Category: TBT

TBT: Lazy Sunday LIX: The God Pill Series

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Former pick-up artist and born-again Orthodox Christian Roosh V has a new book out about his miraculous conversion away from a life of casual sex to a life devoted to serving Jesus Christ.  The book, American Pilgrim, is one-part travelogue, one-part social commentary, and one-part testimony (according to what I’ve read about the book; I hope to purchase my own copy soon).

To celebrate Roosh’s nearly-four-hundred-page release, I thought it would be worth dedicating this week’s TBT to looking back at The God Pill Series, a series of three posts about Roosh’s conversion.  Many of Roosh’s former colleagues in the PUA world were suspicious of his conversion, but I detected something deep and sincere in it—chiefly, because no one becomes a Christian in 2021 expecting to make more money (the primary charge being that Roosh was “reinventing” himself to cash in; unpublishing all of his pick-up books suggested otherwise).

So here’s to celebrating a new brother in Christ.  Here’s April 2020’s “Lazy Sunday LIX: The God Pill Series“:

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TBT: Populists and Elites

The Portly Politico3 Comments

One of the blessings of the Trump administration was that Trump reminded us how fun regular people are.  Sure, I love the symphony and all that stuff, but a representative government should be basically populist—it should care about the people it governs, and look out for their interests.  Leaders should reflect the people, not set themselves against the people.  At most, our officials should strive to set examples for how a good life can be lived.

The thrust of this piece—written one year ago today—is that elitism is shockingly ignorant:  it presumes that anything that does not interest the elitist is somehow barbaric and simplistic.  That our own elites embrace the vulgar and raise up vice as a virtue suggests their elitism is supremely misguided—or lacking entirely.

Few remember now Michael Bloomberg’s disastrous run for the Democratic primary last year—it was so long ago!—but it was the political embodiment of clueless elitism against Trumpian populism.  Bloomberg had the resources and the softly center-Left stance to buy himself into the White House, or at least the Democratic nomination, but he bungled it so badly, even his supporters were in awe of his ineptitude.

Well, now we have a senile, fraudulent feebster leading a puppet regime, so it seems gross incompetence is no longer a barrier to entry to the highest office in the land.  Perhaps a healthy dose of elitism is needed after all.

Regardless, here is 18 February 2021’s “Populists and Elites“:

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TBT: Romney’s Perfidy Runs in the Family

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As a bit of a mea culpa for my positive post about Mitt Romney’s pro-natalism plan, I thought I’d atone by looking back to one of my better posts:  a detailed rundown of the Romney family’s long history of waffling on important issues, and attempting to play both sides of the political spectrum simultaneously.

Romney’s father, George Romney, was one of a (thankfully) dying breed:  the Rockefeller Republicans.  These “moderate” and liberal Republicans essentially were a paler echo of the postwar Democratic Party:  they espoused heavy spending, government intervention, and socially progressive policies, just in a more toned-down manner than their more overtly progressive colleagues in the opposing party.

In this post, I review Romney the Elder’s infamous “brainwashing” interview, in which he claimed his earlier pro-Vietnam War position was due to a thorough “brainwashing” by the United States military.  It was a politically catastrophic and bizarre statement, and one that demonstrated yet another of Romney’s shifting positions to fit with the tenor and fashions of the time.

And so it continues with Romney the Younger, who voted this week to proceed with the farcical impeachment trial against a man who is no longer holding office.  Romney will yet again bask in temporary accolades for his “courage” and “bipartisanship” in the press, before they return to reviling him for being a Republican.

At this point, why can’t these Republican squishes—Romney, Murkowski, Collin, et. al.—just show their true colors and join the Democratic Party?

But I digress.  Here is 6 January 2019’s “Romney’s Perfidy Runs in the Family“:

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TBT: Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony

The Portly Politico3 Comments

I’ve been on a major classical and Romantic music kick lately, dedicating the last three Fridays specifically to the music of the Romantic Period (here, here, and here).

As such, I thought it would be apropos to look back at a piece I wrote last January about Beethoven and his masterful Sixth Symphony.  The occasion for that piece was the South Carolina Philharmonic‘s Sunday matinee performance of their popular Beethoven and Blue Jeans concert—back in The Before Times when we still had live music.  The program, as I wrote at the time, was “‘Beethoven’s Greatest Hits,'” featuring Beethy’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor and Symphony No. 6 in F Major.

The Sixth, often called the “Pastoral,” is one of my favorites.  I’m a sucker for programmatic music, and there are programmatic elements embedded in the titles of each of the symphony’s movements, but the music sounds like the countryside.

But I covered all of this a year ago, so why repeat myself (except that I’m doing that below… hmm…)?  Here is January 2020’s “Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony“:

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TBT: Lazy Sunday LXXXII: Universal Studios

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I’m on the road—yet again!—to Universal Studios, heading out this afternoon after a long day of mind-molding.  This trip will be my fifth in the last year, and my first of the calendar year.  I’ve certainly worn the magnetic strip down on this Season Pass.

Seeing as it’s TBT, I figured why not look back at the Lazy Sunday dedicated to my first two Universal Studios excursions of last year (you can read about the fourth trip, too)?  When I go out of town for a long weekend, I try to file posts in advance, and a catch-all Universal Studios TBT seems like a good way to go.

Here’s hoping I make it to Orlando alive—or, at the very least, awake.  Here’s “Lazy Sunday LXXXII: Universal Studios“:

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TBT: Gardening

The Portly Politico2 Comments

A post on gardening might be a strange pick for TBT in the dead of winter, but my mind has been on the topic more and more lately, both as a beautiful outdoor hobby and as a means of sustenance—even survival.  There’s also a spiritual element to feeling one’s own soil between one’s fingers.  I get a sense of deep satisfaction after pawing through the richness of my own land.

Perhaps I’m being overly Romantic, but planning and planting a garden is a wonderful experience.  I’m not very good at it, mind you (unlike my mother, who can make anything grow in any conditions, it seems), but I enjoy tackling the flower beds (just not enough to keep them free of weeds consistently).

As I noted Tuesday, I’ve become increasingly interested in investing in a solid cultivator and turning some my lawn into beds for vegetables.  A buddy of mine is keen on the idea, and has offered to help with his labor and some funds in exchange for a share of the crops (would that make him a sharecropper, essentially renting my land and giving me some of the fruits of his labor?).  I think it would be a fun, albeit time-consuming, project, but one worthwhile.

Another friend of mine has been slowly turning his postage stamp backyard into a thriving organic garden for years now.  He’s been growing without fertilizer so that the soil can build back up essential nutrients and fertility.  Apparently, fertilizer yields great resorts in the short-term, but it doesn’t help the soil replenish its fertility.  He’s taking the long, slow approach, but he’s gradually turning that Midlands Carolina clay into rich topsoil.

There’s so much I don’t know about this process, but at the same time, my thought is, “dig in.”  I already buried last year’s Jack O’Lanterns and seeds near my grapevines—why not?  Maybe I’ll get lucky and get some pumpkins.  Worst-case, my grapevines get some more nutrients.

Or it could all just be an expensive boondoggle.  We’ll see.  My results this past Labor Day weekend were pretty good, so I’m feeling optimistic.

With that, here is 2019’s “Gardening“:

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TBT: Warrior for Life

The Portly Politico2 Comments

South Carolina has a reputation for orneriness—we were the first State to secede from the Union in 1860, after all, and threatened to do it nearly thirty years earlier, during the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33—and it seems our Catholic priests are particularly prone to use their pulpits to prescribe some red-pills.  Priest Jeffrey Kirby delivered a fiery homily warning that with Biden’s election, the Church faces real persecution in the days ahead, and scolded parishioners who cast their votes for Biden as betraying their Catholic faith:

Priests and preachers usually shy away from overtly political sermons, but we’re overdue for some Truth.  We’re not discussing Democrats versus Republicans anymore; we’re talking about electing Evil—those that flaunt their desire to slay the unborn—and even the recently born!—and celebrate every opportunity they can force us to accept another progressive indignity.  Trannies reading storybooks to four-year olds isn’t a “blessing of liberty,” per wincing, politically-correct, noodle-wristed, mainstream Evangelical David French—it’s an assault on our values and our culture.  If they can make us accept something so ridiculous and patently unnatural—wicked!—then it puts that wedge in the door to pry it open to all manner of government-sanctioned evil.

Father Kirby’s bold sermon reminded me of another great warrior for Christ—and for Life:  Father Robert “Bob” Morey.  Father Bob is less bombastic in his denunciation of evil, but he is nonetheless a true warrior for his Faith.  In October 2019, Father Bob declined to give Joe Biden Holy Communion due to Biden’s pro-abortion—pro-infanticide, I should write—stance.

As such, I thought it would be a good time to look at Father Bob’s bold stance for life in this week’s TBT.  Here is October 2019’s “Warrior for Life“:

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TBT: Dawn of a Decade

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It’s the first Thursday of 2021, so here we are with the first TBT of the year!  Fittingly, I’m looking back to the first post of 2020, “Dawn of Decade.”  As I noted at the time, the decade really began on 1 January 2021, so I suppose this throwback post works even better now.

In looking back at this post, it’s sobering to consider how much difference a year can make.  At the end of this post, I wrote, “Predictions being what they are—extremely unreliable—I’ll make a bold one:  2020 is going to be a great year.”

Yikes!  Talk about missing the mark big time.  Of course, on 1 January 2020, everything was going pretty well, at least for yours portly.  Sure, Trump was facing a sham impeachment, but the economy was swingin’.  I’d just come off my best year financially in terms of musical proceeds—enough to pay cash for my plucky 2017 Nissan Versa Note (a fitting model for a music teacher), and was booking some gigs at fun new venues.

Then, of course, The Virus changed everything, possibly forever.  Despite that, I still had a great year—reconnecting with friends and family; traveling far more extensively than normal; and diving more into my love of music.  It was just a very different year than I anticipated.

At the end of least year’s post, I included a word total for the year 2019 (which now WordPress tells me is slightly higher than I reported originally:  232,348 words total for 2019), so I’ll do the same for 2020.  In 2020, I wrote 253,377 words.  Assuming a page of double-text, size-12, Times New Roman font typing is roughly 300 words per page, that comes out to a whopping 844.59 pages of writing.

Granted, some of that is from TBT posts like this one, but the takeaway for me is that it’s time to compile some essays into ebooks.  Cha-ching!

With that, here is 1 January 2020’s “Dawn of a Decade“:

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TBT: The Worst of 2019

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Well, 2020 is, after today, in the books, and we can breathe a collective sigh of relief.  Of course, all the problems of 31 December 2020 will still be there tomorrow when we wake up to 1 January 2021, but there is some optimism that an arbitrary flip of the calendar based on the Earth’s rotation around the Sun will set us up for a better calendar year.  With Biden the Usurper assuming the throne in twenty-one days, I don’t share in that optimism, but I’m looking forward to a music- and art-filled 2021 nonetheless.

At the end of 2019, I painstakingly went through the stats to find all the posts I’d written with just one view in 2019—the ultimate reminder to be humble, and to not expect huge pageviews right away.  I imagine that some of these were read in e-mails sent to followers, so I don’t get pageview counts for those, but that means the number of eyeballs reading these posts was depressingly low.

Of course, it being a Thursday, I pretty much have to give myself the easy way out and feature a TBT, so why not look back at the failures of a prior year?  And, in the spirit of yuletide wealth redistribution, maybe we can show these posts some holiday love.

Here is 31 December 2019’s “The Worst of 2019“:

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