, so I’m essential.  On the plus side, I’ve rigged up my Yamaha mixer in the teacher’s lounge, so I’ll be chilling—literally—in air-conditioned comfort while my colleagues are sweating it on the front lawn.

We’re conducting one of the first major graduation ceremonies in The Age of The Virus in our region, so the school is going to great lengths to make the graduation as safe and socially distant as possible.  They’re spreading everyone out over a yuge front law and capping attendees to four per graduate.  Everyone’s wearing face masks (facial freedom is another benefit of being alone and inside behind my Wizard of Oz curtain).  Our Buildings & Grounds crew has been working hard all week to make everything look immaculate, and I pre-rigged cables earlier in the week.

With today being Graduation Day, I thought I’d do as so many other unqualified individuals have done and offer up my nuggets of wisdom to the Class of 2020:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Conservative Revolution

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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.  NEW TIER: $3 a month gets one edition of Sunday Doodles every month!

Friday’s post, “The Cultural Consequences of the American Civil War,” has enjoyed more traffic than my usual posts thanks to a.) the controversial topic of the American Civil War (gasp!—someone’s not denouncing the South!) and b.) and Dr. Rachel Fulton Brown graciously sharing the post far and wide.  Thanks, Doc!

It’s put me in a bit of a historical mood.  In history, the important points—the Truth—is often in the details, but I’ve always appreciated the contemplation of the philosophical implications of historical events.  Thus, my mini-essay on the American Civil War focused more on the cultural and political costs of the war than the nitty-gritty details.

The costs were, of course, considerable.  Historians of a conservative bent will sometimes refer to “reconstitutions” in United States history, with the Progressive Era and its immediate offspring, the New Deal, often cited as a major “reconstitution.”  The 1964 Civil Rights Act, which elevated anti-racism and social justice above the freedom of association, was another such reconstitution.

Similarly, the American Civil War, as I detailed yesterday, resulted in a reconstitution of the Constitution, as it served to centralize more power in the hands of the federal government, curtailing States’ rights in the process.

An observant reader will note that each of these “reconstitutions” reflected some revolutionary fervor or upheaval:  the horror of war, the agitation of Progressive reformers, the privations of the Depression, and the struggle for equal rights.  They almost all resulted in an increase in federal power, too, often to intrusive degrees.  In each instance, the ratchet turned towards more centralization and fewer liberties overall.

But the American Revolution—which made the Constitution possible—is nearly unique in the annals of modern history—much less American history—in that it was a conservative revolution.  That is, it was a revolution that sought to conserve—or, perhaps more accurately, to preserve—a set of traditions and privileges, rather than to tear them up, root and branch.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Liberty and Safety

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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.  NEW TIER: $3 a month gets one edition of Sunday Doodles every month!

Every liberty-loving American can recall Benjamin Franklin’s famous quip that “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”  It’s become also cliched to quote Franklin, but those words bear repeating, cliched or not, in The Age of The Virus.

The response to The Virus has been something akin to mass social and economic suicide, coupled with plenty of scorn for those not willing to go along with the kabuki theatre of our national hara-kiri.  It seems that the early attempts at “flattening the curve” have worked at preventing hospitals from turning away afflicted patients, so much so that our hero nurses and doctors are staging elaborate Internet dance routines (and yet will also be the first to urge us to take their advice to shut everything down forever).

What I’m beginning to realize is that people truly fear The Virus.  I don’t just mean they’re worried about getting it—I certainly don’t want to succumb to it—they’re worried about dying from it.  That’s not an unrealistic concern for the elderly or those with preexisting health conditions, but I think that fear runs deeper.

Consider:  the people most hysterically concerned with The Virus, in general, are deep progressives.  Progressivism, at bottom, is a materialist philosophy:  it can only conceive of existence in this realm.  That’s not to say it isn’t a religion; rather, it’s a religion without an afterlife.  That’s why progressives spend so much time attempting to create Heaven on Earth—to immanentize the eschaton, as William F. Buckley, Jr., warned us not to do.

It’s an ideology that constantly sacrifices the good to the perfect, because anything less than perfection isn’t paradise.  And because there is no life after this one, the fear of death takes on a terrifying new dimension.  Coupled with progressives’ lust for power and perpetual revolution, and you have half of the population ready to sacrifice everything—including liberty—to appease The Virus.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Making Music

The Portly Politico2 Comments

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.  NEW TIER: $3 a month gets one edition of Sunday Doodles every month!

The past few days I’ve really been pushing my music (see here and here), mainly because Bandcamp waived the commission it takes on sales of musicians’ work yesterday (1 May 2020).  They’re foregoing their cut again the first Friday of June 2020, so I’ll likely be pimping out my electronic ditties again in a month (although, of course, feel free to pick up tunes any time).

I’ve maintained that Bandcamp site the better part of a decade, and until this week, I hadn’t made a single sale.  Perhaps the poor-mouthing about the impact of The Virus on musicians opened hearts and wallets.  To those of you that did purchase my work—I sold seven copies of my full discography (seven releases available now for $15.75), with many buyers paying more than the minimum—I offer a big and hearty THANK YOU.  Seriously, you have no idea what a morale boost it is to have your support.

As for the poor-mouthing, one of the lessons I’ve learned about music is that fans aren’t buying the music, per se, although that does have to be good; rather, they’re buying you and your story.  It’s a frustration for many artistic types that they labor over their art, putting all of their heart, soul, sweat, and blood into it, only to see people more interested in their personal lives than their music.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Reflections on Distance Learning: First Month Review

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Pick up my latest release, The Lo-Fi Hymnal, for just $4 (or name your own price).

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.  NEW TIER: $3 a month gets one edition of Sunday Doodles every month!

Well, The Virus saw its shadow, so it’s four more weeks of distance learning, at least here in South Carolina.  It was Sunday, 15 March 2020 when South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster closed all schools throughout the State effective the next day, Monday, 16 March 2020.  That day I wrote about “Transitioning to Distance Learning,” which was an unprecedented move.

I’m fortunate in that I’ve been adjunct teaching online since 2015, and am comfortable maneuvering a “VLE”—a “virtual learning environment,” as the cool kids call it.  My school has been delivering assignments and other content via Google Classroom for years, too, so the infrastructure was already in place.

Now we’re five weeks (four if you deduct a week-and-change of Spring Break) into this unplanned, partially ad-libbed experiment in distance learning, which was initially only supposed to last two weeks.  With another four weeks to go (although two of those weeks are, essentially, exam-oriented, so actual instructional time is closer to two weeks remaining), we’re halfway through this process.

It’s the perfect moment to evaluate how digital learning is going.  Looking back at my first day and first week reflections, it’s interesting to see what is still true, and what has changed.  A colleague of mine remarked yesterday that it’s like learning to fly a plane while it’s already in the air; naturally, some tweaks and adjustments have occurred along the way.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Productivity in The Age of The Virus

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Pick up my latest release, The Lo-Fi Hymnal, for just $4 (or name your own price).

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.  NEW TIER: $3 a month gets one edition of Sunday Doodles every month!

My precious, teacherly Spring Break is drawing to a close, but unlike past years, it doesn’t have quite the same sensation as usual—that distinct combination of excitement that summer is near, and the dread that the school calendar is open sailing, like a dinghy adrift in the middle of the Pacific.  There’s no land in sight for weeks, your sails are tattered, the crew is on the verge of mutiny, but you all know that you’ll reach Cathay soon enough.

Instead, it’s just going to be a resumption of distance learning.  The mutinous crew members are divided up into their own separate lifeboats, waiting for my captainly orders to arrive in a digital floating bottle every morning.  Meanwhile, I’m still back on Fiji, drinking pineapple juice and avoiding getting eaten by the natives.

One quality of the digital age—and especially The Age of The Virus—is that work life bleeds inexorably into non-work life.  I resented this feature of our connected age when I was putting on hour-long historical stand-up routines for disinterested sophomores for six hours a day—one can never truly escape work now.  Now, it’s just a part of our lives, like cybernetic implants in Neuromancer.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Easter Weekend

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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.

It’s Easter Weekend 2020!  As I wrote on Wednesday, it doesn’t feel like Easter.  It will definitely be weird not waking up, getting all dressed up, and going to service at a packed church tomorrow morning.  Of course, many faithful Americans are planning on doing that, even in defiance of various States’ shutdown orders—more power to ’em!  No State can constitutionally shutdown religious services.  Naturally, you can elect not to attend—probably advisable.

That’s a point that people often miss about the Constitution.  There are tons of activities and laws that are constitutionally admissible—really, our entire legal system is built on the premise of “ask forgiveness, not permission,” as nothing is considered illegal unless explicitly forbidden (that’s the very simple explanation, anyway)—but that doesn’t mean every constitutional action is also a smart one.  The late Justice Antonin Scalia quipped that he wished he’d had a giant rubber stamp that read, “Stupid, but Constitutional.”

But I digress.  In the wake of this decidedly un-Eastery Easter, I thought I’d write a bit about my family has been celebrating in lieu of the traditional observance.

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Yet Another Monday Morning Appeal

The Portly Politico14 Comments

If you don’t want to read all of this post and just want to get the point where you give me your money via my SubscribeStar Page, here is the TL;DR pre-summary of the post below:

  • For $1/month, you get exclusive posts every Saturday.
  • For $3/month, you get the exclusive Saturday posts, and one edition of Sunday Doodles each month.
  • For $5/month, you get exclusive Saturday posts and Sunday Doodles every Sunday, as well as random exclusive content.
  • You can also subscribe at $10/month or, if you’re just looking to give me money, $50/month.  I’ll probably come wash your car (or call you and talk politics and culture) for that much.  Yeesh!

Last week I made another appeal for subscribers to my SubscribeStar Page.  Not wanting to write about the coronavirus—again—I decided to break my self-imposed “once-every-six-months” rule to bring you another shameless appeal for your support, because it didn’t work last week.

To sweeten the pot, I’m going to include some of the whimsical doodles that, up to this point, only $5 or higher subscribers can view.  These are my Sunday Doodle posts, of which there are currently twenty-two editions.

Here is a sample of the instantly classic artwork you’re missing:

Kung-Flu
Rose-Tinted Glasses
The Toxic Drooler
The COOL Wal-Mart Greeter
Fancy Boy
Chinaman

To make it even more compelling, I’ve introduced a new $3 tier, “Fried Bologna.”  At that level, you’ll get all the great SubscribeStar Saturday posts of the $1 level, plus one monthly edition of Sunday Doodles (along with the $5 subscribers).

To recap:

  • For $1/month, you get exclusive posts every Saturday.
  • For $3/month, you get the exclusive Saturday posts, and one edition of Sunday Doodles each month.
  • For $5/month, you get exclusive Saturday posts and Sunday Doodles every Sunday, as well as random exclusive content.
  • You can also subscribe at $10/month or, if you’re just looking to give me money, $50/month.

These are tough times, so any support you can muster is appreciated.  If you are already a subscriber, thank you so much, and please send forward this post to friends and family that might be interested.  If not, please consider subscribing—even $1/month helps immensely.

Thank you again, and have a wonderful Monday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Hammer Films

The Portly Politico3 Comments

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.

The Age of the Virus has demanded a unique sacrifice of all us, one that is fitting for our reduced age.  Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers stormed the beaches of Normandy and fought in the jungles of Iwo Jima.  They and their parents endured the Great Depression (we may be facing a similar struggle).  They sacrificed in blood, sweat, and toil.

All The Virus demands of us—the great sacrifice we all must make, of which we will tell our grandchildren, when they ask about the plague—is that we stay at home and watch movies.

It’s amusing.  Commentators will often quip that Americans today couldn’t make the sacrifices of the so-called “Greatest Generation.”  God surely has a sense of humor, for the sacrifices we’re asked to make are ones in which Americans are well-trained:  sit around, eat junk food, don’t visit other people, and veg out in front of the tube.

To that end, I’ve been engaged in my civic duty this week, as I’ve watched nine films.  Four are from the Boris Karloff & Bela Lugosi 4-Movie Horror Collection, which I will write about in more detail another time (it’s only $10, and I highly recommend picking it up for The Black Cat alone—and the other films on it are good, too).

But the focus of this SubscribeStar Saturday will be another collection of B-horror flicks:  the Hammer Films Collection.  No, it’s not the Ultimate Hammer Collection, which I thought I didn’t know existed, but it turns out it’s on my Amazon wish list!).  But it does have five excellent, macabre films (I also didn’t realize that my Hammer Films Collection is merely the first volume; Volume II is now on my Amazon wish list for future purchase).

So, prepare yourself for my review of The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, Stop Me Before I Kill!, Scream of Fear!, The Gorgon, and The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb.

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