It’s been a wild and wooly wedding week for yours portly and Dr. Fiancée. Our closing on Monday went well, and I spent Tuesday morning visiting the DMV, the courthouse, and the city hall of our new town to get everything setup. I was apparently so quick, the attorneys had not gotten the updated deed to the courthouse yet!
I also picked up our marriage license. Dr. Fiancée and I applied for it on Monday, but South Carolina requires a twenty-four waiting period, I suppose to allow cooler heads (or shotguns) to prevail in the event of impulsive (or coerced) marriages.
The past few days—even the past few weeks!—have felt like a marathon of threading needles of time. But it’s all coming together!
Now I’m just praying my tuxedo arrives at my local Men’s Wearhouse this afternoon, so I don’t have to make a special trip tomorrow. If that’s the only snag in this wedding week, though, I’ll be very pleased!
Dr. Fiancée and I are super excited. We’re also ready to disconnect for the honeymoon.
To that end, I’ll be running TPP’s Greatest Hits (or something like that) next week. I’ll catch up on comments and such when we are back.
My composing has slowed to a crawl lately and my live performances are pretty much nonexistent, but I managed to squeeze out a fresh composition last week, a little bit of fugue-like brassiness for your fantastical enjoyment.
Today Dr. Fiancée (she’ll be Dr. Wife as of Saturday afternoon!) and I are closing on a house in the small town where we’ll be moving once she completes residency. We weren’t going to purchase a home at this point, but when another house we’d looked at went under contract, we started looking again.
The house we’re purchasing today had gone through a couple of price reductions since we’d first seen it on Zillow. Dr. F looked at me and said, “I want this house,” so I went to work.
Last night yours portly had his raucous bachelor party, which consisted of eating pizza and play board games with my friends at my younger brother’s house. The board gaming highlight of the evening was playing Catan: Dawn of Humankind (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you), which my best man purchased as an early wedding gift.
The game can best be described as a blend of the early turns of any Civilization game and Settlers of Catan (more affiliate links), the classic Klaus Teuber game. The map takes place on Earth, with all players starting with camps and explorers (imagine a blend of the scout and settler in Civ) in Africa. Players are encouraged via various game mechanics to migrate out of Africa and to explore and populate the rest of the world.
Like classic Catan, the goal is to reach ten victory points. These points achieved through various means—cultural and scientific development; exploration; and settlement outside of Africa. Like Catan, players gather four different resources, re-themed to fit the prehistoric setting, by rolling two six-sided dice. Players may trade these resources or cash triplicates into the bank in exchange for a single resource of another type.
There are some key differences, however: while Dawn of Humankind is built on the Catan system, it is geared towards exploration and research. Settlement is a key component of the game, but it’s done by sending out explorers. Some areas of the map are blocked off by certain research requirements; for example, reaching Australia requires substantial investments into construction (for boats, presumably) and clothing. Going towards the Arctic requires high clothing investments. Investing in exploration lets explorers move more quickly, and investing in hunting allows players to move the Neanderthal in Eurasia and the Smilodon (saber-toothed tiger) in the Americas and Australia (these tokens act as the equivalent to the thief in classic Catan.
Lately yours portly has been losing weight (I’m down about thirty-one pounds since July 2025), so I’ll often search for calorie counts for unusual food items to make sure I’m not going to blow my entire caloric budget for the day with one ill-considered snack. That has sent me down some gut-bustingly hilarious rabbit holes, where I will ask Google’s Gemini AI insane questions like, “how many calories would be in a four-pound baked potato, into which I cut canals and holes to increase fat absorption, and which I soaked overnight in pure goose fat; then, I bore holes into either end and insert luscious Italian sausage in the middle of the potato, after which I wrap it in thick-cut bacon and deep-fry it in beef tallow?”
The AI then usually scolds me for how unhealthy consuming such a sumptuous, greasy feast would be, at which point I try to double-down on the absudity.
Clearly, yours portly has an odd (and probably unhealthy, given my medical history) relationship with food. That strange obsession has manifested itself on my YouTube page.
Don’t worry, dear readers: I’m not a “lolcow,” consuming vast quantities of food for the sick and twisted pleasure of a hate-watching audience. I just like to do what every mother warns against: I play with my food.
Today’s videos are examples of that tendency to elevate food into absurdist humor:
On Saturday I wrote a detailed analysis of the 2025 off-cycle elections. I don’t think they’re quite as dire as everyone makes them out to be—at least, not dire for conservatives’ electoral prospects in 2026. If you’re living in New York City, the outcome is pretty bad.
Regular reader and contributor Ponty asked me my thoughts about the election of Zohran Mamdani, the Socialist Islamic Mayor-Elect of New York City. He voiced a view he and I have both seen circulating: the disbelief that New York City could elect an openly Muslim mayor a mere twenty-four years after 9/11.
I boiled down Mamdani’s election to five factors (and I am sure there are more): massive immigration, identity politics, socialism’s current appeal, Americans’ short memories, and large-scale demographic shifts. Really, it’s little different from why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got elected the first time: she is Hispanic in a district that is overwhelmingly Hispanic and Left-leaning. That shouldn’t shock us.
With that, here is my take on the Mamdani situation:
In lieu of my usual Monday Morning Movie Review, I wanted to do something a bit different: what are some of your favorite films to watch during the month of December, in the build-up to Christmas?
I’m thinking of doing the Christmas equivalent of the 31 Days of Halloween series, but probably not for all thirty-one days of December. That said, there are some great Christmas movies out there that would be fun to give the 31 Days treatment.
For those that missed that series, here is the idea: these videos will also be super lo-fi, as a.) I believe in the lo-fi ethic and, more honestly, b.) my video editing skills and capabilities are virtually non-existent. We’re talking one take with minimal in-camera editing—and that’s it. No fancy cutaways to clips from the movies; no wacky angles; no green screens placing me in a haunted castle. At most I’ll hold up a DVD of the flicks if I have one.
My only caveats: no Polar Express (2004) and no Elf (2003). Even I have standards!
Let me know your picks in the comments below, or through the contact form on this site.
Regular reader and contributor Ponty made a great point on yesterday’s post: “conservatives should really stop calling leftists progressives. A progression towards conflict and ruination seems more regressive to me.” In the spirit of that comment, I’m going to look back at some posts about progressivism—a truly regressive ideology:
“Progressivism and Playing God” – a post from 2020 about the progressive/regressive tendency to play God (the result of not believing in Him at all).
“AWFL Calls It Quits” – a post highlighting Leftist fragility and moral smugness.
Like with all things Satan touches, regressives pervert concepts that are beneficial or good, twisting them to be thinly-veiled covers for their own wickedness and wretchedness.
Halloween is a week past, but I still have some episodes of 31 Days of Halloween to share! By now, most interested readers have sought these final videos out on their own, but in case you missed any of the later episodes, I wanted to share them today.
On 1 October 2025 I launched a YouTube Shorts series, 31 Days of Halloween. The concept is simple: one, one-minute (or shorter) Halloween/horror movie review every day for the month of October. These reviews are super lo-fi—just yours portly recording on a phone, sitting at a desk. No frills, no fancy editing, just me giving my impressions of the films in an unscripted, fast way.
A quick note: most of the links below are Amazon Affiliate links, typically linking to the movie on DVD or Blu-Ray, as well as the books they’re based upon (or the novelizations of the films). I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you.
Day 23: Nosferatu (1922)
Day 23 is the 1922 German Expressionist silent film classic Nosferatu.
The Portly Politico 