Tag: ideas

Love Letters

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Last week I read Taki’s Magazine for the first time in awhile, and I’m glad I did.  The magazine’s owner and editor, Taki Theodoracopulos, wrote a piece entitled “A Love Letter to Love Letters,” about—in case it wasn’t clear—love letters.

I was on a letter writing kick a few years ago, as The Age of The Virus granted ample time to indulge in time-consuming hobbies.  I am still a proponent of writing handwritten letters, though I have not written nearly as many lately.

Taki’s piece, however, quite eloquently explains the appeal of writing letters.  While he focuses on love letters, his arguments apply to letters generally.

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March 2024 Bandcamp Friday; Epistemology Out Today!

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The future of Bandcamp Friday is a bit up in the air, but we’re living in the present here at The Portly Politico, and today is Bandcamp Friday!  That means Bandcamp waives their share of any purchases made on my Bandcamp page today (Friday, 1 March 2024), so it’s the best possible time to buy my music if you want to support yours portly.

Even better:  I have a new album out today!  You can pick up Epistemology for $5.  It’s ten tracks of original instrumental music.  Your digital purchase includes not just the music, but also full scores for every song; music videos for each piece; handwritten manuscripts for most of the pieces; and exclusive artwork (including artwork to accompany every piece on the album).

There’s a lot to dig into in this release.  The title track, “Epistemology,” is a multipart suite for clarinet, bass clarinet, and piano exploring various philosophical theories about how we know what we know.

If you’re feeling generous and want my entire catalog of fourteen releases, my entire discography is half-off.  That’s fifteen releases for $28.39, or $1.89 per release.

Tight on cash?  No worries—you can listen to Epistemology on any streaming platform (except for Spotify), and all the tracks are on my YouTube page (you should subscribe to that, by the way—it’s free!).

I’m excited about this release, and I appreciate your support.

Happy Listening!

—TPP

Lazy Sunday CXXVIII: 2023 Releases

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It’s been a prolific year for short-form electronic composing for yours portly.  I’ve released three albums and/or EPs in the past three months:  Spooky Season, Spooky Season II: Rise of the Cryptids, and Leftovers.  They’re all available on Bandcamp, but also on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Confessions of a Frustrated Creator

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yours portly has to get something off of his massive, hairy chest:  I don’t think I’ve been delivering the best content lately.  Blogging daily is always going to be a game of quantity versus quality, but I feel as though I have been phoning it in more and more.

It’s my job to give you what you want, and I haven’t been doing that very well lately.  Quite frankly, though, I’m frustrated.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Threads (1984)

The Portly Politico9 Comments

Other than a trip to the Pee Dee State Farmers Market (more on that this Saturday), I spent most of Saturday playing Civilization VI and watching horror movies on Shudder.

Just when I think I’ve exhausted Shudder’s extensive offerings (seriously, I watch it so much, I find myself rewatching movies I’ve already seen, sometimes multiple times), they throw me a total curveball and deliver up something fresh—and genuinely unsettling.

A side effect of watching a ton of horror movies is that one becomes desensitized to them fairly quickly.  I’m still not a fan of gore-for-the-sake of gore, but I’m accustomed to it.  As such, I like horror that is unsettling, and there’s not much of that these days.  A lot of modern horror is snarkily self-referential, and Shudder seems to love to show lots of feminist horror.  Some of that is actually okay, but does every horror movie have to be about the loss of personal identity when a mother raises children?  Come now.

So it was refreshing to watch the made-for-television film Threads (1984), a stark depiction of the aftermath of a series of atomic detonations in England.

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In Defense of the British Monarchy

The Portly Politico19 Comments

As a natural conservative, not merely a political one, I have always felt an affinity for the British monarchy, and never bought into the excessively utilitarian (and inherently radical) arguments that favor the abolition of the monarchy.  After weeks of listening to videos from The People Profiles about the monarchy, I am even more convinced in the necessity of the British monarchy as a cultural and political force.

To be clear, I do not advocate for monarchy of any form in the United States.  The reader might ask, “if it’s so beneficial to our British cousins, with whom we share quite a bit of history and culture, why isn’t it good for us?”  The answer is simple:  we’ve never had one!  Monarchy is something almost completely foreign to Americans, at least since 1776.  Our Founding was explicitly anti-monarchical, even if there were Americans willing to submit to a kingship under George Washington.

The British—and, more specifically, the English—however, have possessed a monarchy for over 1000 years, with the exception of that Cromwellian unpleasantness from 1648-1660, ending with the restoration of the Stuarts with Charles II.  That is a great deal of tradition, custom, and ceremony to toss out merely to save a few bucks on maintaining the Royal Family.

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Island Living: Vanuatuan Taxes

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The FAIRtax folks, who advocate for replacing income and corporate taxes with a unified national sales tax, posted an interesting piece about the remote Pacific nation of Vanuatu (“FAIRtax in Vanuatu?“).  It discusses how the archipelago boasts incredibly low taxes:  a 15% value-added tax (“VAT”), and a business license fee of 5% (presumably, 5% of a business’s total annual revenue).

I’m personally agnostic on the adoption of a national sales tax in the United States.  I do believe it would be much better than the income tax, which I absolutely loathe, and which requires a complex and oppressive bureaucracy to administer.  I also resent sending the IRS all of my personal information every single year, including how many miles I drove and what sheet music I purchased (although those are great for those sweet, sweet tax write-offs).  If it were practical, I’d much rather see a national sales tax, or even a return to old-school tariff regimes.

The problem is that, should we ever adopt a national sales tax, it will likely accompany the national income tax.  A national sales tax also places a great deal of strain on States and localities.  Good luck having a 10% national sales tax and a 6% State sales tax (as we do in South Carolina) and a plethora of local-option sales taxes (about 2% here in Darlington County; higher in neighboring Florence County).  Tack on hospitality taxes, and it adds up fast.

For example, in neighboring Florence County, eating out automatically comes with a 10% sales tax:  the 6% State sales tax, plus local sales and hospitality taxes, totally 10%.  If we had a conservative 10% national sales tax on top, your $5 footlong (already gone—part of America’s mythological past) becomes $6 immediately.  20% sales tax means $1 of taxes for every $5 spent.  A $500 item would cost $600.

I still think that’s preferable to the income tax, and instead of creating a disincentive to work, it would create a disincentive to spend.

But I digress.  For a small nation like Vanuatu—population of around 300,000—a national sales tax makes sense.  It’s a small enough area geographically and demographically that it the national sales tax is, essentially, akin to a State sales tax.  As the article from FAIRtax.org notes, the island has something of a clean slate:  no welfare, no government pensions, etc.  Most people are subsistence farmers, and tourism is the major industry.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Back-to-School Update 2023

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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.

Yours portly is not quite back to teaching just yet, but I am back to work.  That means I’m entering into this odd period of quasi-work before the storm of the school year begins.  It’s a kind of ramping up to the main event, but I’ve been teaching for so long, it feels a bit more like spinning my wheels.

Whatever the case, I’m no longer allowed to enjoy leisurely mornings, and have to be somewhere other than home during an arbitrary stretch of hours that another person dictates.  In other words, I’m doing what everyone else does year-round.

With school looming, some of my projects and their output will slow down a bit, but I do have a few updates to share with subscribers, some of which will interest them greatly (or, at the very least, slightly), including my next book project idea.

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

Ponty’s Pen: The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Video games used to be a bit of a niche—a large and popular niche, but a niche nonetheless.  Sure, our mom loved playing Dr. Mario on our old Nintendo, but that was about the extent of it.  Video games were largely for boys, who grew up into men.  Those men rebought the classics when they became available digitally, and continued to fuel the development of new games with their hard-earned dollars.

Of course, video game companies sensibly sought to expand their market share.  They developed more casual games to attract older gamers and more women.  The Nintendo Wii marked a major shift, as the kinetic style of the console made it popular among many demographics, most notably the elderly.  Nary a retirement home or assisted living facility lacked a Wii, with which geriatrics could play virtual tennis and bowling.

All of that is wonderful.  More gamers means more games, and it means broader acceptance of video games as a fun, harmless pastime (in spite of the ludicrous stories that insist on linking video games to violence—malarkey!).

Lately, however, video game developers have followed in the footsteps of film and television, making a mad push towards increasing “representation” in games.  This development is premised upon a number of false premises, such as “women are objectified damsels-in-distress in games,” which ignores Princess Peach, Princess Zelda/Sheikh, Lara Croft, and many other “strong female” protagonists or supporting characters in game.

That obsession is linked to another false premise:  that in order to enjoy a video game (or movie, or book, or other work), we must see carbon-copies of ourselves in them.  According to this reasoning, a black kid can’t enjoy a Mario game because Mario is an Italian-American plumber, not an African-American one.

As Ponty so eloquently points out, video games are frequently a form of escapism.  We don’t want to be ourselves; we want to be a burly barbarian, or a sneaky thief.  When I play roleplaying games, I don’t play a six-foot-one, two-hundred-fifty-plus pound nerd with bad eyesight; I typically play a short rogue or bard character, pilfering loot from NPCs’ homes.  I’d never burgle a home in real life, and the game doesn’t make me want to do so; rather, it gives the thrill of being a second-story man without any of the terrible consequences for either myself or the victim.

Regardless, gaming, too, has been a major front in the Culture Wars, going back to Gamergate in 2014.  Nearly ten years on, we’re still fighting similar battles.

With that, here is Ponty’s essay “The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry”:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Chicago

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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.

Here at The Portly Politico, I like to roleplay as some kind of Jeffersonian country squire, overseeing my little homestead while contemplating the grape harvest.  As much as I love living in a small, country town, yours portly is not immune to the allure of the big city.

Naturally, I have little desire to live in one, and most certainly not the one that is the topic of today’s post.  However, there is a vibrancy and energy to large cities that is intoxicating, especially for those of an artistic bent.  Cities can be cesspools of crime, homelessness, and progressive politics, but they also pulse with an electric creativity and a sense of hustle—everyone is working hard to survive and create in a sea of humanity.

Granted, I don’t want to live in an overpriced shoebox, isolated by the sheer size of that very sea.  Some people thrive in that environment, while others should probably live on forty acres in the woods somewhere.  The rest of us are somewhere in the middle.  Most Americans don’t want to live like lab rats in an urban playground.

All that aside, cities are cool—the seats of civilization, as Milo once argued.  Despite its crime-ridden reputation, I think Chicago, Illinois makes for a good illustration of cities as the centers of art and architecture—of civilization.  After all, what is a civilization but the expression of its cultural achievements?  Few cities exemplify achievements in architecture more than that great epicenter of nineteenth-century America, Chicago.

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