New Music Tuesday III: “Snail Drop”

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The koi pond at our new house has served as a source of immense inspiration for yours portly.  I’ve spent many late nights researching various species of aquatic life that can thrive in our little pond ecosystem.  I’m most excited about getting some Japanese Trapdoor Snails for our pond.

In the meantime, however, I’ve added some ramshorn snails to the pond already.  They arrived in a bag from an eBay seller in Oklahoma, clinging to the walls of their watery shipping compartment.  I drove them up one frosty night and gently plopped them into the pond, which inspired today’s new piece.

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Guest Post: Britain Stands at a Crossroads

The Portly Politico13 Comments

Good ol’ Tom over at Free Speech Backlash graciously sent along this powerful post about the state of free speech—or the lack thereof—in Great Britain and Europe.

American readers are likely aware of the rapid erosion of free speech in the nation that birthed the very concept, and it serves as an object lesson on the importance of the First Amendment, which has so far protected Americans from the worst excesses of government censorship.  As Tom notes, though, paper guarantees are worthless if not supported for every American.

However, government censorship has rarely been the issue in the United States; rather, corporate censorship is what haunts free speech in the United States.  The various attempts by the tech giants to censor free speech on their platforms in 2016, 2020, and 2024 indicate that the platforms that serve as our de facto public square are often restricted at the whims of the rich and powerful.  Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter did much to restore free speech online, but even that is imperfect.

Further, American banks have the nasty habit of “debanking” account holders with unflatteringly Truth-based views.  Many conservatives found their deposited funds inaccessible, or unable to accept payments through popular payment processors, because of publicly-voiced opinions that did not fit the globohomo narrative.

But, ultimately, we have the protection of the Constitution to criticize the government, even when the ostensibly private sector platforms for doing so are often censored.  Great Britain and Europe at large lack that basic protection.

Tom links this destruction of free speech to the massive influx of Third Worlders.  The two go hand-in-hand—if you need an imported slave class to a.) do all of your work for cheap and b.) make you feel good about yourself, you don’t want the native-born proles complaining.  The solution—especially in a system like Britain’s where the party in power controls the executive and legislative functions simultaneously (usually) by default—is to make it illegal to criticize the massive influx of dusky hordes into your homeland.

That brings me to another point:  why does Britain have a Home Secretary—or anyone in power—named Shabana Mahmood?  It reminds me of this clip from The Simpsons:

But I digress.  Here’s Tom with more:

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Lazy Sunday CCCXLXIV: Fire and Water

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s a quick Lazy Sunday this week as Dr. Wife and I hunker down in the cold.  I’m casting my gaze back to two posts from earlier this week, one based in the coolness of the watery depths, the other in the fiery crucible of the modern restaurant industry:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday Post Coming Soon

The Portly Politico2 Comments

My apologies to readers—I’ll have a SubscribeStar Saturday post up tomorrow (God Willing).

We have been working nearly around the clock to get our respective houses packed and cleaned.  This past week I was routinely putting in five or six hours each night after work getting stuff packed, moved, trashed, donated, cleaned, etc.

My pastor has a new carpet and general cleaning service, and I had to the age-old task of preparing for the cleaner:  cleaning.  I was able to clean enough to allow him access to the deep stuff.

It’s amazing how filthy a house can get when inhabited by a busy bachelor over the course of seven years.  Yes, I take out the trash, clean the counters, wash the dishes, do the laundry, etc.  Dusting is my enemy, though, and when you have as much inherited and acquired bric-a-brac and furniture and just plain junk as I do, there are thousands of surfaces for dead, shed skin cells to fall.

Now my house is at a level of cleanliness worthy of selling, and I hope to get it listed this upcoming week (after Winter Storm Fern wreaks her havoc).

Needless to say, my planned piece about the attack on the Minneapolis church is on the backburner.  Dr. Wife and I had another busy day today, and after dinner and errands, I realized I didn’t have it in me to slam out a rant about evil Leftists.

That will come tomorrow.

Stay warm, my friends!

—TPP

Phone it in Friday CXIX: YouTube Roundup CLXXIX: Winter

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It is the deep midwinter, and even the Carolinas are getting their share of the white stuff.  Murphy and I were up at Dr. Wife’s house in North Carolina this past weekend, and there was a little bit of snow on Sunday afternoon!

This weekend brings Winter Storm Fern, which is supposed to dump lots of snow and/or “wintry mix” and/or ice all over the Southeastern United States.  Gulp!  We’ll know more by Sunday.

In the spirit of wintry frostiness, here are a couple of recent videos from North Carolina all about the cold.

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TBT^16: The Hermit’s Life

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Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

My mind is always a bit sharper during these cold, bitter wintry months, especially in the morning after a good cup of black coffee.  Indeed, I’m writing this post while sipping coffee in the wee hours of a very cold morning.  Dr. Wife and Nugget, the three-legged wonder dog, are still fast asleep; Murphy and I have been up for about thirty minutes.  The old girl (Murphy, not Dr. Wife) is munching on a beef rawhide in the other room as the morning light slowly pierces through the grey of January.

These early hours are about as close as I get to the hermit’s life these days.  It’s quiet to focus on writing, spending time with God, reading the Bible, and knocking out whatever little tasks need doing.

In putting together these TBT posts, it’s always fun—and occasionally cringe-inducing—to look back at posts from yesteryear.  One of the joys of maintaining a daily blog for seven years—whoa!—is the ability to explore my own, evolving time capsule.

It’s one of the things I love about WordPress.com.  It’s very easy to find my old posts and link to them instantly.  Oftentimes, I’ve forgotten about some of the topics I’ve covered over the years (in searching for “coffee” this morning, I found a post about coffee glasses).  Links are insanely easy, especially if you use the “Classic” block—still my preferred method of writing using WordPress.com:

They're like glasses, but made from coffee!

I currently use the $8/month “Premium” plan, which features the functionality I crave (for plug-ins, however, you’ll need the $25/month “Business” plan).  It boasts 13 GB a storage, which might not sound massive in our age of terabyte SSDs, but is more than ample when you’re mostly uploading pictures of your dog:

Also, WordPress.com is constantly throwing coupons at me.  It’s rare that I actually pay full-freight for my plan (which is billed annually).  For example, WordPress.com‘s sister site, Pressable, is offering 15% plans with code 2025PRESS15AFF.  I can’t speak to the functionality of Pressable firsthand, simply because I haven’t used it, but it offers hosting services for ecommerce sites, developers, and the like.

For everyday use, however, WordPress.com is fantastic.  I love the “Classic” blocks because I’m used to working with the formatting ribbon included, but the sheer number of available blocks is impressive:

So many blocks!

I literally just realized there’s a “Slideshow” block—my mind is already envisioning compelling slide decks of koi pond pics once the weather warms up!

I’ve been really pleased with the functionality of WordPress.com, which also comes with Jetpack built in.  Jetpack has functionality I’ve only begun to explore; that said, I love its Akismet anti-spam system. According to Akismet, it’s blocked 13,830 spam comments in the past six months alone—and 141,377 over seven-plus years I’ve been writing this blog:

Well, enough of my yakking.  If you’re like me, these cold, dark months are the perfect time to brew up some coffee, pet your dog, and start your own blog at WordPress.com.  Blogging has opened up so many doors for me, and the switch to WordPress.com back in Summer 2018 has been life-changing.  I may be a hermit, but I love the little community we’ve built here around TPP.  I have several readers who are bloggers, and many more who should be blogging.

I’d love to see our little community grow further.  WordPress.com makes it easy to get blogging, but I’m here to help!

With that, here is 2 January 2025’s “TBT^4: The Hermit’s Life“:

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Chilly on Chili’s

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Dr. Wife and I love Chili’s.  For my European readers who aren’t blessed with the family restaurant concept (I assume you eat at McDonald’s or at pubs), Chili’s is a restaurant that acts like it’s all about Tex-Mex and Southwestern cuisine (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link to my highly unsuccessful book Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams, which features a chapter about eating a massive burrito on the drive to the Grand Canyon; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you), but really it’s a great burger place with chips and salsa.  The food is very American, with a bit of a Southwest twist.

Indeed, when I was playing the role of brash American in the comments section over at Free Speech Backlash, I kept joking with my detractors—the people who objected to the idea that the United States should take Greenland, because 60,000 defenseless Greenlanders have the right to sell their sovereignty to the Chinese but not to the United States—that we’d soon be dining together at the new Chili’s in Nuuk.  Eating an Old Timer with Cheese in Greenland will be one of them any blessings of American imperialism.  Who needs independence when you can get unlimited chips and salsa for free with the Chili’s app?

But I digress.  Chili’s and Texas Roadhouse were the two most profitable and/or fastest-growing restaurant chains in the United States in 2025 for good reason:  they offer patrons tons of great food at ridiculously low (for the post-Age of The Virus inflationary world) prices.  Dr. Wife and I can split a burger and get out of Chili’s sufficiently stuffed for under twenty bucks.

However, all is not well at Chili’s.

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New Music Tuesday II: “Koi Dance”

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I’ve been working hard on this week’s piece, “Koi Dance,” for about two weeks now.  It’s a chamber piece featuring two flutes, bassoon, and piano, and draws inspiration from Bedřich Smetana’s “The Moldau”; that piece also features a flowing theme that depicts the movement of water.

I plugged the finished piece into Audacity and applied some additional reverb and a master effect, both of which I think have allowed the sound to “pop.”

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Memorable Monday: Daybreak in America: Trump’s Inauguration, MLK Day, and a New Hope

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in America, and tomorrow will mark one year since President Trump’s Inauguration.

It seemed fitting that Trump would be inaugurated for his second non-consecutive term on the day set aside to commemorate King, a man who very likely would have descended into grifter status had he lived much longer.  Trump election also continued the rollback of the affirmative action racialist system that King’s successors endorsed.

Most importantly for yours portly, it’s a day off—and a cold one!  I’m looking forward to a quiet morning with Dr. Wife before Murphy and I make the frosty trek back to the South Carolina.

With that, here is 20 January 2025’s “Daybreak in America: Trump’s Inauguration, MLK Day, and a New Hope“:

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Lazy Sunday CCCXLXIII: Empire

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It’s been the week of American imperialism here on the blog, and I don’t necessarily mean “imperialism” negatively.  Here are some posts about how the United States is embracing its destiny (and the peaks and pitfalls of doing so):

Happy Sunday!

—TPP