That was not this week.

I am plagued.    Assailed by my thoughts, whipped by my doubts, slapped by the unknown, and terrorized by the future as it looms over me, cackling in the way that it does.   It enjoys the idea that I don’t know how to deal with it, I think.

Professionally, Myself is found adrift in the sea of uncertainty, floating from idea to thought, trying to nail down what I’m supposed to hold onto tightly and what I am to release.   How can I determine a direction to go when there’s so many and I have no idea if they’ll pan out or be a big, giant flop?   How do I know what effort to expend, what portion of my life to burn on my career, if every fire I’ve lit to date has done nothing but fizzle?

I’m a little rowboat, jostling amongst the multitudes of so many other, larger ships, gazing at them in awe and, at the same time, in curiosity — how did they get where they are, and why does the effort they expended seem so much less than my own?   Whereupon I instantly feel that my flounderings are nothing more than a drowning man’s floggings and I am simply ineffective — and much more worthless than I think.

I grew up being encouraged in my development — strongly — by those who loved me.   In many ways I appreciate it, but in so many, I regret it as well, for if I am all that everyone imagined, why do I feel like I am nowhere at all, and Sisyphus’ mountain rises high above me, and the rock is so large?

Stagnation is my nemesis, but he is a clever, tricky fellow.    He’s almost impossible to see, difficult to detect, and a swarthy opponent to fight.   Paired with him, in a tag team, is the Unconcentrator, the king of all things flighty and unreliable, impossible to pin down and equally hard to wring out anything of worth.    They circle me, swords drawn, and I am armed only with this keyboard.    I cannot fight them both; I cannot avoid their thrusts.   Is the best strategy to go out as a martyr….or to lay down the sword and let what slices come?

And then I sit back and try to wedge this circle-shaped block into a triangular hole in the great Table of Life — for, in the end, I do not want to say that I have contributed nothing.   That I have not somehow reached my old age, time has run out, and I have left no mark upon the world as a whole.   I fear more than anything of reaching retirement — reaching the age of inability — and finding that the life I lived was nothing more than a fart in the wind, like so many lives that have lived over the past thousands of years.   Ineffective.  Unimportant.  Non-influential.   Unnoticeable.   Forgettable.

That doesn’t mean I know what would fulfill that criteria.   Of course I don’t — that’s just the shards on the tips of the cat-o-nine.

Many times I step back and look and go, “Bah!   You’ve got years and years ahead of you to figure this out….honestly, why the bellyaching?   You’re only 34, for Constantinople’s sake!”   And then the dark tide flows in and the truth hits:   You’re 34.   You’re almost halfway done.   And you’ve done…..what, exactly?

Moreover, I cannot guess the chess game that I am playing, and fear grips me as I consider the board before me, the huge myriad of factors that I must answer to, make decisions about, and try to reason with.   I can only see one, maybe two moves ahead, but beyond that my vision fades, the lens is fogged, the ball grows dark as ink.   How can I possibly anticipate the moves made today that will put me in check tomorrow, let alone 10 or 20 years from now?  What if I sacrifice a piece and then sit there, weeping for lost rooks that can never be retrieved, when I hit 50?

I wish not to be a mere statistic — a mere blip on the radar, alive for 80 years, influential in the short term but, by the century’s flip, dead, forgotten, and good riddance.   There are so many blips, like a sea of candles in a hurricane.   Are we destined to ultimately be nothing?

Or am I only getting started?

Or am I already done?

Bueller?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2012. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS

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

I’d like to share a particularly poignant passage that I read today, as it got me thinking:

As a society we Americans spend only a fraction of our disposable income feeding ourselves — about a tenth, down from a fifth in the 1950s.   Americans today spend less on food, as a percentage of disposable income, than any other industrialized nation, and probably less than any people in the history of the world.   This suggestion that there are many of us who could afford to spend more on food if we chose to.   After all, it isn’t only the elite who in recent years have found an extra fifty or one hundred dollars each month to spend on cell phones (now owned by more than half the U.S. population, children included) or television, which close to 90 percent of all U.S. households now pay for.   Another formerly free good that more than half of us happily pay for today is water.   So is the unwillingness to pay more for food really a matter of affordability or priority?

I have wondered about this for a long time, because the fact is, we DO spend an awful lot more on things other than food, and we get really upset when the price of, say, ground beef goes up 30 cents, even though its been birthed, grown, finished, slaughtered, clean, cut, ground, and shaped into a convenient package for us, all for a few bucks per pound.   Bananas are up?  Oh lord!   Never mind the fact that they just got done traveling a few thousand miles to your grocery store, mostly unharmed.

I think part of it is price habit.    As adults, we all have a list of prices in our heads for, say, milk, bananas, meat, bread, and cheese.    Deviate much from those defined levels and we get all put out.   We like our traditions, in a sense.

I also think that we, as consumers, don’t really know what we should be paying for food — so we pay what the majority of the market says we should pay.    Maybe we should be paying $10/lb for good meat, but if the majority of the market says, “We have perfectly fine meat over here and it’s only $3/lb” and everyone ELSE has it for $3/lb, your mind tends to think that $10/lb meat must be exorbitant!  Ritzy.   Overpriced.

And finally, we look at things like food as constant necessities and, much like toilet paper, we haaaaate paying more than we must for something that we have to buy All. The. Time.  Most people feel like they spend the great majority of their time sleeping and eating, let alone having to go into a grocery store and buy food.   Paying more than you think is fair, or what everyone else is paying, simply grates on one’s nerves when you have to do it over and over.    It’s bad enough paying for $3.60/gallon gas, must we break the bank for food, too?

And yet……YET….we probably have our priorities out of whack, like so many other things.   We spend an awful lot of hours in our beds to not be shelling out top dollar for the best mattress money can buy, given that we spend on average almost 122 DAYS out of a year in bed!  That’s a full 1/3 of the year in bed and we still think $1000 for a mattress is akin to slavery.

Are we simply just really, really screwed up?

Of course, I’m not advocating spending $30 per person, per meal, 3x a day.   But is it the first thing we should skimp on when the budget is tight?   Should we be so quick to pass up that organic chicken in favor of the Walmart bulk-pack Trough Pack™ of chicken breasts, just to save a buck or two?   Need we feel so guilty when we buy local and pay twice the price?

Instead, should we be focusing on how healthy the food is for us, what chemicals and compounds were used on or in it, how it was raised, what sort of people in what sort of conditions harvested and prepared it, and….god forbid the audacity of it, how it tastes??

Far be it from me to be a food snob, or a tree-hugging environmentalist, or a food industry fear monger, but, at the same time, I wonder:   Are we being smart about this?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 5 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

I think we can all agree that business is necessary.   Not only from a make-a-living standpoint, but to generate the various things we need — or want — to survive.   But where that business falls in terms of its motivations, goals, and means is on a wide spectrum between two points:   Pure Philanthropy and Pure Greed — you do it for the betterment of the world, or you do it for the money, or as more often happens — a combination of the two.

This, then, has been the key point that I have been thinking about:   What combination of the two makes me happiest and most fulfilled?

It surely isn’t Pure Philanthropy — I am not employed because I feel a sense of having to better the world with my work; at least, not in a pure sense.   But even more so, I don’t ever envision myself working for a primarily-philanthropic business where the goal is to “do good things” vs. anything else.    This is because I have enough things of my own goals and volitions that I would happily accomplish if I didn’t have to earn a living.   Since I must do the latter, if it ever comes down to, “don’t work or work for a social benefit company”, I’ll probably opt for staying home and completing my own goals.

This is not to say that I’m incharitable — it’s simply to say that I don’t ever see myself being able to have the time and availability to engage in such purely unselfish activities with my time and efforts.    But, I do see myself volunteering in my free time for such things, and I think that’s where my contributions will emerge from.

On the reverse, I could never be simply money-grubbing.   There’s no soul in it, no conviction, no trust, no heart.    When your only god is the almighty dollar, your means become whatever they must to get it, no matter the associated non-monetary costs.    I won’t sacrifice my family, friends, sense of goodness, heart, mind, soul to the cause.    Those with the most toys don’t win, they just end up with a playroom full of toys and nobody to share them with.

That all being said, I don’t work for my health.  (Indeed, my health suffers rather greatly from having to work!)  I work because money, like it or not, makes the world go around, provides for almost everything in this post-industrial world, and is a necessary evil for so very many reasons.   So while I’m not a whore to the system, I am still planning on trying my best to earn as much as I can, advance my career as far as it can go, and to rise in the ranks of the business world so I can get the funding to accomplish everything I’d like to be and do.    I worry all the time that I’m not doing enough, fast enough, good enough, big enough, and the top of my career is looming ahead of me and that downhill slide to retirement is getting ever closer.   I fear it so much it makes me ache at night sometimes, simply because I know that I only get one shot at doing this the right way and I hate the idea of pulling out at 70 and saying that I had a mediocre run of it.

So, I don’t think either side of the equation is fundamentally evil — I have to be doing a job where I am earning money and being successful and I also have to be doing something that ultimately creates something of worth for the world as a whole, even if it’s a limited audience.   There are times when it’s perfectly fine to say, “Let’s to X because X will generate us a metric buttload of money.”   Likewise, I need to always be looking at the things I’m doing and say, “Is this really worth the money?   Will I hate myself in the morning/5 years/later?”

The balance must, ultimately, be struck.   Money, life, and everything in between.

Where does that line fall for you?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS

• filled in said 3 windows, but replaced them with a 6′x1′ transom window, complete with new header and wall
• tore down the 25′x15′ plaster-and-lath living room ceiling (messiest thing I’ve ever done in my life)
• filled 29 50-gallon garbage bags with 1,500 lbs of plaster, nails, and other debris
• blew through 8 different dust masks in the process and one pair of cargo shorts
• removed ~100′ of old knob-and-tube wiring and replaced it with ~300′ of new wiring
• used up a 100-count pack of electrical staples to hold the new wiring in place
• put in 9 recessed lights and 5 dome lights totaling 1,140 watts of new light in 2 rooms (for only 247 watts of actual electricity, thank you, CFLs)
• 6 new double-gang outlets with wiring
• 2 new 20A circuits on the panel in the basement
• new sheetrock on the ripped-out window wall and on the entire ceiling (~634 sq ft)
• applied 25 gallons and 2 sacks of drywall compound
• used up 5 rolls of Frog (green), blue, and white masking tape
• slapped 7 gallons of paint on ceilings, walls, and trim
• ripped up 600 square feet of hardwood floor in 3′ by 2″ pieces (1,200 pieces, approximately)
• pulled approximately 10,000 finish nails (at least it FELT like that many…)
• went through 1.5 rolls of insulation, a can of expanding foam, a roll of plastic, and 5 tubes of caulk to seal up errant drafts
• stapled down 16 sheets of underlayment
• rolled out 6 rolls of padding
• snapped 27 boxes (378 planks) of laminate flooring together
• air-gunned 423 feet of quarter-round trim
• troweled on a gallon of mastic, cut and squished 16 sheets of tile, and sponged on 2 gallons of grout

I’m pretty tired.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

Almost.

The difference being, of course, that my son cannot eat any of it — not a single piece.   Being strongly milk-soy protein intolerant, plus a host of other food-related allergies, it almost completely eliminates him from any and all consumption of the treats he’s about to procure over the evening’s activities.

While for many the lure of the sugar high may be a great motivator, Keston only has…his costume?  Prancing around in the cold for amusement?   Walking two miles with an eye patch on to practice his manners every couple of minutes?   He’ll see plenty of others having fun eating all the loot and he’ll get….nothing.    Maybe a banana, if we have any left.

Such amusement.

Whatever his motivation is, he’s damned excited about doing it and will have a great time.    Despite a major component of the entire experience being removed, he’ll be chirpy and giggly and have a thoroughly good time prancing around, spending time with us, walking hand-in-hand, and enjoying being dressed up and talking to anyone that will listen.

And really….shouldn’t we all be so excited?    Do we always need a prize, a treasure of physical form, to go out and do something with others, the community, our friends, and our family?

Bless his innocence and spirit a thousand times.   I do not relish the day it is snuffed by the world.

Arrr.....

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

Your Estimate is Wrong — I’ve been doing both software development and construction for a long time, and universally?  You’re off — by a lot.   Not just a little, and if that ever happens, you’d better count your lucky stars and buy a lottery ticket, because it won’t happen again.   Ever.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

A lack of food means a short temper.

A lack of touch means impaired learning.

A lack of water means hallucinations.

A lack of sex means a strained relationship.

—

Fulfill the physical and the mental follows; like a puppy panting in the desert, it comes.    The crude supplies the foundation for the fine.    The biological drives the logical.   Our art is propped upon piles of vegetables, feces, and pillows.   Technology is powered by the passion excreted by a thousand sweaty bodies, humping and gasping,  filled with water and steak and wine.

—

I am amazed at the ways in which our physical state affects our mental.

I am also abhorred by the same fact.

When will we break free?

And…what do we do in the meantime?

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

As one who only spent a mere week mucking about the hallowed halls and entrails of central NJ, I am ill-equipped to make any sort of mention about the qualities that I witnessed.

But let’s suffice to say that I found it to be….less offensive than I was bracing myself for.     In fact, for the most part, I was rather happy and enjoyed my stay.

That all being said, here are some random pics to amuse your eyestalks:

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

“What do you mean?” I hear you ask.   “I’m looking at them ALL THE TIME.    Gotta.   They’d shave the cat with a Brillo pad, spray paint the dog bright pink, and completely disassemble the DVD player in a few minutes if I didn’t.”

One of the big problems with being a parent is that far too often we — myself included — get stuck deep into our, “parenting mode”, and although we’re looking AT our children, we’re not really looking at them.   We’re actually looking past them — we’re watching their behavior, checking for signs of distress, eyeing out potential hazards, or trying desperately to stay one step ahead of their crafty little minds and anticipate what next thing they will find amusing that you certainly will not.

Other times, when we know are kids are in a safe place, we have a tendency to tune them out.    How many times have you said, “That’s wonderful, dear,” as you glaze off at the TV program you’re watching and Junior is trying to show you his crayon drawing for the 14th time?    Guilty!   And hey, I get it; kids can’t — and shouldn’t — get 100% of our concentration 100% of the time.   They’ll manage and survive fine if we don’t coo wildly over every single thing they do or jump to their every whim.

The problem comes when we fail to come back out of our parenting or zone-out mode and recognize what is truly in front of us — and how amazing, wonderful, and unique it is.    And what a privilege we have been given at getting to be so involved in it.

Keston was playing on my lap the other night and he was in a mood to be a bit snuggly and close so we were sitting face-to-face as he talked to me and played with my face and beard.    At first I found myself gazing past him as I talked to my wife and checked out the TV and so forth, and then suddenly, I stopped.

My eyes — and more importantly, my mind — switched focus to concentrate on him.    Looking deep into those eyes like I used to all the time when he was first born, noting the expressions and thoughts behind those liquid windows.    He was suddenly quiet and gazed right back at me, a curious expression on his face as he tried to figure out what I was doing.  My eyes played over the delicate features of his face, eyelashes, cheeks, nose, noting all the while the perfection and beauty in each of them.    All at the same time, feeling and allowing myself to recognize and savor the emotions of connection and happiness and protectiveness and pride that swelled up inside of me when I really stopped to look.

The cliché about kids growing up too fast is all too real, raw, and frightening once you become a parent.   He’s only three and already I look back on pictures from his earlier years and go, “Was he THAT small?  He looked like THAT!?  I don’t remember!”   I don’t want to be one of those parents that suddenly gets a clearing of their vision about the time their child turns 14 and goes, “Who are you, where did you come from, and are you going to do your laundry anytime soon??”

So, I’m going to try my hardest to stop and look more.   To savor what I can and capture as much as I am able.   To parent when I must, but to avoid the trap of familiarity.   To really look.

I hope I never fail to see him.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

My ‘class’ definitions:

• Poor: Can’t afford basic necessities even with careful budgeting
• Lower Class: Can afford basic necessities with strict budgeting; can afford some small luxuries (e.g. cable TV, dinner out) with long-term budgeting
• Middle Class: Can afford basic necessities without strict budgeting, chooses between the little luxuries, can afford larger expenses/luxuries (vacation, college tuition, kitchen remodel) with long-term budgeting
• Upper Class: Does not need to choose between little luxuries, can afford larger expenses/luxuries with short-term budgeting
• Rich:  Can afford larger expenses/luxuries without budgeting

The breakdown is probably one of the better ones that I’ve ever seen and it struck me in a significant way, because I can easily place myself into this chart and I suspect most people that read this blog would be able to do so as well.    I’d say for my family, we fall into the lower to middle part of Middle Class.

The question is:   Is it accurate?    For those of you who consider themselves to be “middle class”, do you fit within the above definition, or is it lacking something?    If you don’t fall within what you would consider middle class, where DO you fall and are you comfortable with that definition?

Is it even useful to define and discuss things in terms of financial classes at all?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Sounds impossible, right?   I mean — playing the lottery is fun, but everyone knows the entry fee is flushed down the toilet.

Unless….

Freakonomics Radio (a podcast I highly recommend) recently ran a two-part podcast (Part 1 | Part 2) on “No-Lose Lotteries”, otherwise known as Prize-Linked Savings Accounts (PLSes).     I found the concept to be fascinating and intriguing and it left me wondering — man, how can we get it going here?

The essential idea is this: You open a savings account at a bank or credit union or somewhere.     Instead of meager interest payments which, as we all know, are next-to-nothing anyway, the interest is pooled from all other people saving into one lump sum and then, once a month, one person wins the entire pot of interest in a lottery.

If you don’t win, you have your original savings and haven’t lost a dime.   You haven’t gained anything, either, but not-losing in this economy is pretty nice.    And if you are one of the lucky ones that win, it could really change your life for awhile.    Prizes are not gigantic and depend on the number of people saving, but they range from $20,000 to $100,000.     If you’re like me, even a $10,000 windfall would make significant dents in my debt, lifestyle, etc.    $100,000 would be incredible.

PLSes have been around for years in Europe and Africa and other countries but have only recently been able to take a foothold in a few U.S. states, mostly due to the fact that the laws prevent lotteries that are not State-run from existing.    And, as you can imagine, the States are NOT fond of the idea of letting these in.

The podcasts and articles basically sum it up like this:    Americans are crap at saving.    Americans love to gamble in some form or another, mostly on lotteries.   (~$58 billion spent on lottery tickets last year)    Why not combine the two, increase our saving rate, and fulfill our need to dream a little?

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

The airport walk:  We all adopt a certain pose, a particular swagger, especially once we have gone through the pains of the security checkpoint.    Before, we are mere citizens, lined up like sheep to the slaughter in the queue, downtrodden and dejected.   We are one of the “nots”, on the outside, the unprivileged.

After passing through the crucible that is the screening and pat-down (sighing greatly if we are one of the lucky ones to pass the requirements without a full cavity groping), we change – we become one of the elite, someone with an agenda, a place to be, a flight to catch.   We’ve endured the lash, conquered the mountain, and now we have a 2:34 to LGA to handle.

Even that phrase – “a flight to catch” – makes us all sound like athletes, as if we had to complete a rigorous triathlon and, with crossbow and camouflage, had to track down and bag the wily Boeing in its natural habitat (feeding ever so gently on Jet-A1);  a successful hunt resulting in the hours-long privilege of sitting on our ass in a very expensive, fart-soaked chair in a high-speed tin can.

So we adopt this into our attitude; we have, of course, chucked out gregarious amounts of cash to be here, we have a schedule, we’re being modern and self-reliant, following signs and rules and boarding only by zone, and generally rubbing noses with some High Tech Shit™.

We cop this all around the airport itself, navigating between people in the concourse with barely a nod or a change in facial expression, but carrying it over to the plane itself.  We regard each other gingerly, as if to say, “I have to SIT next to you, but I don’t have to necessarily ACKNOWLEDGE you.”   Nevermind the fact that while you are on a transcontinental flight and you might be thigh-to-sticky-thigh with a total stranger for 8, 10, 15 hours – a position that would normally result in several fruity drinks and music in going untz-untz-untz to achieve —  introductions are right out.

Few other places generate so vast of a cross-section of a fake humanity in such a small space, and yet it is here – day in, day out, in cities all over the world, we do our little dance next to but not with each other, just to get to a new place for little while.    (Assuming no delays.)

Now, if you don’t mind, dear regular citizens – I have a flight to catch.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

Cogito ergo sum.  “I think, therefore I am.” When I was six, I used to think about what it would be like if there was no world.  Consider for a moment that we are only in the imagination and that our world does not exist.  What is the universe really like? Is there a universe at all?

In thoughtful response:

In Your Wildest Dreams

She was surprised that she hadn’t seen it before, really; the signs were all there, people just seemed to conveniently ignore them all their lives, going on as if nothing was the matter, as if things were supposed to be orderly and expected and logical. Logic — she snorted — the mere word sounded foreign to her now.

Sitting there in the dark she knew exactly how it all worked at this point and yet couldn’t fathom exactly what to do about it.    Having this sort of transformative power over the world gave her the ability to do an infinite amount of good — or bad.    This was the problem with absolute power; it tended to get muddled when it came to ethics.

“A drink, madame?” said a stately butler at her elbow, suddenly.    She looked up, bemused.

“Where did you come from?” she asked with a curious tone in her voice.

He looked incredulous.    “Madame clearly feels ill, or she would have remembered that she hired me last year to look over her estate.”

Always logical.    Everything that she thought of to happen always came with a causal, logical reason behind it.    Truth was, she just wanted a drink and, being alone in the house, getting out of the chair would be required.    Instead, her life now consisted of a rather proper-looking French butler standing at her side.   Go figure that he would be French.

She waved him off.    If she thought about it right, he would be gone by morning, complete with yet another logical explanation as to why he was no longer there.   She wondered — would it be because he was fired, or she couldn’t pay him, or because he had a family emergency?    Sometimes the curiosity was worth the sad emptiness of it all.

But the sense of loss remained; she could barely shake the feeling of worthlessness, of meaningless. Did the life lived according to one’s imagination count as a life at all?    When all that you desired — and thought, wished, imagined, and dreamed — came true in one form or another, what was the point?

Anything.    That was the problem — without the accomplishment factor, she had nothing to struggle for.    She had already won the lottery, of course; trips to exotic places around the world, lovers of all types and scents and sweaty nights in Morocco, drinks by the hundreds in small island clubs that resulted in no hangovers due to some factor or another.    She had really lived it up those first few years.

Now….well.     It was all a bit old.    Despair had gripped her heart so tight that sometimes at night she could barely stand to breathe despite the cool air that drifted through her hut each evening.   There was nothing — nothing — that made this seem real.

As she drifted off to sleep, she wondered what death was like and whether it was anything like this, and she feared for it almost as much as she longed for the end.       Later that evening, as she lay there slumbering, a small part of her heart that had gone years without detection suddenly popped — and she was gone.

Logical.   Everything had a reason.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Head on over and check out my blog today:    Slightly Twiggy

Thanks for the opportunity, S30P!

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Osama bin Laden was killed yesterday.    Well, thank goodness.   Now the war on terror is over, all our troops are headed home, the economy is already improving by leaps and bounds, and I hear that Republicans and Democrats were buying each other rounds in all bars in D.C. last night.

Oh, wait…..what?   What’s that you say?   Nothing’s changed?

Nor will it.   For all the hoopla and people having their temporary fix on this news story, it will change nothing, and for that reason alone — despite many other, valid reasons — it’s annoying at best to view the revelry and carrying-on by everyone in the USA and elsewhere about this rather minor development in the grand scheme of things.  OBL was marginalized ages ago; he has been no more effective than the boogeyman for years.

Americans, however, are exceptionally good at focusing on the shiny and completely missing the larger picture and, as such, will spend the better part of the next month having this as our top news story, analyzing the attack, the compound, the result, the analysis, the burial at sea, etc. from every possible angle — the people in charge will be on every news story and even Oprah will shed some tears over it, and at the end, Ryan Seacrest will hold a special on E! entitled, “Osama:  From Fame to Infamy, a Tragic Tale” and will fill it with ominous phrases that hang over every commercial break.

Meanwhile, back in reality, our troops will keep on staying exactly where they are and will still be fighting the same, pointless wars that they’ve been involved in for the past 10 years.  The economy will keep on crawling — dazed, bleeding, and drunk — back from the cliff edge.    Jobs will still be scarce.   Homes will be foreclosed upon.   Families will cease to be able to afford healthcare.  Government will continue to bicker and bitch and moan and draw down salaries us proletariats can only dream of.

And best yet?  Terrorism will likely INCREASE as OBL is martyred.    Excellent.

And for those of you who somehow think that this will automatically earn Obama a 2nd term, think again.    Only the politically naive would suggest such a thing, as if one single “success” in a presidency ever gained that sort of clout.    He’s got a hard, hard road ahead of him and I don’t think this necessarily points to him being an effective or worthwhile president — there’s plenty of crap that he’s failed to push or come through on.   This is very, very politically minor.

This is not a patriotic thing that we have done.   Going on the warpath, acting like a global jackass, spending billions of dollars in two needless wars with countries not even involved in the original idea, and hunting down and killing a man is not something to be proud of or jubilant about, unless you’re the sort that gets some sort of sick glee out of watching executions or similar.

This is not to say that I don’t think the man was the scum of the Earth, because I think he was; but at the same time, taking pleasure in this is the wrong attitude to have — it’s terrible that people of his ilk even exist; try to hold yourself higher than his standards and treat this as what it is:  A sobering, unfortunate yet necessary step in an ongoing struggle against the purely evil people of the world who do not think twice when it comes to eliminating anyone they do not agree with.

The adults among us should be quiet, contemplative, and sober; yesterday, a man was killed.   A life was taken.   This should not ever, ever be taken lightly, no matter what the need or justification.

In the end, the result of this event is almost certainly a wash.     Yes, a crazed mastermind of incredible evil has been eliminated from the Earth.  But do not think this ends terrorism, for there will be any number of other people willing to jump up and happily take the role.    Yes, a mission was accomplished, but it won’t send our troops home.    Good on Obama for finally doing what Bush couldn’t, but it won’t save his presidency.   And the rest of us will be no more or less safe at home or abroad than we were before.

Don’t you feel better now?

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

A Royal Fantasy

What is, in essence, true royalty?  

We know what it is historically, but have you ever thought about it in terms of what it actually accomplishes?

Many would say its primary function is for a small group of people to be in charge, to rule a land or an area, to be the government in its entirety.    In most cases, they’d be right — to an extent.   Royalty existed to provide that ever-so-difficult-to-come-by means by which a country could figure out who in the hell was calling the shots.   Whether by look, hook, or crook, it worked as a political system (and still does in many ways) in many countries and areas.

Others would also cite the idea of elevating one group above another; the royals and the serfs, the bourgeois and the proletarians, separated not only by mere financial status but by an entire class, thus giving a social order that could be understood and followed by the populace.   A separate, special class of humans.

But I wonder how much having a royalty fulfilled the innate need of humans to feel special — privileged — admired.

Think about it:   A group that has figured out that if they only repress those around them and elevate themselves, they suddenly feel better about it.   They not only get better things but better treatment.   People call them fancy titles.   They give them gifts and praises.   Special clothes adorn you and fill your closets.   You live in great palaces and castles and command many soldiers, servants, and admirers.   Scores of people travel to visit your domains simply because you’re royalty and they are not.

And it perpetuates — once royalty has it figured out, they know the score — and they have time to plan it further, so that they dynasty goes on.   Properties and lands are captured and then rented for income.    Riches and assets are gathered together to fund not only pursuits but to keep up the image — to fuel the party and keep it happening.   And because of time and money, the royals are not mere idiots — no, they are educated and thoughtful and politicians and leaders and an inspiration — to everyone.

And they get married to scenes of pomp and circumstance and many, many more reminders that they are royal and you — you are not.

It is a game in many ways; a complex series of moves that, once you get into a particular places, unless something drastic happens to change the rules, you can stay on the merry-go-round almost infinitely.

Any invitation to a wedding is considered an honour — a request from someone to share in their most special day.    From the royalty, it is a call to populate the church and the event with the very folks that keep them in the royal light — their subjects.    And yet, despite all this, we rather like it.

So if invited I would attend and see the spectacle that is before me; not because I do not see it for what it is, but because it is the fulfillment of the ultimate fantasy that any person can has — to be special.

But I shall never forget my place.

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

Professor Walt Will is one of the many excellent professors in the Computer Science department at Luther College in Decorah, IA, USA. During my tenure at Luther, I got the pleasure of having him for a few classes, the most noted being Databases. These quotes are collected from that class session. At the time, I printed these out and handed them to the entire class prior to the final exam, including a copy for Walt, whom I recall laughing a lot once he found it on the podium. I present them here so other students of Walt’s — and the general public — can appreciate his unique teaching style.

Walt is retiring this year and will be greatly missed; I am honoured to have been one of his many students.

“Have you hugged your computer account lately?”

“…and I’ll try to make those times as gentle as possible as we slam you to the mat.”
– Walt on relational databases and the math involved in them.

“One of the prerequisites for the course is to read — or read if you are pressed. I’m pressing.”
– Walt on his theory of motivation

“Oh…Oh…damn it anyway.”
– Walt trying to work out a math problem on the board and coming up horribly wrong.

“…couldn’t we bring this tuple into the join and give it some friends to play with?”
– Walt on sympathy towards tuples lost in natural joins.

“When you want it, you really want it. But you can go days — weeks, even, without wanting it.”

“That should have given you who are going to copy this time to get it copied, and the rest of you time to fall asleep. Good job on that so far.”

“You walk into your typical bar in Decorah and I’ll bet you won’t.”
– Walt on the lack of people who can write SQL in Decorah.

“It amazes me how you can walk down the street and meet people every day that couldn’t write a line of C++ if their lives depended on it.”

“Have you seen this textbook in the room at all??”
– indicating the course’s one-and-only textbook.

“…where you were thinking about something else and he was up here babbling on about whatever he talks about. I’ve been there.”
– Walt on the attention span of his 2:30pm class.

“You get a good score, I get the illusion that I’m teaching well, everyone’s happy.”
– Walt on his teaching strategy.

“I apologize for being too lenient and I promise to make it up in the future.”
– Walt on the easy grading on a certain test.

“I’m skipping over the part I really wanted to skip over for the time being.”

“The great thing about standards is how many we have.”

“So as you sit here ignoring me, in a skyscraper in Manhattan and a barn in Wisconsin, people are writing SQL queries….”
– Walt on the importance of SQL in daily living.

“…just imagining a person on a mountain bike with pink sprockets just puts a little joy into my life.”

“Well, you look around for awhile, and unless some of you have names I don’t know about…there are no Ferraris in the room.”
– Walt somewhere on the intricasies of functional dependencies.

“And it caught the attention of those people sleeping, just for an instant; I don’t have high expectations here.”

“I’m suggesting that most of you are well enough traveled that you know that there is a First Avenue in more than one city. Also, that Decorah isn’t the only city with a main street.”
– Walt on travel habits of college students.

“You can come in here and hold hands and sing, ‘We are the World’ or something, but if you can find something else to do at 2:30 on the Friday before Spring Break, go for it.”

“…And if this trips your trigger, you can read all weekend if you want.”
– Walt on the erotic pleasures of multivalued dependencies.

“I had this debate with myself, which I lost.”

“We’ve all become so perverted that we think that a tree’s roots are at the top and leaves at the bottom.”
– Walt on CS vs. Biology

“I can only lose so many battles with myself.”
– Walt showing the strain of a long spring semester.

“Oh, just kidding. Just trying to wake a few people up, just for a moment. Kind of ease ‘em back into reality.”

“Get a life.”

“You have big buffers. Nothing personal, but you do.”
– Referring to the size of some people’s memories.

“They tend to love their computers in a way that’s, well, kinda scary sometimes.”
– Walt on Macintosh owners.

“Back in the 60′s and 70′s everyone thought it was smoking dope.”
– Walt on hashing algorithms.

“Maybe it’s a database of stolen cars. And the one you bought doesn’t show up there. That’s a good thing.”
– Walt on the positive aspects of databases

“I have nothing against fractions and some of my best friends are decimals, but…”
– Walt on his relationship to math.

“Dang it to heck.”
– Walt on stubborn B-tree algorithms.

“Dammit anyway. Or ‘gracious’, whatever the expletive of your choice might be.”

“Sometimes your little sister could answer it.”
– Walt on the obvious answer to some final questions.

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

And so many of you are wonderful bloggers and writers, but you’re busy, too, right?

So let’s write TOGETHER.   What do you say?

A collaborative story.   Kinda like Mad Libs, kinda not.   More like that old campfire activity of making up an entire story by adding a sentence one person at a time around the ring, except this would be adding it a short chapter at a time, one per blog post on your own blog.

Everyone would be linked forward and backwards — forward to the next chapter, backwards to the previous chapter and/or the beginning of the story.     You would be given the starting and ending sentences of your chapter so everything would tie together in the end…somewhat.    The middle would be up to you.

What do you think, bloggers?   Interested?    If so, leave a comment below and say, “I’m in!” and I’ll add you to the list.   Deadline of April 1st at 9:00 AM CDT to sign up so we can get moving and all parts will publish on April 10th.   If you sign up, you MUST do it, even if you turn in a small piece, otherwise the story will break, ok?

Suggestions for general genre and basic plotline are welcome — but keep it simple, I want to show off every writer in their own creativity.

No prizes other than fun, no entry fee or charity donations or any of that crap, no awards other than people reading your blog, link love, and a general feeling of community and accomplishment.   But hey — that’s good, right?

Right.   Jump in.   You know you want to.

UPDATE:   See commentary for additional clarification about how it works.   Thanks!

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 7 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

“Do you call yourself a patient or a junkie? The only thing that separates you is who takes your money.” -Atmosphere Using the lyric above as inspiration, write a fictional piece (or non-fictional piece if you have had your own struggles) from the point of view of someone struggling with prescription drug abuse.

I answer back with the following:

Scraping By

The shaking of my fingers almost derails their skittering across the keys as I frantically conduct my search.

“C’mon, c’mon…” I mutter to the glowing screen in the wee hours of the morning, the sun barely ratcheting above the horizon for another long haul across the sky. I know that somewhere — somewhere — inside this wretched city is another doctor’s office. I know it.

I have to know it.

I flip over to the spreadsheet that has all the names, addresses, and numbers arranged in it so neatly it almost makes me bark a laugh; it would be considered a skill in organization if it wasn’t so farcical.

“Renner? Renner? Ren-NER.” I slap the key combo to quickly flip over to the browser and then back to the spreadsheet, comparing entries. “No, dammit, that was 2 weeks ago.”

Again to the Google and again to the search terms: “doctor Chicago walk-in”. The walk-ins are easier; less suspicion, they expect no insurance so they don’t ask as often, more likely not to remember you or care who your kids are, just in and out. In and out. In and out and down the throat again and I can move on with my day.

A hit pops up a few pages in. “There!” I exclaim, quickly grabbing a Post-It and a pen which my shivering flesh dashes to the floor and I spend an inordinate amount of time picking up, the tremors and the adrenaline dancing as an unholy puppeteer in my blood. “Grolsch. Grawlsh-KKKK.” I let it roll off my tongue and out between my chapped lips in a crack. Clicking on the link, I ask Google to do the magic and direct me on which buses to take to the place. “Right, the #13, the #25, and the #39 eastbound.” Three numbers appear in blue on the notepad and I whip the slip off the top and into the kangaroo pouch on my tattered hoodie. Jumping up and through the nearest doorway I nearly run headlong into the open cupboard door and I spin around in a jerky motion, landing me on my ass in the middle of the kitchen floor. Cursing, I pull myself up on the countertop and grab the brown bottle hanging out there near the back.

Shaking it produces only one half moon and some crumbs which I lick off my hand before tossing back the ray of frown into the back of my throat and shoo-ing it with a dash of water from the sink. I cut the last three into halves, somehow thinking that it might help if I had problems locating another supply; in retrospect, it helped. And then not, because the tremors are worse this way, because you’re half there and the pain is enough to cause you to moan but not scream. Not scream, but close. So it’s a half life instead of the dead calm of being medicated or firey existence you are used to when the bottle doesn’t shake anymore.

Sinking back to the ground, I wait for the savoring feel of numbness to come, although it’s not like it usually is with two or three pills; no — this is a brushed kiss across the aching inside, something that barely touches it. You know it’s there because your mind suddenly slows down a tiny bit, just a fraction; it’s enough to bring you back to the moment and realize that the floor is dirty and you need shoes on before you go outside, but the fires are still there, radiating. And you can’t forget — which is the point. Forgetfulness.

It comes, eventually, and although it’s lackluster, I pull myself back up to my feet, snag a jacket with one finger under the hook, and I’m out the door with a harsh slam. The path, the sidewalk in greys and wets, to the corner — busstop. Bench. Sit.

The ride in comes with its usual; gazing outside the window as if the city was new and fresh and amazing, as if you could see out of those foggy panes of glass covered in fingerprints and hot breath from kids gone cold, sweaty pits, greasy hair. The filth of a hundred commuters slapped onto solidified silica, the entire bus a moving display of macroscope slides with specimens from the masses.

The waiting room at the place is nicer than some I’ve been to — a bit more upscale considering the masses served. Magazines are in the range of Good Housekeeping vs. Maxim and there’s a potted plant that smells like pee in the corner. An improvement, if you ask me. I get called back after watching three episodes of Press Your Luck! on TVLand and goggling at the large-breasted receptionist a bit too much.

The doctor is the usual sort, attempting to rid the world of its problems and pains while churning out a respectable wage and keeping up on the boat payments. I’ve seen them all — the young, confident guns with their technology and belt full of tests and procedures. I deny them all, of course. The older sort tend to hum and haw and hrumph as they look over things and can take some time to convince that I’ve, “only had this for a couple of weeks, and my regular doctor gave me morphine, but he’s not in, he’s on vacation, see and….” I wring the story out into the sink of their heads and just wait for the water to run down the drains and score me another paper.

He takes a bit of convincing and redirecting from other drugs and tests. Calls me, “Son”, a lot. “We can try…” “No, this just WORKS.” I emphasize, and he does that clucking sound, but still pulls out his precious pad and writes out the next month of my life as a normal person.

I toss some green at the cashier and by the time I’m out of the door, I’m as high as a kite emotionally and and as low as a sewer in everything else. I know I’ll need this one soon. A pharmacy looms around the next corner and I wait nervously till it’s finally in my hand and I can swallow towards normality again.

“There…” I sigh and lean my head back, sitting on the bench outside a McD’s as the full brunt of the triple dose hits me. “That’s my daddy.” Did I take three? Or four? If one is awake and two is wonder….eh. I’ll pull back for the rest. Have to savor what there is here.

I giggle to nobody in particular, realizing I’ve dumped my Diet Coke into my pants and am sitting in a cold, sticky slush, but it doesn’t matter now. The stares of those walking past me bounce off into the fog that surrounds every thought and I’m happy again. Happy.

Ha. Ppy.

Puh. Eee.

Puh.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 11 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

“I failed because I believed.”

Here then my divulging:

The Failure of Belief

Belief and I grew up together, side by side, one serving the other in a sort of symbiotic dance that required that each perform his duties to the relationship and everything would stay stable and manageable.    It was a great arrangement — until it fell apart.   The breakup, as they say, was not pretty.

These then were revealed to me the day that I held aloft a clear vision, a logical evaluation, an immolation for all things previously known as “fact” or “truth”; once I performed the Cartesian act of reduction, I arrived at a very dark place, devoid of much except my own beating heart and the sound of my sighs.

It was many days.   It was many weeks.   It was many, many months.

Slowly, like the slow unraveling of a fiddle-head in a misty meadow, a few truths appeared, unhindered by the ponderous maille of blind faith that belief had clothed them in.   They were young, virginal, and shy; quick to run away in the first light of day, hard to defend in the heat of battle.   But they were pure.

There were not many; it was hard to conceive of each one, to give birth to that fully-separate being, and they were very needy.   They required a delicate food, untainted by any preconceived notions or generalizations; they consumed only the finest of evidence, the sweetest of arguments; their palates were extremely discerning.

Over the years I have tried my best to help them to grow, but the progress is slow and daunting.   Each is different, each requires a specific way of caring for it.  A few I’ve had to mercifully take out back behind the shed, because ultimately they were doomed to not survive, and having been down the road of letting beliefs wither and die slowly, I am not prepared to do so again.    This time, it is swift and clean.

Belief doesn’t show up at my door much anymore; there’s little that can be considered a “belief” so much as a truth or a knowledge that lives here.    I have no room in the inn for anything based upon fantasy or dogma or superstition; anything not supportable by the logic I have been blessed with is severely looked upon and disciplined into whatever can be saved of it.

But I am better for it.

And I am cleaner.    Clearer.

I am able to see others for what they are, not for what I suppose them to be.   I see everyone’s flaws as being something that we all bear, that we all have, and those are what build us up or tear us down, universally, and by gaining understanding of each other, we gain more than simple knowledge.

I see the world through clear glass; a world where fairness does not exist, where sometimes circumstances pin people in places they have little or no control over, where influences are sometimes greater than the individual spirit, and where damned-do, damned-don’t is the rule of the land more than any other principle.   Where each and every one of us needs each and every one of the rest of us, fullstop.

I see women now, not as the mystical objects of my youth, but as the wonderful, spicy flavor in every dish of life, one that I would desperately long for were it not present.

I understand now that love — pure, true love — comes in as many fascinating and dazzling forms as a cave filled with a thousand suns and it is all legitimate and good and right.

And I see truth; not as I want it to be, not as I hope it to be, but as it is.

For all the failure of belief, there is victory in that.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 7 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Finally, I posted an ad on Craigslist and a local farmer responded, saying he was taking a hog to the locker at the end of the week.    Long story short, what went from asking to purchase a part of said hog resulted in me obtaining the ENTIRE pig, in large pieces, a week and a half later.   I finally had my belly to work with.

Below is the picture gallery of the experience.    Although I whizzed RIGHT by the Feb 15th deadline to be considered for participation in the contest, I nonetheless am having a great time with it and will keep it up, and am starting to reap the benefits of my efforts.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

“You are present at your own grade school/high school/college graduation. What words of advise do you give to yourself, and how do you make sure that younger you remembers them?”

Below is my meager response.

Notes

The first I barely noticed as I enjoyed the incredible high of handing in my very last final before the end.    As I gathered up my notes at my desk, I saw it scrawled across the open page of my notebook in an oddly-familiar handwriting: “Pffft.   That was nothing.”

Taking the advice, I thought nothing of it at all and raced for my locker to gather the last of my things and make a quick escape before someone – anyone – could pin me down for one last requirement, test, signature, or blood sample to get out of the place.    12 years and I was finally FREE!

As I whizzed my wrist around the combination and yanked open the door with a CLANG!, something orange fell and poked me in the forehead.    I picked up the loosely-folded piece of bright cardstock and read, “The best is yet to come.”   I grinned, thinking that one of my friends had gone a bit off on the happy tree and, elated with the prospect of summer and the end of tedious days with books, was spreading the joy.

That was…until I found the next note.

Written on dark, navy blue paper in white pencil and folded tightly in the front pocket of my leather jacket, it tomed, “The worst is yet to come.”   I looked around the empty hallway as I shrugged my backpack on my shoulders.    “Ok, “ I said to nobody in particular with a half-hearted laugh, “now you’re just fucking with me.”   I marched out of the school and into the sunlight to face the upcoming days of frolicking and celebration as we prepared to graduate at the end of the week.

Disconcertingly, however, the notes kept appearing at random intervals and odd places.   Two inside my diary, one saying, “Women are just people – treat them like it,” written on a pink, flowery-cut piece of paper, but on a stark-white sheet: “Sex is everything you imagine – and nothing that you think.”    In the church bulletin that week, “Believe what you believe and not what you are told,” and in my apron at my carry-out boy grocery store job, “Hard work pays; Smart work pays better.”

I started collecting all of the notes in a crinkled envelope I kept in my back pocket.   I would obsess over them at random intervals, sitting in my car at night before going home, in bed late at night, in the shower where I found the one in the ziplock bag that said, “Friends will be lost.   Family will die.    Appreciate your showers.”

I asked my friends about them; I cornered my family.   Nobody would admit to it and I couldn’t tell if they were putting me on, but none looked like they even had a clue as to what I was going on about.   Some were typed, some were handwritten, but I never was able to place it, though it all looked familiar.   I assumed that, at some point, the trickster would out.

Graduation Day and, even as I unsheathed and put on my robe, another note fell out onto the floor.   I threw up my hands to the sky and shook them in mock rage, and then read it aloud to the room, “Question Everything.”   Profound, I thought, given a day that’s supposed to say that you have the answers to most everything people think you should, but I tucked it away in my pocket with the rest of them.

The usual ceremonies, the choir singing in the background, the speeches, the, “You’re now ready for the world” dronings, but during it all, I couldn’t help but feel the burning of the notes in my back pocket, taunting me with all of their quips and advice.    Was I hearing the truth or was this all a lie?

Outside the hall and shaking hands, greeting, tears, congratulations poured in from friends and family in the usual way.   The crowds thinned and eventually I headed off down a hallway to the bathroom to take care of some business.   Suddenly a man approached me from a side hallway and said, “Nathan.”

“Yeah?” I questioned, looking him over.   He was about my size, a bit heavier, with a hooded jacket pulled up over a sunglass-adored, bearded face.   He looked, frankly, like a pervert.   “What’s up?”

“Congratulations.”

“Err…thanks,” I responded, not quite sure what to make of it all.    I started to continue down the hallway; nature called, after all.

“Hold it!” the man exclaimed and then extended an arm with a folded piece of green paper in it, “This is for you.”

I took it in my fingers, tentatively, as if it would explode, and opened it.    In neat handwriting across the center it said, “Reality is not what it appears.”   I looked up sharply.

“YOU!” I shouted as the man had already whirled around and was rapidly making an exit towards the outside doors, “These were from you!?    Wait, wait….who are you???” I started after him.

“It’s just advice – that’s all.   But I’d pay attention to it if I were you!” he sang over a shoulder, laughing, and slamming through the crashbars to the outside.

I hit the door just seconds after he and, bursting through, flew blinking into the sun.   I pulled up short in the parking lot and glanced around frantically – nobody.  There were only cars.

Entering back into the school, I shook my head, unable to come to terms with all this craziness.   Unfolding the note again, I read the advice again and sighed as I agreed that reality was certainly being odd.    Then I noticed on the back, in tiny print, a note, and I gasped as I read:   “To Nathan, Congratulations on your graduation.   Heed the advice.   See you in 2011.   – Nathan”

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | 6 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Meat and I go a long way back.     Born and raised as a farmer’s son, I was whelped on a wide variety of animal proteins, ranging from simple mince to an involved, family traditional sausage.    We’ve always gotten along well.

I have, however, in recent years become enamoured with those who take the use of animal bits to a whole new level of taste and respect. While I’m not vegan by any means, I do understand the sentiments and cannot discredit those who have taken that gastronomical angle.     That being said, it isn’t for me, and so I’m more interested in exploring how to make the meats I consume not only taste better, but used better.  With more care.    With more love for the animal and the product.

Enter stage-left charcuterie, the craft of salting, smoking, and curing meats in old-fashioned traditions using simple ingredients, time-honoured methods, and waste-not want-not practicality.  Originally derived because the world lacked such wonderful devices as refrigerators and freezers, a growing trend in culinary circles has been to turn back to these methods of preparation because they result in extraordinary flavors and textures, to say nothing of the pride of creating an end product over the course of days, weeks, or even months of careful work and patience.

For Christmas, my lovely wife bought me two tomes of knowledge in the subject, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery by Jane Grigson and Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.   Since then I’ve been pouring over them in earnest and have been super-eager to try out some of these recipes.

The Founders

What better motivation than an online community of charcuterie enthusiasts to motivate you!     CHARCUTEPALOOZA, started by the talented Cathy Barrow of Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen and Kim Foster of The Yummy Mummy started this 12-month challenge to make and show off preserved meats of all sorts.   After lots of consideration and thought, I decided I had nothing to lose and tossed my spoon into the pot — twelve months of taste, here we come!

Now I just have to find some meat!

The effort has attracted a lot of attention. More than 180 bloggers and food enthusiasts are signed up.   There is a Facebook group and a Twitter hashtag (#charcutepalooza) and a Flickr group.     Tomorrow Charcutepalooza will be featured in the Washington Post and the online story is here.    Michael Ruhlman himself has endorsed the project and has contributed to the articles and instructions.      The grand prize is an all-expenses paid trip to Paris and Camont, France, where the winner will spend a week learning charcuterie skills in one of the regions most known for its original development.

Come join me as I participate as best as possible and learn all I can about this fascinating art!

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | One comment. One lonely comment looking for a friend. | Subscribe RSS

This bread is adapted from a bread machine recipe I found on AllRecipes.com and adjusted for a handmade system instead.   Vegetarian compatible but not vegan unless you get into honey, then you’re ok, too.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup water between 120F and 140F
• 4 tsp honey
• 4 tsp canola or olive oil
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 3 cups white flour OR 1 2/3 cups white + 1 1/3 cups whole wheat or any combination thereof (hence the half & half bread)
• 3 Tbsp ground flax seed
• 3 Tbsp whole sunflower meats (or you can lightly grind them if you prefer)
• 1 1/2 tsp active yeast

Directions:

Mix the water, honey, yeast, and about 1/2 of the flour together in a mixing bowl.     Stir well with a whisk or fork to get well-combined without lumps.    Leave it sit for 15-25 minutes or until the mixture is bloomed well and bubbling like mad.

Mix in the rest of the ingredients sans the flour.    While mixing, add the flour slowly until it becomes a pliable ball of dough.    If too sticky, just keep adding flour slowly until it isn’t.   This isn’t rocket science, folks, and bread is fairly forgiving.

Turn it out onto a floured surface, stretch your muscles, and get to kneading.    This is not a light, fluffy, unicorn-filled bread and will require some muscles to get it properly kneaded.   It will also be somewhat stubborn about getting the gluten strands linked and holding together; don’t be surprised if you are still kneading after 10 minutes.   It WILL come together, I swear, and when it does, you’ll know it because the texture and feel and response will drastically change.

When you reach that important point, take the ball and tuck it under itself — roll the edges under until the top is a beautiful, smooth ball of dough.   Flour the inside of the mixing bowl so it won’t stick, slap that ball down in the center, pretty side up, and give it two pats for good luck.   If you have a child, this is a good opportunity to let them pat it, as their inherent good luck will seep into the dough and help it along.

Cover with a damp cloth and put in a warm area for anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half, whatever it takes to double it in size.    Since it’s winter and this is a heavier bread, it might not go past double and it might take awhile to get there.    Heat the oven to 150F or so and shut it off and put the bowl inside if you need to give it a boost.

Flour up your hands and gently pull it out of the bowl, do NOT punch it down.   Good lord, if I had a dime for every time punching down dough screwed it up, I’d be a happier man.    Not necessary, because in the time you’ll reshape it into a loaf, it’ll get all the punch-down it needs.    Shape it into a loaf and put it into a lightly lubricated loaf pan.    Toss that damp cloth back over it and put it in a warm spot or your warm oven for another 30-40 minutes until it’s risen so it looks like a loaf.   This recipe WILL NOT get huge and overflow the sides, just a nice pretty loaf, so don’t wait all day.

Take the cloth off, shove it in the oven, and turn it on to 350F.     Bake exactly 30 minutes and pull it out.    Let it stand at least 20 minutes to cool if not more before cutting into it.

Thoroughly enjoyable and wonderful for kith and kin alike.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2011. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS