Dear readers,
In honor of a belated Valentine’s Day, a short “best-off” collection,💘🤖Technological Romance🤖💘 is FREE to download today (Monday, 16 February 2026) only.
Happy Belated Valentine’s Day!
—TPP
Dear readers,
In honor of a belated Valentine’s Day, a short “best-off” collection,💘🤖Technological Romance🤖💘 is FREE to download today (Monday, 16 February 2026) only.
Happy Belated Valentine’s Day!
—TPP
It’s Christmas! It’s Christmas! And it’s a Thursday, so yours portly is TBT’ing to a classic of yesterchristmas.
Back in 2019, I wrote this piece about Napoleon. It took off because it gained some traction on WhatFinger News, which came along after Matthew Drudge inexplicably went woke. The name of this alternative news aggregator always strikes me as vaguely inappropriate, but they ran my link and it got tons of views at a time when I was getting discouraged with the blog (a perennial issue, it seems—perseverance is a virtue for a reason).
Napoleon is a complex and intriguing figure. Whatever his personal and professional attributes, he indelibly changed Europe and the world. It’s hard for us to understand today, fixated as we are on the failed Austrian painter with the Charlie Chaplin mustache, but Napoleon’s impact was still being discussed actively in the early twentieth century. He totally upended the gameboard of Europe—for good or for ill—and the fear and/or hope of another Napoleon endured for quite awhile.
YouTube philosopher Agora made a great video linking the two figures—and warning about why those links miss some key differences:
The important thing to remember, however, is that humanity’s conception of “greatness” is false. Remember, Christ Was Born today as a simple baby in the most humble of circumstances—literally bedding down in a feeding trough for barnyard animals. He Died a humiliating Death on the Cross. He Rose from the dead and Conquered Death, and Will Return again!
No Napoleon could ever achieve what He Did.
With that, here is 26 December 2024’s “TBT^2: Napoleonic Christmas“:
Earlier this week I posted one of my recent compositions, “Clarinetti” (the Italian plural for “clarinet”), and I’ve composed quite a bit for the instrument over the last year; as such, I thought I’d cast a glance back at some pieces that feature, or at least use, clarinet:
Squidward would be pleased.
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
Last year I issued to my readers The TJC Challenge, a challenge to listen to all of my music on either Apple Music or YouTube/YouTube Music. At the time, The TJC Challenge took about three hours to complete, appropriate for a morning of shirking responsibilities at the office.
The entire challenge now takes approximately seven hours and eleven minutes. If you just listened to the albums (some of which are, ironically, shorter in playtime than the EPs), it would take five hours and fifty-eight minutes—just shy of six hours.
Actually, it’s a bit longer: when I initially did the above calculations, I forgot to include my latest release, Leftovers IV, which clocks in at nineteen minutes, thirty-nine seconds. That brings the total playtime up to 7.5 hours and change.
Also, you can now attempt the challenge on Spotify as well. I gave up my doomed boycott of releasing to Spotify. I don’t really make any money from streams there, sadly, thanks to their thieving streaming policy, but I realized that the vast majority of music listeners (including my older brother and Dr. Girlfriend) use the service, so I might as well let the people I love have the ability to listen to my music easily.
The point is, it now takes about an entire workday to listen to all of this music. I don’t expect most people to do it, but I will send a free hat to the first person who listens to all of my releases on the streaming platform of their choice. All you have to do is listen to every release, then send me a 100-word blurb about which albums/EPs/songs/pieces you liked—and which you did not—and tell me why. And, no, I’m not going to count every word; you can write more or less. Years of teaching have taught me that people crave a word count or page requirement, so there you go!
Do you have the guts to take on The TJC Challenge? Or the free time, for that matter?
With that, here is 10 April 2024’s “The TJC Challenge“:
My next album, PRISM, releases tomorrow, so I thought I’d look back at a post about the bit of online frivolity that, in many ways, kickstarted the massive amount of composing I’ve undertaken over the last year.
I never did get around to writing those flute pieces for that one guy (see below), but I’m not too worried about it. I imagine one day I’ll get some more requests to compose some pieces, and I have quite a back catalogue from which to pull and adapt ideas.
With that, here is 29 February 2024’s “TBT^2: Composing Humorous Miniatures“:
Pickup my newest release: Leftovers III! Use promo code ziggurat to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Tuesday, 31 December 2024.
Hard to believe that it’s the last day of 2024! Instead of a retrospective, though, I’m looking ahead to a new album, one that I’ll release at some point in 2025.
To celebrate the new year, I’m featuring the first track from that planned album, “Blue Field”:
Way back in 2019 I wrote a post entitled “Napoleonic Christmas“; it took off thanks to being featured on a conservative news aggregator that, at the time, was presenting itself as an alternative to The Drudge Report, which inexplicably but notably turned hard to the Left after the 2016 election, in which it played an important role in getting GEOTUS Donaldus Magnus elected.
Napoleon has always fascinated me. Indeed, I wrote an entire tone poem about the enigmatic figure:
I don’t think Napoleon was a good guy, but he was great, in the sense that he was—much like Trump—sui generis, a man unto himself, and a man for the historical moment in which he found himself.
At Christmas, however, the Greatest Man Is a little Baby in a manger. The Son of God Humbled Himself to become like us. No Napoleon or Trump (the latter of which I like very much, and who I believe has God’s Hand of Protection over him) could ever do that—or would.
With that, here is 28 December 2023’s “TBT: Napoleonic Christmas“:
Pickup my newest release: Leftovers III! Use promo code ziggurat to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Tuesday, 31 December 2024.
I’ve just released my tenth album of the year, Leftovers III. It’s really an EP, as it just contains five tracks, but it also contains the longest piece I’ve ever composed, “Hanging Gardens.”
This week I’m featuring the third track from the album, “Rainy Wednesday Morning Waltz“; it’s looking like tomorrow (Christmas!) is going to be pretty rainy, so it seemed apt:
Pickup my newest release: Leftovers III! Use promo code ziggurat to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Tuesday, 31 December 2024.
I’ve just released my tenth album of the year, Leftovers III. It’s really an EP, as it just contains five tracks, but it also contains the longest piece I’ve ever composed, “Hanging Gardens.”
This week I’m featuring the sixth and final track from the album, “Funny Phantom“:
Pickup my newest release: Leftovers III! Use promo code ziggurat to take an additional 20% off all purchases on Bandcamp! Code expires at 11:59 PM UTC on Tuesday, 31 December 2024.
I’ve just released my tenth album of the year, Leftovers III. It’s really an EP, as it just contains five tracks, but it also contains the longest piece I’ve ever composed, “Hanging Gardens.”
This week I’d like to feature the fourth track from the album, “Skittlebräu“: