I recently passed this link about “one word for 2012” on to Her Highness, who wrote on her own perspective on her blog.

Her style, full-bore.   Totally Carly down to the fibrous filaments of life.

NOT my style.

But.

I got thinking in the shower (my thinking place), and while you KNOW this is not my style, it got me thinking anyway. (DAMMIT!) So. *IF* I had to pick a word for 2012 (which is not to say that I am, because, you know, it isn’t my style in the least), it would have to be….

CONCENTRATION

I’m having huge amounts of issues with concentration, both in my professional and personal lives. Issues with performing as well as I can on the job because of fleeting concentration, errors with not fully handling my personal life experiences because I’m not 100% there.

Issues with not being as healthy as I should be because I can’t fix my concentration upon doing what’s good for my body because I don’t stick with that which I should. Problems with feeding my mind in the way it begs to be because I don’t concentrate on challenging it in the right ways.

Owing my son more concentration than I’m giving him, although I do feel like I’m trying my best in this area above all others.   But you know, there’s always room for improvement.

So. This is NOT my word for 2012. But if I had a word, that very well may be it.

But it’s not. Just so we’re clear.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 2 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Like Kris from Not Yet a Wino, I’m rather fond of writing games that require me to stretch my mind in various directions and come up with some sort of plot out of thin air. Normally I attempt not to blatantly steal an idea from another blogger, but in this case I’m doing exactly that — both because living Monday is enough of a workout (the writing ideas I have to blog about would be a tremendous effort today) and also because — hey, who doesn’t like a game, right?

So here it is: below you will find an opening paragraph to a short story, novel, etc.; the length matters not, but what it DOES require is your creative juices and muse! If you feel so inclined (and I urge you to give your inspiration a shot even if you aren’t confident in it — we’re all friends here), please leave a comment and give us the next couple sentences, paragraph, or paragraphs of the story as you see it from your perspective. Check back often to see what others have written — it should be very fun and interesting to see how you folks’ minds tick!

The Story So Far:

To be honest, he wasn’t sure if he noticed the shoe or the lips first. Shoe-wise, it was an incredible specimen, to be sure — thick, brown English leather construction of high quality, the sort of footwear that enters a boardroom at 9 and exits well before noon having made three pivotal, business-changing decisions, eaten a frosted cinnamon roll with delicate character, and spent the remainder of the time waggling eyebrows with the extraordinarily cute sales rep. Shoes with light tan and orange laces that didn’t simply make a statement, they practically gave a commencement speech. Heels that commanded respect from the tiles and not mere tolerance. Yes, these shoes were something else, but the lips are what really took the express train home with a pastry in tow. The problem of the lips was whether or not their proximity to the aforementioned stately wingtips was going to interfere with his abilities or not.

Go to it, folks, and have fun!

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | Permalink | 5 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

In computer programming, we call this any number of names, but it’s usually, “getting in the zone” or “going on a coding spree” or a “hackathon”.    We have the ability to get into a mode, a method of thinking and reacting, that shuts out 98% of everything else and distills your neurons down into a fine, smooth wine of design and bits and logic.   It’s a beautiful thing to be in…when it happens.

Writers talk about finding a similar comfortable spot of mental clarity and developing that into a habit for producing their prose.   It’s a shut-out against everything else for that one, sacred, glowing spot of white in the middle.

I’ve been terribly distracted and unable to silence the voices that ramble in my head all the time and so I’m finding it increasingly difficult to be at my peak performance.   Tactile things seem much more do-able at the moment and pure thought is fleeting at best and shouting crowds of bullcrap at the worst.     Whoever is driving the crazy-train in my head is certainly having fun trying to jump the tracks.

Much like the weather outside, my brain is like a blowing snowstorm, things flying this way and that, eddies of wind whipping around hidden corners and swirling in the middle of the room.    To hold onto a thought is like trying to fly a kite in a jet engine it seems.

I should have been a carpenter.

In Other News…

Despite my concentration issues at hand, on March 6th I will be guest-blogging at the ever-revealing blog Morning Erection.   To say that I’m excited about this is like saying that I like taffy a lot, and I’m a man who likes his taffy.   I’m currently planning out the piece that I will be doing there and it should be a good, fun opportunity.     Tom is a great guy and often writes a lot of varied pieces (much like this blog) that touch, inspire, and make you tilt your head sideways.

I encourage you to stop on over to Morning Erection and get a feel for what Tom’s doing and to stop over there on March 6th to see my guest post.    I’ll be sure to mention it here and on my Twitter to let you know as well.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

I find myself of late needing to break loose from a great deal of things.

Sticky things.   The kind that hang on for dear life with those creepy-ass suction cups that octopuses (octopussies? octopussai?) have.

Mind – As mentioned above, this gunky crap that seems to have settled on me leaves me unreceptive to truly taxing or inspirational thought; things that might actually make good, deep sense fall easily away and I’m reduced to finding the Kardashians to be mentally scintillating.    (This is nearly reaching a level of simply sticking a hot poker into my ear to prevent further damage; I assure you, I’ve considered.)   Just hammering out this prose is going to wind me and cause stars to swirl overhead.

Body — More and more am I being impressed upon that this bulk of a beast is causing issues and I am best to move it along to a different stage of existence.    For that matter, I’ve done rather well of late in establishing a good cardio routine and weight lifting series; the subject at hand has been known to grunt 80lbs up and down in the air like he knows what he’s doing with it (on occasion) and has so far avoided damaging the furniture; this all being said, I still feel like I am waylaid in a tarpit full of molasses and buxom young cheerleaders during a severe blonde drought.

I know I can break free and actually shed this coat, the question is simply a matter of how.     Women, I hear, find there to be a corporate/governmental glass ceiling, but mine’s made out of sheets of subcutaneous fat.     It doesn’t shatter well without the careful application of an M80.

Maybe I need one of those rice, spring water, and cod liver oil cleanses or something.   Are they back in fashion now?

Profession — Computer programming has forever been a matter of being in the correct mindset, of obtaining that particular zen-state of being where code flows from one’s mind directly into the fingertips and out across history, forever captured like a beautiful painting is frozen in pigment blotches.   You can force a painter to do his art, of course, but the true inspiration comes from within, not without.

I glimpsed this on Sunday for awhile, feeling that creep down my arms and light me on fire as the world slowly faded and I became one with the machine and the thought.    Past that, the pursuit has been unclear again this month and I can only hope for a little light to suddenly turn on — or enough caffeine to artificially induce me.

The Inescapable Truth — I’m stuck, I guess…not really spinning my wheels, but at the same time, I’m not really headed anywhere, either.   And eating at McDonald’s all the time vs. just not eating…well, sometimes it’s not always better, ya know?

The lifelines I cling to right now are my lovely wife, my adorable and entertaining son, my never-dull job, and all of you people out there, doing the things I wished I was, writing the blog posts I know I can if I only I could clear this spiderweb, and hammering the lines with all sorts of funny quips, inspirational quotes, profound emotions, and memorable times.   I cling to you all, I hope you know that.    Purely platonic, of course, although I’ve been known to glance at a boob from time to time.

In truth, we can’t go anywhere but onwards, right?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

The freezing point of water at sea level in Fahrenheit.

The number of completed, numbered piano sonatas written by Beethoven.

The number of footsteps sung about by They Might Be Giants.

The number of Kabbalistic Paths of Wisdom.

In chess, the number of black squares, white squares, and pieces.

The number of panels of leather on an official soccer ball.

The number of teeth in a full set of an adult human.

The size of a databus in bits.

The size of an IPv4 Internet address.

The ASCII and Unicode code for a space character.

The international telephone code for Belgium.

The year in which the Roman council declared war against Mark Antony and Cleopatra.

And, apparently, my designation for the next year of life.

I’m half-way to retirement if nothing else!

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 6 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Really.    If I could jack my brain into an HDMI cable into that fancy-ass flatscreen you have in the living room, I could keep you entertained for hours.

Alas, alack.   Thine life doth assail me so.   Work, preparations for a party, sideline projects, sleeping — you know, anything to keep our mind off having fun.

We rely so much on our favorite writers pumping out quality content regularly — you get to know someone from their regular postings and goings-on, much like a favorite newspaper column or coworker who always stops by on Tuesdays to talk about her bar hopping.    We are creatures of habit, routine, and morning lattes.

And here I am, ruining your routine.    Well, so be it — I’m the sugar cube that just won’t dissolve.      All up in yours coffeez, gummin’ up yer mug.

I’d end in a haiku, but that’d be predictable — how about a jaunty pair of boobies?   (.)  (.)

No?   Well, it’s one of those swing-and-a-miss sorts of days.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

No matter what I’m doing, if there’s a rhythm to be had, I’m bound to find it and adhere to it, or ache trying.   If there’s some rhythm being generated and I can’t match whatever I’m doing to it, I feel physical pain as my guts twist against it.    I once again experienced this last night as I was working out on the treadmill and listening to my iPod; I must try to change my stride length and/or speed to match the beats of the music if I at all possibly can, and if not, I’m likely to change the song just to avoid the headache.

Come to think of it, I’ve always been one to like and appreciate rhythm.   From my first experiences in music, I sucked at learning it, but I loved to do it.     I couldn’t tap out a complex rhythm on a drum or a tabletop from a sheet of music, but I always understood the pattern and felt it.   Marching band was a heaven and hell to me as I loved whacking out a march step and keeping strictly to it — despite my never wanting to be involved in the armed forces, if I had, I could have been a mean marcher.     And if it wasn’t for all the cretins that couldn’t keep step for the love of all that’s holy, I would have had a great time.   Folks without rhythm are my personal nails-on-a-chalkboard demon.

I think about how many places in my life rhythm takes hold — construction work (nailing), gardening (hoeing in beat), walking/running/biking/dancing (especially to music), sex (otherwise you look like you’re having a spasm), typing (although it’s a complex pattern), painting (stroke, stroke), boating (see painting), tapping my fingers, and so forth.

What is it about rhythm that drives me so?    I hate heartbeats — I’ve written about that before.    I love music — perhaps that’s the source?    Whatever it is, I find myself drawn to aligning my mind and my body to whatever external or internal (read: music in my head) beats there are to be had.

How about you?   Do you find yourself consumed with rhythm or are you able to walk through life at your own, jagged, uncoordinated pace?  (consequently driving the rest of us stone mad)

P.S. — I hate, hate, HATE typing the word, “rhythm”.   Who thought of THAT spelling?   Srsly.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 8 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Have you noticed that?   There’s been about a 2-week dearth of decent blog entries, both from the folks I read and from myself.   Now, my whole family’s been under the weather, work has been so busy I’m catching myself leaving when I get there in the morning, and in general I’ve had a pretty decent case of the lay-on-floor-and-don’t-bloody-move blahs.

SO!   Onward, as they say.

I have 5+ draft blog entries in progress, and I would really appreciate some input from you, the reader, as to what you’d like to see me finish up.   C’mon, give me an idea of what sounds good, because it’ll give me motivation and very well may light a match under my nether regions that I so desperately need.     Why do I smell burning hair?

In no particular order:

Explaining the Bank Crisis — NPR’s Planet Money had a great explanation on exactly why the mortgages are causing havoc with the banks in such a way that I finally got it.    Now, I’ve understood for a long time that having bad mortgages are bad for the banks, but never really the mechanics behind it.   This I now understand.   I’d like to draw you out some diagrams and explain the whole thing, simply and clearly, because I’d like you to understand it and the problems behind the bailout, but….do you give a whelk?

Controversies:   Jesus — The man, the mystery, the wonderment.   My take on this religious figure, what I think of his supposed deeds, and of his importance in life in general.    All the Christ you can stomach in one concise posting.

Face Windows — Talking about (and showing you pictures of) the various glasses I’ve worn throughout my life (yes, I have all of them) and some philosophizing about glasses -wearing folks and how it alters our perceptions — and how people see us.

Controversies: Abortion — Oooh…truly touchy subject, but I have a really logical argument (I think) to describe and explain why my views are what they are.    But this is a tough subject — and while I don’t shy away from touchy things, at the same time, I don’t want you all closing your browsers and thinking, “Oh, god, not another abortion post” because if that’s all I’m going to get from it, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself, ya know?   So feedback me on this idea, because I want you along for the mental exercise, and to help me clarify my own position, even if you disagree.

Musical Limits — Me talking about my struggles with the musical group I’m involved in, how I feel like I’ve really hit a wall with my instruction there, but my other options aren’t much better — and I’m not sure where to go most days with my musical desires and wants.

So, there you go….5 posts that are in-progress, but I’m stuck on where to go with them.    Can ye help, inspire, and comment, dear reader?    My mucus-adled brain appreciates it very much.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 9 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Through the course of the year, I made 81 posts on this blog — not a great number, but certainly respectable enough, equaling about a post every 4.5 days.   I suspect this was impacted primarily by the shoddiness of  my posting frequency earlier in the year, even though I found a reasonably decent rate in the last few months, which I hope to keep up.   Ah well, not everyone can be perfect.

I think part of the reason that 2008 seemed so long was the politics and economics that happened; truly a long year of huge amounts of information and mind-slaying by the media.

The hilight of the year was watching my son grow, I think, because from January to December he changed so much and yet is still my wonderful little boy.   Children do amaze and confuse in how they grow,that’s for certain.

This next year I don’t have any “resolutions” because I don’t believe in them, but that being said, it never hurts to set some goals.    Better health, better concentration at my job, better attention to my family,carving out some time for personal projects, finding something to call my own contribution to the world.    I’m not going to get more specific than that because I think it’ll detract from the way life works, which can be, at best, random.

Ah, yes…and keeping up this blog.    I hope you’ll hang around with me as we go forth into 2009.   I have a slew of postings to get finished and up here and tons of interviews done by some interesting folks.    Keep reading and good luck with your new year!

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Quickly following on Friday evening the atoms of the world, having been blanket-attacked by this crystallized phenomenon, decided that they’d rather be sunning themselves elsewhere and promptly stopped moving, sending the temperature of the area into digits that have difficulty showing up on any self-respecting thermometer.   You could see the trees practically shrivel themselves up as they cursed the winter and snuggled down into the earth, forever glad that their genitals naturally fall off before it gets this cold.

It was into Satan’s deep freeze that I found myself heading on Saturday morning, intent on finding a means to convey myself and my family to the wild north in search of the season’s quota of pre-manufactured blessings to shower upon my relatives, friends, and those I was unlucky enough to draw out of a hat at Thanksgiving.    To say it was, “crisp”, outside was a gross misrepresentation; it was insomuch as to say that plate glass is, “soggy”.   Snorting a fresh cup of bleach would have been warmer and not nearly as traumatic to my respiratory system.

My thrashings about to free my vehicle from the icy depths and to awaken it (much groaning and complaining ensued) were for naught; for on the outskirts of town and heading away into the barren wastelands was a paved trail intersected by copious piles of meteorological soldiers in strategic positions, that which we so coyishly term here as, “drifts”.   They are amusing when approached by sleighs, snowmobiles, and jackasses in trucks, but not nearly as pleasant when slammed into with a sedan.

Besides – by this time my nipples were tight and my shorts were not.   I know my limitations.

It was not until late Sunday night that we finally ventured forth into the dangerous night, intent on our goal.   The weather had settled down – somewhat – and my wife, gorgeous thing that she is, had a case of cabin fever that would make even a hibernating badger agree to go for a swim and a cappuccino.   If the weather didn’t kill her, I was going to.

Our shopping was rosy, our cheeks were so merry, our bodies were shivering and saying, “Hail Mary!”   The stores were pleasantly stripped of their usual compliment of assholes-with-carts, thanks to the inability to see through frozen corneas, so we were able to complete a good percentage of our mission in record time.   After doing our part to stimulate the economy, we headed to the local 24-hour breakfast-all-day restaurant to replenish our expired load of carbs.

After our meal, my son took off running around the 99% empty establishment to stretch his legs and ended up behind the counter as I was paying for the meal, the workers cooing at how cute he was and so forth.   They let him paw the various muffins for sale in the display case (sorry, folks) and the next thing I knew, he was marching away, lemon-poppyseed pastry in hand, huge grin on his face like he had hoisted a bank.    I admonished him for taking it, but the staff was so overcome by his adorable countenance that they simply tossed it into our order and we took it home with us, sans charge.

“How useful!” you say, and I agree wholeheartedly.   Tomorrow we’re going to a car dealership to let him loose on the place.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

1 relatively bored 30-something

2 braces from a child’s bouncy seat

1 semi-amused wife with camera

Bake for 15 minutes in a slapstick sauce and let chill.   Serves millions of equally bored Internet surfers.  

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

• 1 x $20 and 2 x $5 bills
• A receipt for an doctor’s office visit
• 3 debit cards
• 1 credit card
• IA Driver’s License
• Volunteer Blood Donor I.D. Card (O+, thank you, although I suck at giving because I pass out)
• Progressive Roadside Assistance Card
• American Red Cross Adult CPR/AED Certificate 5-7-2008
• Group Dental I.D. Card
• A card with Landa and Keston‘s SSNs on it
• Iowa Organ Donor Registry card
• Hunan Chinese Restaurant Buy 10 get 1 Free Card
• American Heart Association Heartsaver AED Certificate 4/23/2007
• Express Scripts Prescription ID Card
• A coupon for 20% off at any Sherwin-Williams store
• Barbershop Harmony Society Membership Card (expired because I’m a slackass)
• Blue Cross/Blue Shield of New Jersey Insurance Card
• About 20 Cambrex business cards

There.   Now that I’ve opened up my, er, wallet to the world, whatcha got?   Anything funky?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 8 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

I really should find a time to write during the day that doesn’t correspond to my brain shunting its resources into my legs to keep them vertical and my eyes to keeping them open. I sat down, finally free to do some typing, and my brain decides to go out onto the balcony, have a smoke, and spit on the cab drivers waiting in the alley below. This is not conducive to the sort of writing that you might expect out of a blog entitled, “PhilosYphia”, but more to the sort of crap spewed forth on the social pages of the local newspaper on an idle Thursday.

If it wasn’t so hard to type while driving, I’ve had all sorts of time to do so. But the other drivers get really pissy when I’m coming at them on the wrong side, so I should probably stop doing that.

I was ever so grateful that the weather was sunny today, even if the wind was a bit on the chilly side, and the rest of the week is promising to be more of the same if you can trust the weatherman, which you shouldn’t, of course. As I told some people awhile ago, the only reason that meteorology exists is because folks can’t accept the fact that weather is an unpredictable phenomenon and it’s just something you can’t control. No, they prefer to have someone say, “It’s going to be sunny and 70 on your wedding day” rather than say, “Look, it’s a week away, I have no freaking CLUE.”

We went for a lovely walk after a long night of not sleeping with Keston (up every hour or two, he just will not sleep for long periods) and pushed the pram through the 1.5 mile path that we’ve traced through the town, stopping to talk to some friends on the way. It’s amazing how many people were out and about, but it seems to always be that way in the summertime. We really do hibernate during the winter and come out of the woodwork when it gets warm. I’m so ready for it.

The rest of the day consisted of baking (roasted potatoes, a carrot cake, and white rolls), cooking (T-bones on the grill, a roast in the slo-cooker, and peas in the nukerator), and some well-deserved cleaning (some vaccuuming, dishes, laundry, and bagging the crap out of my commuter car). Nothing like a weekend to spend doing WORK.

Of course, there’s the playing with the baby and taking care of him. Although he was a complete and utter shit last night, depriving us of almost any quality sleep at all, he was perfectly wonderful the rest of the day, which is absolutely his saving grace. Smiling, giggling, playing, following me around the room, wondering where I’ve gone when I leave the room or his line of sight. I tell ya, it’s a total kick to be not only recognized but wanted by a kid.

So hey — a mediocre day, turned passable by a child. Go figure.

On that note, my brain has reminded me that there’s a balcony and a wonderful crop of targets awaiting, so before it steps out, I leave you with a few photos of my son from yesterday’s professional shoot. Enjoy.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 5 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Sitting in glory in the middle of poo

What does a shoe do on a bed of glue?

Whollop the head of a smelly grue.

The light of the sun spits in my eye

and rakes the nails across my thigh

For what? I say, and I sigh

a simple slice of a spicy crow pie

Beans, beans, you’ve heard this before

Aren’t something your doggie should smear on the floor

A right-wing nut is knocking the door

But the mailbox flag will give him what-for.

The marker fumes are strong today

In a silky, satiny, moist sort of way

“Tho’art heady!” might some of you say

It’s perfect to sit in the river and play.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

So I’ve taken a personal day off work as I know that I’ll spend most of it watching him once he wakes up, but at the same time, I’m trying to get some work done so I don’t have to stress out about it for the rest of the week.    Nothing quite like donating your time to your company, eh?

The weather today is supposed to be nigh on crappy from all the reports, so it’s probably best that I stick around here anyway.    Good old Iowa is turning out to be a mell of a hess this winter and with another layer of ice and sheets of snow on their way, it’s just heaping insult on injury at this point.

Tea!   Tea sounds good about now.    I think I shall jaunt over to the kettle and get it going.

Man, I’m cranky of late.  I know it’s mostly because of a lack of sleep coupled with the crappy weather and dismal greyness that is all-pervasive outdoors.   Even the sun was seen weeping into a handkerchief the other day.    The wife and I have bitten at each other’s throats for some time and we both know it’s because we sleep poorly and are depressed from the weather, but it’s humbling to realize it’s happening and while you can acknowledge it, it’s hard or impossible to control when you’re in the middle of it all.

And you know what?   That cup of tea?   Yeah, that didn’t turn out so well.

So, I grabbed a cup of decaf Earl Grey (Tea.   Earl Grey.   Hot.)   I put it down on the table and then sat down, bumping the table and pissing tea everywhere, and causing me to jump up and do the Dance of the Wet Technology Fairy, tossing keyboard and rodent out of the way and hoping that it didn’t splash up into the laptop and wreak havoc on the hardware.

Ah, Monday….I wondered when you were going to show up.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Now, on with our random stream…

In local climes today the weather has turned downwards in popularity and the tits of witches everywhere are protesting in jealousy at the ability of a good old fashioned Iowa winter’s ability to render even the toughest of us a shivering wreak in a few short heartbeats. What during the months of July and August is typically the crucible for God’s own Mongolian barbeque has now crisped up into arctic walk-in and local residents have taken to hanging sides of beef in their front yards and collecting the chunks of air as they fall from the sky. Remember, nothing makes a beautiful cup of iced tea quite like a cube of solidified oxygen.

Upon shouting in to ask Punxsutawney Phil if he’d care to make a few comments about the cold snap, an echoing yet forceful, “Fuck you!”, was forthcoming and the news media gathered around had to return home empty-handed and admonished.

However, I feel we disparage the mammaries of the female wizards of the world. After all, who was it that decided that all witch’s tits are cold? We know from the sagas of Hogwarts that there are clearly some very comely women that just happen to be spellcasters, Emma Watson being one of those. She can wave her wand at me any….what? She’s not 18 yet? Dammit. There I go, looking like a perv and it’s not even midnight. Sigh.

There is magic in the air, however, my studious and attentive reader, for my son at least. He has long had a wide vocabulary of grunts, squeals, yips, squeaks, and clicks, but within the past two days whenever he starts clicking his tongue in his mouth — you know, like you do when you’re “clucking” at someone, snapping your tongue down from the roof of your mouth to the bottom so it clicks? — I do it back to him. He’d click, I’d click back. I figure this is one of those sounds that all babies can make but if you don’t use it in your natural language production they lose as the brain rewires to your native language. The click would have been vastly useful had he been born somewhere in backwoods Africa, but instead he got honky-ass Iowa. Lucky him.

At any rate, my entire weekend — no, scratch that, week — was made tonight. Normally he would start clicking his tongue randomly and then I would click back to him while he was already doing it. We were sitting upstairs talking on webcam to Grandma Sharon and I was trying to get him to smile and carry on for her a bit, when I got an idea and started clicking at him. He wasn’t doing it at the time, and he first gave me an odd look, but then you could see him start to concentrate. After about a dozen clicks, one tiny, soft sound emerged from his cherubic mouth — click! You could have lit a city block just by slapping some jumper cables onto my ears.

Having them smile and recognize you is awesome. Having them remember something you did together and figure out how to do it again on cue — priceless. Now if only I can get my cat to respond in a similar manner; alas, when it came to felines, Pavlov knew he was bested and simply did the only sane thing — gave up before he even tried.

So, it’ll be a weekend of staying within these hallowed walls and nursing our domestic dustbunny collection as our son clicks, burps, and farts his way further into our hearts, minds, and stories. We dare not take him outside in this weather despite the various covers, blankets, warmers, snugglies, padding, and other insulating devices we have just on the random chance that Daddy would ditch it and we’d have to cross the Back Forty to get help, but that’s ok. We have plenty to do here and sticking around to watch our money burn in the furnace is kind of sadomasochistic in a way.

You folks keep your titties, spellbound or Muggle alike, warm during this snap and I’ll be off in a corner, teaching my son to doubleclick and, if he’s exceptionally lucky, right-click. He’s my cute, cuddly, and exceptionally gassy geek and I think he’s off to a great start already.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 5 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

I had a lot of life changes in 2007, personally — a 5-week trip to Australia, two new cars, a new job after 7.5 years, a new son and my first shot as a father. These events alone would have kept me busy and amused, but ontop of those we had any number of smaller things that kept us involved, stressed, or otherwise occupied. Hopefully my blog reflects a little of this as well as giving you, the reader, something to think about in the meantime. I look forward to 2008 and our conversations!

January: As per usual, I started the year off with a rant about new years resolutions and so forth, followed by my transition from the crappiness of MoveableType to WordPress, a move that proved to be wonderful because I actually enjoyed writing for once. A few pictures of snow and destroyed houses followed. Then began my wife’s trip to Australia and her subsequent rogering by VirginBlue Airlines.

February was a slow month, mostly involving planning for my trip to Australia, commenting on a few funny news stories, and then relating my very long play-by-play of my trip to Australia. However, there was a good whack of pretty Australian pictures to see, so that’s not all bad, is it?

March was filled with trips to Tumby Bay, enjoying the local flora and fauna of Australia, their sense of filesystems for trucks, steel-making facilities, and brews. I even managed to finish a book! Of course, I returned to normal life in later March and found a very dirty water heater, but still had time to evaluate some airlines.

April, soggy April. You started with an account of my trip back from the Land Down Under, then quickly followed with some very cute penguin pictures, a musing about being mentally hardwired to have religion, and a whack at the stupidity over the Don Imus hubub. News sources did not fail to provide amusement, while a movie about cross-dressing shoe designers distracted me. I happened to discover the beauties of FlightAware, and I returned home to da nortlands.

May must have been the month to wax philosophical or talk about real life, as evidenced in these posts. We started out talking about the concept of a perfect life. I then changed tunes to talk about the lucky rabbit in my backyard, the sneaky teenagers in my neighborhood, grandmas that should never be allowed behind a wheel, and starting some plants. Back to thinking hard as we touched on forced health mandates by employers and computer systems that won’t forget your sins. Somewhere in there we had Easter, too. Don’t forget the Press Release about our upcoming baby! To help with my computer addiction, I got a larger monitor and satisfied my Martha Stewartisms by converting a toilet into an herb garden. We talked about Taboos in America and the happiness that is Ron Paul. I ranted on about our veterans and jackasses behind the wheel. Last, but not least, we all grabbed our mugs and thought fondly of coffee.

June must have been hot, because our discussions started out with ice cube fairies. I lamented about our financial inability to fun a trip to Denver and then completely lost the ability to find a topic to write about. The video of Connie Talbot brought me to copious tears; apparently a lot of other people agreed as she went on to get 2nd in Britian’s Got Talent. I went and commented on Aussie politics and the new Twitter service which I later abandoned because it was stupid. Your marital litterbox was the subject of a posting, as was my unborn child’s heartbeat and his future. I think I should have spurned a new Internet term with “Medium Talking”, but no major media centers caught on. I had had enough of conservative religious hypocrites at one point, but my interest in tracking currency kept me going. I must have been working a lot to think about styles of completing projects.

July was a slower month, starting out talking about how kids address adults, then moving on for a picture-fest of the Clintons, Latham, and a bunny on parade. I then entered a Blog-Off run by Courtney Slavin of Five Second Dance Party, and made postings about the words, “Survivor“, “Hope“, “Breasts” (mmmm….), and “Victory“. And, just because summers aren’t expensive enough, I had to buy a new car.

August saw me going on about energy drinks and laziness of the tongue in marriage before diving in to yet another Blog-Off (again run by the beautiful and talented Mrs. Slavin), upon which I talked about “Religion“, “Attitude“, and “Dichotomy” all within a week. Making fun of stupid country songs was on my agenda, as well as showing off our new baby pram. Idiots plagued me many times, refusing to talk to the answering machine, preventing us from getting pancakes, and annoying us with unsolicited parental advice. But, hey — who doesn’t like a good shower? I tried to kick up some criticism but my readership wasn’t about to be bothered, so I just mused about the calling of your profession.

September was a month of cleaning up used computer parts, waxing on about the days of printed materials, and cooking as kids. Of course, while we’re on the subject of cooking, who can forget a sexy Rachel Ray? She might be cute, but she’s gotta cut down on the turkey burger use. My child had better be grateful, even if we are poor. Nah, just as long as they’re not ungrateful bastards I think we’ll end up fine together. Birthdays may come and go, but useful advice about fixing your refrigerator door is always in style. And you would never believe what some people have in their closet!

In October we reviewed a large array of subjects, anywhere from letting children drink alcohol, to the concept of Cuddle Parties, and how we use weather in our conversations. In amongst this I got lambasted by an asshat, had a rant about Jessica Seinfeld’s book, and spoke about the inadequacies of Blog Action Day. All that work writing got me sick, but I must have still managed to be coherent enough to get a good review and finish off the month with a musing about soundtracks in our lives.

November wasn’t much of a writing month, but it was a great month for having your first son, a baby that never ceases to amaze me, especially when he looks at you. Of course, I’m entertaining him with 80′s music when I can. I also posted the blog entry I wrote when we first found out that we were expecting him, which was a time of uncertainty and fear, mostly. It all turned out fine, however, and I sealed up November with an abstract piece about the calm of a winter’s night.

In December I acknowledged that I had had a great lapse in posts, but explained why I had dried up, then promptly managed to make it a good month for blogging. My idea on how to solve the gay marriage problem ended up being a pretty good discussion. My long-term battle with credit cards finished in December, but the snow continued to screw up my life. I talked about the stupidity of baby boy clothing options, asked my readership to check in (a few of you bothered, thank you), and gave my take on the U.S. housing bubble crash. Pictures of another new car adorned a blog posting, but soon after I horrified you with my youthful acne story. A Christmas Greeting found you all on the 25th and for the rest of the month I distracted you with my new, “Scanner Love”, series of images, starting with The Hitchhiker, Jack and Jose, Two Kittens, some 1950s Cuties, and a very Chubby Bubby.

WHAT A YEAR!!!

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2008. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

The shadowy darkness of the living room seems to heighten awareness of the small sounds that are normally background to the hubbub of life but now punctuate the twilight even as my eyes lose their grip on specific details. Computers whirr and whoosh softly, their internal fans gently blowing a cooling draft past heated silicon. The clackity of my fingers on a keyboard like so many unchoreographed tap dances is met with a rhythmic shuuck-CLICK, shuuck-CLICK from across the room.

My baby son, cranky and gassy from the many relative encounters yesterday and the odd schedule of the holiday, rides on a pendulum of sleep. Moans, groans, and whines softly emit every so often, but the steady tempo continues to be tapped out and he is lulled back to the dreamworld. The furnace fan kicks in and a slight whoosh! is heard as gas turns into flame and heat arises from the basement. The phone lodges another complaint, bitterly.

These sounds surround me, bathe me, as the darkness cuddles me here in my chair, the stark whiteness of the screen ahead of me the only harsh element in this horizon between light and dark, the greynesses of early evening, the shufflings of a winter sifting down through the slate sky and settling in a blanket over the landscape, claiming all green things to brown, active to slumber, warm to cold.

And me, and my thoughts, find free reign in the middle of an otherwise chaotic period of time, the beginnings, endings, and continuations that plague all of us and rob time from our fingertips and years from our chests. Even as I allow myself a few precious moments to tap out some wayward thoughts into this neglected forum, my mind is both enthusiastic and loathsome of the many background issues awaiting attention — lists of projects to finish, paperwork to be approached, meals to be negotiated, life to be navigated.

If I allow myself, I can prompt it instead to wander down paths less travelled, the roads to other minds, thoughts, and hearts, future dreams and ambitions, mental and physical needs yet unfulfilled. These are overgrown trails, a track to be followed, yet the caretaker woefully absent of late and the trimmers lying in repose for far too long. Flowers in this secret garden still bloom but are covered by sheets of weeds and neglect. Walking down these aisles is an exercise in exasperation; a realization that there are things to be done, but the starting point is difficult to pin down.

And yet, here in the start of evening, I have the sense that the winds have changed and the last season is drawing to a close. I am not yet through the gate and into the garden, but it stands before me now, its outline discernible from the rest of the wall, subtle yet visible hints of a direction to head and a world of options beyond its weathered face. I might still be fumbling in my pocket for the key, but I can now see the knob and I know, instinctively, which way to turn it.

Drifting back to the present place, I shiver in my hoodie, the chill tendrils of the frozen tundra drifting eerily across the floor and wrapping themselves around my ankles and spine. Despite the warmth deep inside, my skin still tingles from the touch of ice — the dampening forces of a world hibernating from the harshness. As I — as we — go on, the fear and trepidation will never leave me, this I know. They inspire the foolish to be wise, the timid to be brave, the lost to be found. The family tree of Good and Evil ends up being circular in nature and first cousins are kissing more often than not. Opportunity begot Strife, Pain begot Pleasure, and the clock ticks onwards…

I sigh, contentedly, as the darkness settles in deeper; night has come, but my eyes shine forwards in the dark to light the path, and I smile as I take the first step of many towards that new day.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

When I was born, they looked at me and said,
“What a good boy, what a smart boy, what a strong boy.”
And when you were born, they looked at you and said,
“What a good girl, what a smart girl, what a pretty girl.”

I think so much lately about my child’s future — what will they become? What will they do with life and its challenges and rewards? I know I will serve a vital yet short role in this and the best I can do is to direct, sustain, nurture, and advise; past that, they are still their own to direct in the long run. I find this concept a bit stranger than most, as other aspects of my life I have full control over and call the shots in all aspects, whereas with children, my control starts out absolute and slowly dwindles away over the years until there is but a faint influence, if any, and I am once again released to my own devices.

We’ve got these chains that hang around our necks
People want to strangle us with them before we take our first breath.
Afraid of change, afraid of staying the same,
When temptation calls, we just look away.

I wonder how much we express upon children as they are born; every child is cute, every child is smart, every child is good — until proven guilty. We start with a cup full of possibilities and expectations that are set upon each child and only they can empty from that vessel of hope. And yet, at the same time, we fully expect them to be tabula rasa, the blank slate, open and willing to soak up their environment and influences. Is our expectation misplaced? Should the pressure instead be upon the parents and other people who are the influences in this child’s life rather than the child itself? It is no wonder that parents take the successes and failures of their children personally, although I believe that one must factor in the preparation the child had for that particular action and weigh that with their maturity to derive who should be responsible for the result of the actions.

I go to school, I write exams,
If I pass, if I fail, if I drop out,
Does anyone give a damn?
And if they do, they’ll soon forget cause it wont take much for me
To show my life ain’t over yet.

Schooling of a child is so hard; they’re expected to absorb so much for so long and the system is designed to reward the middle to upper levels and the lower ones are left to make their own means through the system, often stumbling and scratching to do so. Yet, the smartest of the bunch will fail in other areas, leaving behind social and interpersonal skills in favor of the almighty top mark. In the end, in a professional setting, schooling matters little and knowledge matters much, so I often ask myself how I will attempt to not only direct my child in his/her studies but also in the skills that will benefit them long into their adult years. So much is lost from the books; much that is retained is practical, yet one has to strike a balance between the two. My role as a parent will fall precariously in between to ensure my child is neither over-run with their studies nor malnourished.

I wake up scared, I wake up strange.
I wake up wondering if anything in my life is ever going to change.
I wake up scared, I wake up strange
And everything around me stays the same.

I am still getting used to this idea of being a parent, a father, and sometimes I am wreaked by fear of my inability to do so and other times I just feel odd at best, not really sure if this is my life or the life of someone else that I am living, as I rarely feel like I am of my current age, placement in life, or the maturity and wisdom to be a father figure. And yet, at the same time, I know that I am settled and solid in many ways to handle this; my insecurities and uncertainties will be solved out of range of my child’s knowledge and perception, and they are quite forgiving if the intent is well-placed and exercised. I hope for all in the world that my child will never regret what I have tried to give him/her and the love that went along with it. I can only hope on this.

I couldn’t tell you that I was wrong,
Chickened out, grabbed a pen and paper, sat down and I wrote this song.
I couldn’t tell you that you were right,
So instead I looked in the mirror,
Watched TV, laid awake all night.

I wonder what points my wife and I will agree upon and which ones we will clash on when it comes to directing this child. So far, we agree on much — our backgrounds and parenting observations have told us similar things, and we have often talked to each other about our perspective. So this lends to good feelings about the future, but I often muse about that which we have not yet foreseen — will we be able to resolve it? I always think so, as we have struggled through so much and made so many successes in our relationship to date, this should be yet another one. But I cannot allow myself to not pay attention to this and keep on my toes, lest I mistake something.

This name is the hairshirt I wear
And this hairshirt is woven from your brown hair.
This song is the cross that I bear,
Bear it with me, bear with me, bear with me, be with me tonight,
I know that it isn’t right, but be with me tonight.

There are so many expectations placed upon us by our families, friends, community members, etc. Some are harder to bear; others are easier, but all will influence us in some way or another, and I wonder how we will plough our own furrow in the field, combining and taking what wisdoms we feel are correct; discarding the ones that do not fit our world-view. So much is borne with our names and our placings within these families and communities, yet we cannot allow them to control and subvert, only to suggest and observe. I have a feeling that we will be bucking these things much throughout our parenting careers. Right or wrong, we owe the best to our child, bar none.

When I was born, they looked at me and said;
“What a good boy, what a smart boy, what a strong boy.”
And when you were born, they looked at you and said;
“What a good girl, what a smart girl, what a pretty girl.” Hey?

So many considerations, so many decisions, so many thoughts and ideas. May we both be granted the power and wisdom to chose the best and brightest of them all.

(Lyrics taken from “What a Good Boy” by Barenaked Ladies. Video here.)

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

The problem with writing a blog on any sort of regular basis is that it involves finding subjects that not only are interesting to you as a person, but to your audience as readers of your blog.   To avoid any sort of "snore factor", you must engage the part of your reader’s mind that usually keeps it locked onto the dancing picture box in the living room.   Without posting articles about celebrities getting nude, drunk, laid, or all three and without highbrowing it by talking about such subjects as boring political matters, fiscal policy, or why home mortgage refinancings are up — well, you have a limited amount of "standard" material to work from.

I’ve lost you, haven’t I.   *shakes*   Wake up, dammit.

Angelina Jolie incestual relationship with Britney Spears shaving anorexia from Brad Pitt’s low mortgage rate while sleeping with your ex-wife’s sister!

There.   Now I have your attention.  (a great part of me wonders if that will garner more Google hits?   Hrm….)

I spent a few hours last night either tossing bales of hay from a rack into a barn or hauling bales across a barn floor to be stacked.   Prior to that, I spent a good half an hour following a set of hay racks on the highway with my flashers going to prevent any accidents or anything.   Do you know how utterly boring it is to be coasting along at 20mph for a half an hour?   I wished that I had a small vaccuum or something because I could have totally cleaned out my car while driving at that speed.

My back wasn’t as bad this morning as I thought it might be considering that it was cramping badly and I was leaning up against supports in the barn to not only catch my breath but give my lower muscles a chance to stop whining for a second.   (It didn’t really help much.)   You never realize how terrible a computer programming job is in terms of getting you ready for heavy manual labor.  As my wife would say, HARD YAKKA.

So, now that I’ve amused you with the best my life has to offer at the moment, I ask of you, humble reader — wherefore shall I write next?   Do you have a subject you’d like to see me attack, defend, make friends with, or slap around the room a few times?    Toss something my direction by email or otherwise — a word, a sentence, a phrase, a subject.    Anything at this point will probably assist, or if nothing else, it can’t hurt, right?

Many thanks for your mental fodder.   I’ll FedEx you a beer as an everlasting mark of my gratitude.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

It is rare that I post a blog entry of little to no worthy intelligence, relevance, thought, or otherwise proving content. However, this is going to be one of those, mostly because the picture on the left is one of The World’s Absolutely Cutest Penguin and I can’t stop the unbelievably horrible feelings of affection rising from my inner cockles at the sight of this little bugger. I have desires to go out and pet bunny rabbits, coo at newborn babies, and tie little pastel bows on every passing car antenna. He’s so terribly cute that I just want to stare at him all day long until my eyeballs dry up and crack.

I know — this is really, really sad.

I am very, very fond of penguins, however, and since I’m a Linux geek, it works out pretty well. (Linux’s mascot is a penguin named Tux, if you didn’t know.) In some ways, this little guy makes me giggle because I’ve had that same sort of expression on my face once or twice, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it on my wife’s face, too. I’ve made him my desktop background so I can grin at him on regular occasion.

I wouldn’t feel quite about posting this like a giggling schoolgirl without attempting to justify it in some fashion. You’re going to get an educational experience even if I have to make it amusing for you, so brace yourself:

A penguin’s average speed under water is 15mph. When greased with lard, they can hit speeds upwards of 25mph. One does not want to attempt to catch a lubricated penguin.

A penguin’s normal body temperature is a balmy 100°F. Fish in the neighborhood hold BBQs in between their legs because it’s so comfy.

Penguins have bristles on their tongues that face backwards so food can’t get away. This also makes French kissing in the penguin world an extreme sport.

Penguins drink salt water — they have a special gland that extracts the salt and pushes it back out of their bodies through grooves in their bills. Cracked pepper emits from special bumps behind their ears.

Penguin parents recognize which chick is theirs by the chick’s voice — it’s usually the one that grates on their nerves the most.

There. I feel justified now in sharing my extreme and unnatural love of that group of pixels in the upper left-hand corner. Enjoy the saccharine.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 2 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

In another move to protect idiotic people (who should never be parents) from themselves, Hasbro has recalled 985,000 Easy-Bake toy ovens from the market, citing that the door could catch youngsters’ fingers in it, resulting in burns; indeed, apparently at least 5 incidents have already been reported.

You know the Easy-Bake ovens; you (or your sister, or a cousin) probably had one when you were little. They use a 100 watt light bulb inside a steel cage inside a cheap-ass plastic oven fascade to heat up a chamber where you can cook nasty-ass cakes and other confectionaries, lovingly mixed up from stale little cardboard boxes with cheesy pictures on the front. Kids love them, parents dread having to sample the little culinary horrors they produce. It results in a successful day in the kitchen, all in all.

There must be an overwhelming sense of patience at Hasbro to recall almost a million units of this toy because of 5 stupid children who got burned by them. FIVE. That is 0.00000005% of ALL owners of this toy who got injured, and I bet out of that, 99.998% of those were the parents fault because they let 3 year old Timmy try to make a muffin on his own while they watched Oprah.

Give me a break, folks. Poor Hasbro, I say. I’m sure they have tons of nervous lawyers in their offices, but, given that they make toys for children, I really don’t think they’re out to purposely be shoddy in their products. 5 hundred millionths of a percent of children getting injured is nothing to get in a tizzy about. More kids probably choke on Easy Cheez in a year than that, and you don’t see them recalling cans of that nasty concoction. Again, parents need to stop pointing their fingers at everyone when the default answer is usually pointing back at themselves for being stupid.

Armour Pork Brains in Gravy Really DOES Contain Pork Brains, However

Fortune carried an “analysis” article today stating that modern food labeling may “mislead consumers”, as if this was some sort of brilliant revelation he had while doing his morning Yoga With Mary.

REALLY!?

I can’t imagine. C’mon, folks. Let’s not kid ourselves about how stupid the average and below-average consumer is. They are the ones that watch Subway ads and think that by mowing down meatball subs all day every day you can lose 150 pounds and are shocked when it doesn’t happen quite that way. They are the ones that sue because coffee is hot, ice cream is cold, and driving heavy machinery while drunk almost always ends up with bad results. These are not the valedictorians of the class, people. Food labeling hardly has to be subtle to result in someone eating fish heads without knowing it.

That being said, I find it highly amusing as to what lengths manufacturers DO get away with product labeling. The fact that Kraft Guacamole Dip contains less than 2% avocado is funnier than hell. The idea that a softdrink (Enviga) burns calories is a laugh and a half.

Not that I think that they should be forced to change! “You shouldn’t have to read the small print when you visit the supermarket,” says Michael Jacobson. I disagree completely. If you’re not concientious enough about what you eat to examine the label, then you don’t deserve to know what’s inside. You are eating a pre-packaged, processed food — nobody checks the label of an Twinkie package, because really, YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW. You’re buying them because you want an Twinkie, not a lesson in chemistry.

Parke Wilde also covers this in his blog, stating that, while there are rules about what can and cannot be called a particular food by the FDA, they’re somewhat…lenient. Thankfully, he does not seem to suggest that the onus of responsibility exists with the government to protect the stupid from their gluttony, which is why we have bloated federal departments in the first place.

Wise up, people. Chemicals are ever-present today in almost any food that has been cut, sliced, diced, mashed, pulped, whirled, deburped, or centrifuged. Pay attention to what you’re sticking in your gob or learn to get over it.

New Food-Free Food Promises a Healthier Lifestyle

In a blasé effort to cover the status of the consumer product market, Lynn Dornblaser of the market research firm Mintel has declared the end of the low-carb food fad and the beginning of the “gluten-free” fad, based on the number of new products being released into the market. I’m sure these sorts of stats are interesting to someone, but I really don’t know anyone, personally, who gives a damn.

Having said that, I’m a pretty big believer that we are consuming far too many carbs for our lifestyles these days. That certainly doesn’t make me an Atkins hippie nor does it mean I am a solid South Beach adherant; however, I do see value in the underlying mentality behind these fads: The amount of pure caloric intake we are subject ourselves to does not match with the requirements of our mostly-sedentry lifestyles.

I suffer greatly from this, myself. I am a computer programmer and online geek, which puts my ass squarely into the seat of my chair for at least 12 hours out of the day, sometimes more. I must make special efforts to induce movement into my schedule or my muscles might as well be vacationing in Aruba for all the good they are doing me.

I see the introduction of these products as an overactive, marketing response to a real shift in people’s mentalities. While the low-carb diet craze has died down, the underlying shift in people’s thinking has not. They are still concerned, in general, about carbs and will continue to keep that in mind as they make food choices. We’re now adding things like like trans-fats, salt, sugar, etc. to that thinking as the country struggles more and more with obesity and health issues associated with diet. I think, on the whole, it’ll end up in a good result. The key, I believe, is not to take any of it too seriously, but to glean the best features from each fad that comes along.

Aqua Teen Terrorist Force

And lastly, a short blurb about an advertising campaign gone wrong and the officials who twisted their panties over it: It seems that, in the sleepy town of Boston, an ad campaign featuring LED-powered caricatures of figures from Comedy Central’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” cartoon shut down the city and several bridges while officers inspected the devices, afraid that they were bomb threats planted by terrorists. Now, I’m sure while having a cartoon character flip you off in bright lights isn’t perceived as “family-friendly”, it certainly doesn’t look like a threat to my safety. Ah, those silly Bostonians — they’re good for a laugh, you know?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS

Bent Over the Turnstile

If you are ever considering taking Virgin Blue airlines as a connection off an international flight, don’t, unless you travel lightly. Yolanda finally got to Adelaide, but she got raped at the ticket counter because they have a silly 20kg limit on baggage, and she had 2 bags, both over 20kg each, so she got charged $110AUD to get them on the plane, essentially nullifying the price advantage of taking VB in the first place. GAH! So much for spending money for the next couple weeks. I think it’s idiotic for them to screw over international travelers like that; domestics, sure, but…*sigh* It was my fault for misreading the information — I thought it would be 20kg per bag, not total, and so I screwed it up. Lovely.

It sounds like she’s making the rounds of everyone so far, catching up with our friends Mel and Dale and their cute little daughter, Lara, and she also saw Simon and Lou and their two kids, Geordie and Taevey, so I’m a bit jealous about that, because we’ve been watching these kids through pictures and webcam for the past three years and now they get to meet up. All in good time! I’ll get my chance in awhile. The only frustrating part is that her family seems to have gone into high gear and want to see her all at the same time and it’s overwhelming her right now, as she just needs some time to recover from the jetlag and needs to get to everyone on her own time. It’s not like she’s going to ignore them while she’s there, but they seem pretty insistent to see her as soon as possible, no matter how she’s feeling.

Crossings of Postage

I have a bunch more postcards to send out for Postcrossing. I haven’t done this in a long time, but I picked it back up again about 2 weeks ago and since have been sending cards fast and furious; as soon as one is registered and I’m allowed to send another, off it goes. My theory is that I can stop in about a week and then get postcards from others for about a month or so, give or take.

Today’s postcards (if I get stamps and get them going) are going to Ayumi Oda in Japan, Paola Papen in The Netherlands, Pip Wilson in New Zealand, and Kirsten Schauble in Germany. All of the cards are the same one — the custom-made cards I had made at VistaPrint with our house and our picture on the front. I figured if I was sending so many cards, they might as well be personalized, and it keeps me from having to find stores selling cards. Plus, they were 100 cards for $10 total — who can beat that? Not with a stick this side of the Mississip’, by gum.

Code Mania

I have a lot to write about with programming and coding but haven’t yet found the time to congeal my thoughts about it and put it down in some sort of concretized fashion. I’ve been working steadily on HooDaHek, improving it as I go and debugging things that go wrong. I really feel like a schmuck about it, because I wrote this program, released it to the open-source community, and then got too damned busy to keep it up. Now it’s sorely out of date and my next version will kick some serious ass, but I have to get the features done and out there.

I have also recently purchased a copy of AJAX for Dummies and PHP 5 and MySQL 5, so I need to get reading on those for my next personal project (yet to be revealed to the breath of the baited world). Essentially, the only way I can learn programming languages is to make a project and then do that project in that language, so I have created a project that I think will benefit a lot of people in the world and am going to force myself to write it in these technologies so I learn them. I may very well end up taking both tomes to Australia, either as in-flight entertainment or as something to read on the back porch whilst I listen to the birds chirp and the spiders inject horse-killing poisons into the local ant population.

So much to do…so little time left to think to sort it all out. I’ll get there, one way or another, by gum.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

That being said, it is a royal, scathing bitch to get up in the morning.

No doubt my 2am bedtimes contribute widely to this struggle, but the room doesn’t assist in any way. Each morning the alarm clock spews forth the recorded sound of a thousand hungry, wet, pissed off babies being slapped in the ass repeatedly with an ice-cold tennis racket. It is, if nothing else, a sure way to be yanked out of a deep slumber. The only other sound that I sometimes hear, if I set the controls incorrectly, is the voice of some morning radio wankjob DJ announcing something incredibly mundane at a volume that forms cracks in the space-time continuum and results in me levitating directly out of bed, organs splashing in several random directions, as I awake with a new-found appreciation for the price of the corn markets.

To all of you who do the stupid, “Happy New Year” crap and resolutions and reviews of 2006, kindly place your lips upon my pasty-white buttocks and plant one. 2006 sucked, 2007 is going to suck as well, and there isn’t any chance of it getting better. There. Somebody had to say it.

First of all, everyone treats the annual increment of our calendaring system to be some mind- and universe-altering event that shakes all things to its core and shakes up the domininant paradigm, giving each and every one of us newfound opportunities to change ourselves and the world as a whole. Bullshit. 01/01/07 is no different of a day than 12/31/06 other than you have to learn how to write the day differently and your embossed napkins are now obsolete. There’s no huge cosmic change, nothing in the stars/planets/universe suddenly resets — hell, many cultures don’t even have Jan 01 as the day of the new year. And yet we Western cultures treat it with some sort of significant meaning.

Look, if the only way for you to find meaning is to increment a completely arbitrary number, why not find meaning every day? Every hour? Every minute? Same deal. Just because massive amounts of people get together once a year to get hoinked on hooch and watch a lighted ball fall 50 feet makes it no more significant than anything else, unless you’re using it as a marker to indicate that you have yet again made it another 365 days on this planet and you hope you won’t be boiled alive by the atmosphere in the next 365 days. If this is your perspective, you’re already light-years ahead of most people.

The second thing that pisses me off about this is all the New Years Resolutions. What an utter load of crap these are. Making a resolution for the new year is like using mosquito netting for a condom — completely and utterly ineffective to the point of being damaging (all you get for your trouble is a rash). People need to start realizing that setting goals isn’t worth anything — it’s the carrying through of goals that counts. Set goals till you’re blue in the face for all I care, but if you quit them a month down the road, then it wasn’t really worth it, was it? You just end up looking like a jackass.

If you need to lose weight, then do it. If you need to stop smoking, yesterday would have been a good day to start on that. People will use ANY excuse they can to prevent themselves from doing the things that they should every day. “Oh, the holidays are coming, I’ll go on a diet afterwards.” You know what professionals say? A diet is a life-long change in your thinking and acting. It shouldn’t matter if you decide to start your diet on the morning of the Tri-Regional Full-Immersion Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough with Hot Fudge Eating Fair and Gluttony Euporium, you should do it and stick to it. Don’t be a dick and go around setting goals, or resolutions, or promises to yourself with no intention of following through — go Nike on it — Just Do It!

Now, to those of you who can’t help but need a reason to start a new way of thinking and acting in your life and you have chosen the arbitrary incrementing of a meaningless time charting method, and have full intentions for this being a life-altering experience in which you will better yourself, your family, and your world, Good Luck. Here are some pointers:

• 99% of all pursuits fail. Expect to fail. Just expect to get up and do it again until you succeed. You have a coupon book full of free failures, no expiration dates on any of them. The only requirement is that you keep trying and trying different things until it works.
• You are only as strong as you let yourself be. Just because nobody else sees you sneak extra piece of pie or single cigarette, you know you did it. Be strong enough to stop your disillusion. The worst person to lie to is yourself.
• You can’t change yourself for anyone else; it won’t last. Eventually everyone struggling to change for someone else will say, “Fuuuuck iiiiiiiit!”, and quit. This happens with relationships all the time. It happens with goals and pursuits, too. Change for yourself or don’t bother.
• You can’t do it overnight. In a world where we expect results in “only 4 weeks!”, people get depressed and are abusive to themselves when they can’t make a radical difference in themselves instantly. You have to dig in for the long haul to reap results. Remember that change in your life is much like a savings account — it only gets good results if you give it years to sit and work its magic. Give yourself a lot of breathing room to work.
• Be reasonable. If I hear one more idiot say that they’re going to lose 100 lbs by summer, I’m going to split in two with laughter. Know yourself, know your environment, and know what’s reasonable. Don’t know what’s reasonable? Start with a stupidly low and easy-to-reach goal. When you make that, make another goal. You’ll feel a lot better losing 1 pound 50 times than 50 pounds once. Don’t be a moron.

And it’s not like I’m an alcoholic — ask anyone. I rarely have anything to drink at all. I used to have a beer or 3 every night in college; now I’m lucky if I have one a week, if that. It’s just when I do drink, in a party setting, I go overboard usually. I can easily sit down and have a few drinks socially; I go out with the barbershoppers on occasion for a few beers, have a few drinks with my homies, etc. — no problems. But when the premise is a party where everyone is going to be boozing it up and getting silly, it’s like I have to play King of the Hill, only my BAL is the Hill. ~

Now, that being said, I’m not upset about what I, personally, do when I’m drunk as a skunk — usually. I rarely have any shame about that, as I’m used to all sorts of crazy stunts, both in college and years after. I played naked soccer, for the love of god, and I’m not the sort that should be naked on a regular basis. I still believe it’s possible to get completely legless in the company of good friends and not have to worry about the repercussions — we all need to let down our hair from time to time — and good friends are usually gracious and forgiving. However, looking after how I affect my wife is important to me, and clearly it’s been negative so far, which isn’t good.

I wonder what prompts me to get to that point in the first place. My one guess is that I have a lot of stress and worry and anxiety in my life — heck, I think adult life is defined by stress. You’ve never heard anyone say that adults have all the fun and you never will, because there isn’t any fun to being an adult. Any fun you have has a price to pay; nothing you do is completely carefree. We make up these things called, “vacations”, with the sole intention of disconnecting from life and having a good time, and all we do is end up worrying about how we’re going to pay for it, who’s taking care of things while we’re gone, oh-god-the-paperwork-when-I-get-back. Nobody has fun on vacations but the kids. I think in some ways my drunken escapades is a desperate attempt, sometimes, to find that worriless lifestyle that is so far behind me and nowhere in my future.

Not that I’m using that as an excuse, and please don’t take it as one. I’m an adult; I should act like one. So it worries me that this so easily happens when I really should be in control of that aspect of my life, too.

The other thing that bothers me is that I apparently lack an ‘off’ button when it comes to consumption. On NYE, I drank 2/3 of a bucket of margaritas, which was an entire 750mL bottle of tequila amid the accompanying fluorescent slush. This would have been more than enough booze for anyone, let alone myself who doesn’t drink hardly at all. But, I didn’t stop. I had a bunch more Captain-and-Cokes after that, how many I really don’t know, but more than I should have (read: greater than zero). If I have to drive or otherwise stay in control, I can drink and then tell when I get fuzzy and stop. But if I’m out to get legless, once I reach a certain point, I lose the ability to stop and, moreover, I gain the urge to keep going. That part is scary to me, as I don’t know why I would have the urge to plow myself into the ground once I was already flat out, but I do. I often wonder if that is a direct correlation back to my uncles who were drunken menaces in their high school days.

So, I’m doing a lot of thinking about this and trying to determine what the best course of action is for me in these terms. I’ve only come up with a few guidelines so far, so I think it requires more thought, but here’s what I have so far:

• I need to stop drinking hard liquor when I drink. I like beer; I should stick to that. That doesn’t mean that I can’t get hoinked on beer, it just means it’s harder for me to reach a point where I can’t stop with beer. On that topic, I need to try to prevent pitchers of beer when possible, as it’s easy to toss them down with wild abandon. The exception to this is times when I know I’m driving or otherwise needing to stay un-fuzzy; I do ok with pitchers in those situations.
• I need to stop going to parties with the attitude of getting drunk, even a little bit, as my little bit of drunk turns into a shitload of drunk almost every time. I think a great deal is about attitude. If necessary, I need to invent a reason to stay soberish, even if it isn’t required. (“I might need to read a map; better stay somewhat sane.”)
• Like food, I need to slow down. I’ve always liked the idea of getting drunk fast and then sitting on the buzz for a while, but it’s proven that when I do that, I end up going past my point-of-no-return easily. I think I’m going to have to stick to ‘drink steady’ and let the buzz come when and if it comes.

I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of other steps that I need to take in this correction, but these are a start, I think. By putting them here, I hope to better stick to them. I have 2 weddings in Australia that I cannot afford to get even a little hoinked at (foreign families, ya know) and three weddings here in the States this summer that, while I *could* get trashed at (they’re all for the boozin’ side of the family), I probably owe it to myself and my wife to implement my plan to get relaxed and nothing more. Hopefully I can then avoid the hurts of the morning after, both my physical hurt and the guilt over having hurt my wife.

Then it’s just a matter of saving up for the rest of the trip! Yike. It’s coming quick.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2007. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS