I didn’t even know at the time that what I was experiencing had a name; I had had quite a few moments in high school where I would suddenly get extremely hyped, very nervous, shaky, and unable to control my senses, but it would go away eventually and I’d shake it off.

That was, until senior year, last period of the day, band rehearsal, and I suddenly felt very nauseous, very ill, and excused myself to the bathroom.   It went downhill from there.  Every sensation I would feel would seem to double back on me and cause yet another, stronger one to take its place.   My panics are always health-related — I’m sure I’m going to die.  Heart attack, usually.   I thought it a pretty crappy place to die, surrounded by 1960s era tiled walls and the all-familiar smell of school bathrooms, that beautiful funk of industrial cleanser and teenagers who can’t aim for beans.

A dear close friend, bless him, came and found me in the men’s room and drove me home and stayed with me as I got worse and worse.   Eventually my parents arrived home and called 911.  I felt so silly but I couldn’t get up off the floor by then, heart pounding, sweating buckets, mind spinning, speech slurring.  I remember the technicians tending to me and lifting my big hulk off the floor and out the door and into the idling ambulance.

A 95mph ride 30 miles north to the hospital amid rocking IV bags and tubes and my heart still trying to escape and run amok in the fields surrounding us.   I remember suddenly having to pee so badly I ended up convincing a dubious responder that getting a bottle to do it on the ride, right now, was imperative.   At the time it seemed so incredibly ironic — here I was, dying (or so I thought), and suddenly my body insisted on taking a leak.   Someone was laughing at me, I swear.

The bustle of an E.R.   EKG.   Little strips of paper with my heartbeats captured for posterity.   Docs poking and frowning and shaking their heads over bushed eyebrows and clipboard wielded like swords.    Flabbergasted sighs.   “There’s nothing wrong with him!” as if I was a fruitloop.  By then I was calmer, the monster was leaving.   I kept telling my mother, “I know it was real, it happened!  I swear.   It was awful.”  She believed me, bewildered though she was.

I was worn down.  Tired.   All I wanted to do was sleep, to forget for awhile that I had endured it.   “Panic attack,” came the final thought from the doctor shortly before I was released back to normal society.    He said it with the demeanor of someone holding a dirty gym sock, as if it was all in my head.   Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, jackass, but would you like to trade?

Research on my own later — hrm, maybe this isn’t so uncommon.   Signs that pointed to what I had been doing wrong — too much caffeine, too little sleep, too much stress, heavy class load (9 classes, 7:30 am till 3:30pm with hours of practice afterwards).    I had simply pushed myself beyond and the whole of me gave up and said, “Fine!   Screw you.”

I still get them.   They’re not as frequent nor as awful because now I know and I can usually talk myself out or at least keep busy with something, anything, until the sensation passes.    I am my own best therapist when nothing else will listen.   I always fear that they’ll escalate again into something terrible, but so far, the beast has stayed at bay.   I have a feeling that he’ll always be there, waiting for the opportunity to snatch again, but for now, he is tamed.    And I am calm.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | Permalink | 3 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

I shook the blob out of the can and into my hands and then worked it up a bit before gently laying it out in front of my son.  “Touch it,” I urged him, smiling as I watched him press a finger into it.  For the first time he connected with an extremely classic toy as a complete newcomer — and I think he was instantly hooked.

As we pressed out shapes with cookie cutters, smashed the Play-Doh with our palms, pressed out our handprints, curled “snakes”, and rolled balls to make snowmen of unrealistic colors, I reveled in the simplicity of our playtime.   Like other classic toys — blocks, Crayons, puzzles — Play-Doh is only a barebones medium for what your mind can envision; it is still up to you to create something from the shapeless mass.

In some fashions, the ability to take a material like Play-Doh and shape it into anything at all is analogous to our abilities in life.    The situations, people, and opportunities we face every day are very often shapeless forms; how we perceive them, interact with them, influence them, and build them into something else determines how we function and where we go.

This doesn’t always apply, of course — life is also full of cookie-cutters.     They are the forces that shape and pre-define limits and boundaries to the events we interact with.    This can be problematic; we may have a star-shaped hole to fill and can only find a rectangle piece; we try to massage it into the right shape, but we may very well end up with a shapeless mass that is even worse than useless.

There is at least one property of Play-Doh that we do not, unfortunately, get very often — the ability to SMASH.   Create a crappy-looking car out of dough?   Grab it in both hands and squish it back into a lump from which can emerge something new.    Screw up and blow the job interview?   They look poorly upon people smashing their offices in an attempt to change the situation.    Time does not take well to do-overs.

Three hours later we finally packed up the Play-Doh into its cans and put all the cutters away.   Keston cried when we finally put it away, saying that he wanted to keep playing with it.   I explained that it was late; we really needed to put it away, go to bed, and get some sleep, but maybe we could play more tomorrow?    He was thoroughly convinced that this was the prime time to be playing, but we eventually got him redirected and back to a happy mood for a trip upstairs to bed.

I wonder what he thought about this first experience with being able to make something out of practically nothing; of directing his own input into an unbounded matter.    Did he feel empowered by the ability to make whatever he liked of the situation?   Scared to have a lack of definition and instruction on what to do?  Or did he find it amazing to make a mistake and then to simply — erase it?

It will be years before he makes these same associations and analogies, but as we fell asleep that night, I hoped that he will always find in himself the ability to create, to change, to influence, and to shape the world and his reality to a new and better day.    If he’s lucky, that will occasionally include yellow cans of squishy-soft blobs in bright colors and a familiar smell that will always bring him home.

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

Nathan Pralle, Guest Blogger on Time

Please head on over to check out my guest post on the subject of Time and how it’s getting a bit too accurate !!and while you’re there, check out a few of Tom’s other great postings on various topics!

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | 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

“As technology makes machines more life-like, it is slowly turning us humans into robot-like entities, creating voids of emotion and empathy. The scary thing about this, is that we that are more and more subconsciously driven to allow this to happen.”

As many of you may know, I’ve always been extremely fascinated by the juxtaposition of  humans and technology; it is what drove me to not only get my degree in computer science but a extensive minor in philosophy and my senior research in artificial intelligence.    Several of my friends are philosophers, fans of philosophy, or psychologists.   I love to observe the interaction we have with our electronic tools and communities.

In a nutshell, Mr. Laroya annoyed me with this article.   It very much stank of, “old man on a porch shaking a cane at the damned kids” syndrome which strikes any number of the older generation when faced with the enormous social change the boom of technology has perpetrated.   He is as gruff as a weathered farmer folding his arms and stating, matter-of-factly, “Well, sir, I just prefer a handshake myself, thank you very much.”

I met my wife online in a text-only chatroom and we progressed a great deal of our relationship within it; heck, we still keep up-to-date with each other via SMS/IM during the day.   I’ve made numerous friends through my online contacts, some of which I have met in real life and continued relationships with, and some I have never seen and yet hold dear to my heart and mind.   A great deal of them I would have never met had it not been for technology.  Many of them read this blog.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I composed my response to Mr. Laroya’s article:

Because we’re so sincere when we make happy small-talk with the person in the cubicle next door and then spend our lunch break railing on them to our friends about how they have the most annoying laugh or how you can’t stand their lack of work ethic.    Because we’re so real when we show up to family gatherings, fighting in the car about in-laws and ‘your slutty cousin’ and other relatives that we really loathe but we are happy and huggy and perfect once we arrive at the doorstep.    We’re so affectionate when we invite our friends over for a party only to bait-and-switch them into a marketing opportunity for our latest at-home-sales gig or to shame them into watching the kids or pulling favors.   It’s so truthful to wine and dine our customers so they’ll forget any issues between us when the alcoholic fog covers their brain cells.

Mr. Laroya is dating himself by insisting that the Internet is removing our humanity when it’s doing nothing of the sort but merely changing up the rules and modes of the game — the score stays the same.  It’s those that lament for personal interaction over technological connections that hold us back into antiquated systems and habits for the sake of being able to shake a hand and lie to the person’s face instead of over an email.   If you are finding that digital interactions are leaving you colder than physical, then you are either not communicating using the right rules or your expectations are stuck in a different medium.

Humanity is not defined by the transportation it uses to go between us but by the content of it.    Love, affection, and caring can all be delivered personally OR digitally without loss just as hate, lies, and fear.   It is still the people at either end that make the difference in what is sent.

So, I ask of you, dear readers — what are your thoughts on technology and its effect on our interactions?     Are we finding ourselves less human and less sensitive to those on the receiving end of our technology or are we simply engaging in a new game?

© 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

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was recently interviewed by TechCrunch and one of the questions was about privacy and what people were willing to post online today versus when Facebook first started.   He said he views Facebook as needing to be at the leading edge of the social norm for what was considered, “private”, and to make innovations to match stride with the way people are changing their online personas and information.    He also said that the social norm has shifted and the mainstream no longer thinks of privacy as something as important anymore.

Older generations seem to have huge issues with privacy and keeping identifications and information under wraps; I have almost none of this.   Do you want to know my underwear size?   I’ll tell you.   What do I care?   Ultimately it doesn’t matter.    If that’s going to be the deciding factor on what you think about me, then so be it, we might as well get that out right now.    I just don’t see what the point is of keeping about 98% of what we have traditionally kept private as…private.

Sure, there’s plenty of things I don’t discuss with others.   I don’t talk about the things that only pass between myself and my wife and don’t belong in anyone else’s ears.   I don’t talk about family issues with just anyone.   I don’t talk about my job because I like being employed and I prefer to stay that way.

There are tons of things, however, that people get tied up about that just seem nonsense to me.    Where you work, where you went to school, what clothes you wear, what religion you have, what political party you belong to, what you do in your spare time.    What’s the point of keeping all this under wraps?

Maybe I’m just naturally trusting and open.    Maybe I have an innate sense of when to open my mouth and when to just listen.    I see the revealing of myself through the various channels available as being something inspiring and connecting.   Maybe I’m just a dolt.

Folks, what’s your take on privacy and where we are these days?   Do you feel like you are becoming less private and more open, or do you guard yourself tighter given the environment today?    Do you think this trend is good, bad, or indifferent?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | Permalink | 9 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

I am a patient man.   I have even been occasionally marketed as, “reasonable”, although reports vary in the accuracy of such a bold statement.    I do have limits, however, as folks close to me may suggest, and I’ve identified the Top 10 Twitter Sins that should you commit them you may find me a follower no longer.

It’s nothing personal, trust; it’s simply a matter of management — I can’t possibly follow you on Twitter if you make it hard or painful for me to do so.    So here I give you:

The Top Ten Twitter Sins:

(no particular order)

1.   Over-self-promotion – Unless you are a clearly-identified business, over-promotion of yourself on Twitter is like masturbating in public.   It makes everyone uncomfortable and you’re the only one who feels good about it.    A mention here or there or touting your new blog post once or twice is fine; more than that and you need Kleenex for the cleanup.

2. Retweeting Everything – The re-tweet (RT) functionality lends a sense of community and connectivity to Twitter by showing other people some of the cool stuff you find.    This works until a person decides that everything they read is worthy of everyone else reading, which it isn’t.   It never is.    I don’t care how awesome the people are that you follow, repeating everything they say to all your followers is extremely annoying and agitating.     If we thought they were just as awesome, we’d be following them ourselves.    Don’t force us to follow by proxy because we won’t.

3.  Retweeting Instead of Replying — Hey, I get it;  you not only want to make a cute quip back to someone, but you want everyone on your list to see how clever you are, too.   And that’s fine here or there.   Doing it every time as a matter of form falls under the same umbrella as Sin #2 — if we wanted to see your repartee, we’d be following both of you.   You’re not that funny.

4.  Confusing Twitter with IM — This is a case of the right tool for the right job.    Twitter is not Instant Messaging.    IM is not Twitter.   Using Twitter to hold endless conversations with another as if it were IM causes your followers to gouge their eyes out.    “But they can’t see it when I reply, ” you say, “remember Sin #3?”    True, dear Tweep, but if I’m following BOTH of you, I can see everything passing between.    The occasional comment and snarky reply is fine — in fact, sometimes it’s great — but watching a day-long jab-fest?  No thanks.

5.  Blabbering — You know the sort, right?   The Tweep that just yaks and yaks and yaks because they are bored or they think their followers actually care that they just took a triple-S and are now sucking on a doughnut.   The rule here is minimalism, that’s why it’s limited to 140 characters — if you don’t have something interesting to say, please don’t feel the need to fill in the silence with endless tweets about the mundane.

6.  Follow-Mongering — Hey, I like followers, who doesn’t, right?   But constantly harping on how many or how few you have, or how often they reply to you, retweet you, or DM you only makes you look like a self-centered jackass.   If you’re interesting or funny or useful, you’ll be followed, and if not — you won’t!   Simple formula.   Followers gained through coercion are not quality.

7.  Tweeting the Play-by-Play — I realize that VeryImpressiveSportsTeam vs. HugeRival is a hell of a game and you wish you had an entire living room full of similarly-interested peeps to slurp nachos and cheer at every point, but the rest of us really don’t give a crap.    Want to give an update on the score or a general, overall comment?  Fine.     Going to put some indignant crap about SomePlayer and how he just got totally screwed on that play by BlindRef on Twitter?   FOUL.

8.  Confusing your Audiences — Twitter is not Facebook, nor is it Tumblr, Digg,  LinkedIn, Slashdot, IM, your blog or any other site on the Internet.   The audience you generate through Twitter is unique because the service itself generates a different type of follower than your friends/buddies/contacts on other sites.    What goes as a good status update in one place may not be great in another, so feel out your audience and give them what they enjoy, not what you are too lazy to adjust.

9.  Spoilers — If you interactively reveal the winner to SomeRealityShow, OtherBigEvent that everyone and their dog is watching, or MajorBigMovie, I will personally come over and whack you on the forehead with a tack hammer.   Not all of us watch at the same time; be courteous of those who may have DVRed it because they had to play with their kid for an evening.

10.  No Context – Tweeting or Retweeting something without context leaves your readers in the dark and confused as they search to figure out what you are even talking about.   Don’t make your tweeps work to follow you, it should be a pleasure — always enhance and improve anything you are passing on to the masses.

En Conclusion:

There’s many, many things I enjoy about Twitter — the clever folks, the funny tweets, the pictures of some guy’s wife’s cans, the poignant tweets that make me stop and think and wish I said it.    And if you are one of the folks that regularly cranks out high quality stuff like the above (especially the boobie shots), I salute you and enjoy following you terribly much.

There is, however, no need for all that great quality to be lost in the flood of crap from all the other people who doink up the network.    And some of them come out with really, really great stuff, but it’s all encased in feces and I don’t have time to sort through it all.

Keep it simple, keep it worthy, keep it relevant, keep it interesting.   Short and sweet is the mantra of Twitter and by avoiding the sins above, we’re going to have a long, long twife together.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | Permalink | 8 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

That is, until today.

Kindly feast your eyes upon this beauty of machinery and testosterone — the Murray Blizzard 27″ Snowblower:

Powered by an 8HP Tecumseh 4-cycle engine, it is to snow what a T-Rex is to brontosauri.    Rip, chew, and spit 40 yards off.    It has an electric start, a bunch of fun levers and cranks to shift the chute around, and a headlight. That’s right, folks, I can blow snow IN THE DARK.    If that doesn’t say, “manpower”, I don’t know what does.

My father and stepmother apparently have had enough of our driveway resembling the ice planet Hoth and being barely navigable if you don’t own a snowmobile.  When he heard an ad on the radio for a used snowblower in good condition, he jumped on it and I basically got a slightly late Christmas present.     I could have kissed his boots, but my lips would have frozen to them in the -10F weather.

Being parents on a single income and all that jazz, something luxurious like a blower wasn’t really in our near-time budget as we have larger and more important fish to dunk in hot oil, so up until now, me and Mr. Corn Scoop have had a very good relationship, but his capabilities coupled to my arms, legs, and back have limited range and ability and I’ve kept to the minimum required for mobility given that there is some 15″ of white crap in many places around the yard.

In short order after coming over today, Dad and I hauled to it and got my entire driveway, around all cars and even the junk car, as well as a copious path to the garage, neatly cleared out.   I even put ice melt on the steps — imagine!    The blower does a superb job and is fun as hell to run given that I’m not doing the work.

I’m not entirely sure how to thank my father and Amy for the gift enough because it Kicks Some Serious Ass and it’s going to be immensely useful, but I am very, very grateful.

I leave you with an image of myself having some darn good entertainment telling that stupid snow exactly where to go.    Enjoy.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2010. | Permalink | 6 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

So I jumped on the bandwagon when my friend, the sweet yet awesome Tara from TaraMetBlog recently held a contest for a Food Network Wii prize pack giveaway which was promoting the new Wii game, Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked, and included a bunch of promotional items along with the game.    She recently got to have a sneak peak of it along with Iron Chef Michael Symon, lucky gal she is.

Guess who won it?

Yup!    Little old me.    I was stupidly surprised when she messaged me with the news.    Awesome.

What ended up arriving at my doorstep was the following bundle of good things:

• A copy of Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked for the Wii
• A Food Network reusable shopping bag
• A Food Network Celebrates! Healthy Cooking DVD set featuring Rachael Ray, Ellie Krieger, and Alton Brown
• A copy of Food Network’s “Meals on DVD”
• A Food Network branded oven mitt, already used it tons
• A Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked branded apron — a rather nice one that actually FITS
• A Food Network sideways peeler, a new one for me (I’ve always used the straight ones)
• A Food Network key chain
• A Food Network refrigerator magnet
• A Food Network 1/2 size pen

So that’s pretty nice, eh?   Many and copious thanks to Tara and the fine folks at Weber-Shandwick, Namco Bandai Games, and of course Food Network for the nice swag!

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

A wish — an invocation — a blessing;

To all of you at this holiday season, with adoration:

I could wish for many outlandish, pricey, or grandiose things this holiday — most are certified loads of hogwash; idle fantasies that we toy with to amuse ourselves and dig ourselves out of our miserable existence.    They are difficult if not impossible to achieve.   Scores desire, many try, most fail.

There is one thing, however, that I have observed and it is so incredibly fulfilling and truly awe-inspiring that I wish it to each of you ever so much:

Real Time

Our daily lives are inundated with piles of mental requirements and “multitasking” is the key word to much employment these days.    Whether it is juggling departmental projects, remembering to pick up the milk, or to shut the door to the basement so your toddler doesn’t bounce down the stairs, we are always thinking ahead, planning our moves, strategically shuffling the chess pieces of our lives to ensure the best of outcomes.

Suffice it to say, we don’t spend a lot of time observing the current moment because we’re distracted by thinking ahead.   And most of that’s good, but it can be overwhelming at times, and most importantly, we can miss things.

Real things.

In Real Time.

Think not that Real Time is what you are sold on Hallmark commercials and jewelry sales.    It is not the eggnog and the mistletoe, the Christmas turkey or the shining menorah.  You cannot be sold a moment of bliss.

Real time is not simply appreciating what you have now.   It is not “taking a moment” or “slowing down” to observe the holidays.    “Peace on Earth” doesn’t capture its unique nature.    Hallelujahs do not hold the key to this phenomenon.   It is not necessarily found in a manger.

It is a unique form of momentary existence that is rare, hard to achieve, and precious to behold.   It is the elusive diamond in the rough, the unexpected treasure, the gift that gives only fleetingly yet lingers for a thousand times more.

You cannot work for it — indeed, doing so chases it away, and you cannot plan for it, carving out a spot on your calendar.    Real Time comes when it warrants and stays as it pleases and whisks away just as quickly.    And if you don’t realize what it is, you’ll miss it, too.

Real Time is when all the pre-planning, preparation, and foresight vanish from your mind; not simply on the back burner, but gone from existence.   All the multiple layers of multi-tasking collapse and flatten into a silky smooth pool of thought.   The balls you are juggling fall sharply to the floor and disappear.   You are left, for only a moment — nay, a second — with a clean slate; a bare tablet and freshly-sharpened pencil for which to cherish life.   You have nothing to prepare, nothing to plan, nothing to anticipate.    You simply ARE for that moment in time.   Real Time.

It is — without question — incredible.

For once there are no demands, no pressures, no influences.   Jumbled thoughts disappear into the ether — analysis goes away.    All faculties are suddenly finely tuned towards the exact happenings right in front of you and absolutely nowhere else.    All that horsepower hitched to one single, colorful cart is simply overwhelming in its intensity.

We are not wired for such a state.    Humans are not programmed to stay at a rest, un-touched by the outside, all resources focused so narrowly, so Real Time does not linger.   It will leave no instructions, no calling card, no evidence that it came.

But you’ll know.    You will know afterwards that what you had was a moment in your life so brief you couldn’t possibly tie it to something so large and arbitrary as a calendar or clock or describe it in terms so harsh and garish as clichés or epitaphs, but it was there, and you were, too.   For once you were completely and totally there and nowhere else.

Real time can be anywhere and can be triggered by anything, but unsurprisingly it often happens most frequently when we do those things that connect us and ground us and centre us — the smell of your child’s skin, the depth of your lover’s eyes, the silence of a soft snowfall, the twinkle of a candle.   You cannot search for it; Real Time caters to none.   But it lurks in that which means most to each of us.

May you find a few, unexpected, surprising,  but sparkling moments of Real Time this holiday season, and may they warm your heart for a long, long time to come.

From all of mine to all of yours, the best of repasts.

Nathan, Yolanda, and Keston

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 5 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Worth Brewing (@WorthBrewing on Twitter) is situated in the middle of a block of downtown Northwood, an idyllic small-town stop only 7 miles to the east of Interstate 35 located so far north in Iowa that if you sneeze, Minnesota feels the breeze.   Despite the economic times hurting small business owners across the country, Northwood seems to be holding its own in terms of a good selection of small shops and services lining the streets.

The brewery takes its name from the county, Worth, and is owned and run by husband-and-wife team Peter Ausenhus and Margaret Bishop.   Peter has been known for years to be a famous brewmaster and beer judge, winning many contests and working professionally with the well-respected Summit Brewing Company of St. Paul, MN  (one of my top-10 favorite brew companies, hands-down).     Now he is handily carving himself out a niche in pretty Northwood and making a good job of it, too.

From the men's room door...

The tap room itself is only open three days a week but offers its patrons a beautiful, cozy, dark hardwood-lined room with plentiful yet simple wood tables and chairs and a big screen TV from which to catch a game or the news.    The lighting is subdued and calming and the environment is very welcoming and comfortable.    I did not get a chance to talk to either of the owners due to the busy nature of the evening, but they appeared friendly and service was quick and easy.

Brews that I had were in the $3.10 to $3.75 range for a pint which seemed fairly reasonable, although perhaps a bit on the high side depending on which beer you had.   But given that a comparable beer in any store would run you at least in the $1.75 to $2 range it didn’t seem too terrible given the quality and presentation.    Growlers were $12 for any selection on the current menu.

Had I had the time and a place to crawl to and sleep, I would have happily tried everything on the menu; alas, being that I live an hour south of Northwood, I only had the time and liver to try three selections:

Oatmeal Stout — Because I am such a huge lover of dark and thick beers, my first selection was this oh-so-typical stout, arriving in my glass with a healthy head and lovely color.    The nose of it was warm and inviting, hinting perfectly on the edge of roasted grain mixed with just the right amount of hop to balance.   The mouthfeel was soft and creamy but not so think that you would mistake it for a shake.   The flavors mixed very well, the dark malty wintery barley being controlled but not killed by the hops.    If I had twenty of these beers in a row, they would be twenty too few.   By far my favorite selection on the menu.

Dillon Clock Stopper – Next over my tongue was this lager that didn’t really win me over in any categories and yet was nonetheless pleasant.   Light and flavorful, it had a very sweet kick aftertaste that set me off from the first swallow and distracted me through most of the glass.   That being said, it was light enough to keep the sweet from being a downtrodden effect and I did enjoy the glass, but I guess I was looking for more hop-offset than what I got.   There are a great many people out there, however, that would adore this beer if you don’t like straight-up bitter hops.

I.P.A.

India Pale Ale – The last beer to grace my throat was the IPA.   Having been through a rigourous course in IPAs, courtesy of my former collegiate roommates, I’ve had a few and a few more and then a few gallons more IPA in my life and can work my way around the room with one, if you get my drift.    Worth’s version of this brewing standard was a pleasant surprise; it’s so easy to get these zippy ales wrong and they successfully dodged the bullet.   Strong in hops with a nice biting aftertaste, the Worth IPA was simply a lovely glass of beer to drink.   I would have easily gone for more hoppy but it had a great balance and I really can’t complain at all.

Conclusion

So there you have it — Worth Brewing Company in a nutshell.   All in all, if you have the time to stop by and enjoy their warm atmosphere, happy customers, and worthwhile brews, I highly recommend it.   It’s only 7 miles from the Interstate and if you come early enough, you can enjoy some of the (seemingly) plentiful downtown shopping.   If you come later, stop in at the Northwood Theatre which has been restored to near-perfect moviewatching conditions and is a great place to catch a show.   Neither its screen nor the bubbly liquid happiness that awaits you just a block away will leave you disappointed.

Worth Brewing Company
826 Central Ave.
Northwood, IA 50459
641-324-9899

www.worthbrewing.com

Wednesday 5-9pm; Friday 5-11pm, Saturday Noon to 11pm

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 5 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Today I had an OK day and a simply shocking, horrific evening, and the only saving grace was that I was able to come upstairs after banging my head against a brick wall for long, tedious hours, plop my ass down on the floor, and say to the cute little boy across the room, “Come give Daddy snuggles.”    He padded across the room, wrapped his arms around my neck, and laid his head on my shoulder for a few moments before dragging me off to the table to play with trains and cars and to comment on the TV cartoon.

I wonder if he knows that as much as he needs me at this time in his life, sometimes I need him just as badly.     Thanks a ton, buddy.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Seriously.   I know how societal pressures are, especially from your parents who may be the type that are just dying to get their hands on a baby and spoil it rotten.    Some can be sweet and gentle about it, but I’ve heard stories of those who are downright, “You will give me a grandchild, NOW!” to which I have no rational answer that doesn’t involve propping my mouth open like a codfish.

You don’t have to have a kid.

It’s hard when all your peers are making strides in life and you aren’t keeping up with the Joneses — I know.    When everyone has a snuggle buddy and you are the third wheel, you are left out.    When everyone else seems to be engaged, it’s hard not to have diamond lust and to be picking out china.   And when they’re all getting married, I’ve sat right along with you in a pew and wished I was the one standing at the top of the aisle and not them.    It sucks.    The desire to have kids can be even worse when everyone around you is pregnant or blowing raspberries into tiny bellies.

But…you don’t have to have a kid.

I have huge amounts of respect for two groups of people — those that are parents or want to be parents and love and adore their children (or their future children), and those that have said, “I never, ever want in a million years to have children and I’m not going to and I’m ok with that.”     It’s insanely harder to make that second statement, but bless every one of you for bucking society and doing what’s right for you and not what everyone says you must.

Really — you don’t have to have a kid.

The first group of people really bother me are those who fall victim to peer pressure and have a child, either because they receive pressure from relatives or friends or simply via society and marketing, but in reality, they didn’t actually want to have children as badly as everyone else wanted them to, and now they are miserable or at least not nearly as happy as they might have been otherwise.    I realize, there’s a lot of accidents out there — and they happen — and plenty of people who thought they would never want a kid, but once they did, they love it.    But there’s plenty of folks who took the leap for bad reasons.    And plenty more who will do so in the future.

I’d like to tell all these folks — you don’t have to have a kid.

The second group is parents who already have a child, thought it would be all roses and sunshine farts, and have found out that parenting and child-rearing is tough, thankless, and really cramping their style or patience.  And yet – YET — despite this personal hell that they’ve created, they want to have MORE! What the hell!?    You mean you haven’t had enough of pulling out your hair, feeling like a piece of microwaved crap, or having to grip onto your wine glass tightly to avoid mentally cracking?   Usually this is a result of — you guessed it!  Peer pressure.     Everyone else has two kids, so we should, too.    Or:  “I love being pregnant!”    “I love babies, just not toddlers.”   Or any other mind-bendingly stupid sentiment.

Get a reality check, folks — you don’t have to have a kid.   Or another one.

I am not anti-children, nor am I anti-parents.    And I fully appreciate that some parents are simply uncertain until they actually DO it and then they are lovely and wonderful and their kids are awesome.    I’m not trying to discourage people who are simply scared of making that leap and aren’t sure how they will do — heck, I shat myself daily until I got into fatherhood and realized I could actually do it and that I really, truly did love it.

I am encouraging those folk out there who, in their heart of hearts, really know that they should never be parents — it just doesn’t suit them — or those parents that have found out that it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be to simply Think.   Consider.   Ponder.   And make the right decision, no matter what anyone else says.     Do the best for you and for your children, conceived or unconceived, and make the right choice, not just the popular one.

I, at least, am on your side.    Because you don’t have to have a kid unless you really want to.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 13 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

It was…memorable.

Ontop of this, I would then spend the next month or so sneezing my ass off everytime I was in the house because, as it would have it, I am allergic to pine trees.   (My personal hell is filled with wreaths.) However, I loved them so much (or so I thought) that I put up with it and simply walked around in a Benadryl-fueled haze for the majority of the season.    No wonder the holidays were always so jolly!

These days I’ve forgone the drug-enhanced fun of real trees for the less-nasally-frictive practice of putting up a fake tree that does a reasonable job of approximating The Tree and saves the family a small fortune in Kleenex.    However, we wanted my son to have the family bonding fun of hiking the wooded wilderness in preparation for Christmas (it serves as a penance for sins, I figure), so we took him along when Grandpa and Amy went to locate their shrub of choice.

The below is the resulting photologue of the day, which was terribly nice (completely unlike the arctic temps I was subjected to in my childhood) and lovely lighting for photography.     Keston had a blast.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 2 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

I’m not talking about needing to legitimately eat, I’m speaking of that feeling you get that says, “I’m not hungry, but I desperately want to be chewing on something…anything…”

Well, ok, maybe you don’t get it.   I have to assume not everyone does, because some of you are thin as a rail from simply intaking only what you must and that’s it.   Trust me, this is not an affliction that you want.   You are, in the nicest way possible, a lucky bastard.

It’s probably the hardest non-exercise-related item that holds me back from being fit and trim.    I used to think, “Hey, I just like the taste/texture/smell of food, ok?   Some people like books, some like movies…well, I’m just a goddamned FOODIE.   No problem, right?  They have a whole freaking TV network just for me!”

Turns out it’s a HUGE problem because it means at any point in the day I may get a fantastic urge to shove something in my gob for a snack.    The problem is that the resulting caloric intake is far beyond what I should be ingesting and couple that with a sedentary job and bad exercise schedule (until recently), you end up looking — like me.   Overweight and far too many squeezy parts.    Good if you’re a teddy bear, not so much if you’re a 32-year-old guy.

Here’s the really frustrating part about this — eating something?   Yeah, it only solves the sensation for awhile.    Immediately, certainly, and then for a bit more, but it drops off after awhile and I’m back where I started.    The only tried and true way, besides willpower to stop it, is to eat until I am stuffed full — at that point, something else kicks in and stops the sensation and I go back to normal, albeit feeling like a whale because I’ve just ate when I didn’t have to.

It’s much easier to ignore if my defenses are strong — when I’m well-slept, not stressed or pressured, have had good exercise, love from my family, and generally feel good about myself.     Step on any of those or trod on many and it becomes easier and easier for me to fail to resist the urge and instead solve it by grabbing something to munch on and moving on.      Thus, when work has hammered me down into the ground and I’m working insane hours, it’s been a long week of only 4-5 hours/night sleep, or any other factors, I gain weight.    And it’s almost entirely the fault of this sensation.

That’s not to say I’m not the person in control, because I am.   I have no one to blame but my own failures.     It does mean, however, that I have to constantly work on trying to figure out the best way to A) prevent it from happening in the first place and B) how to mitigate it when the munchies DO hit me full-force.

I think the first battle is identifying it, which I’ve done and tried to elaborate on with this post.    Secondly, it’s finding and defining activities or mental exercises to avoid giving in to the sensations.    I know exercise helps, but I can’t always burst into “Ab Crunchers for Dummies” during a 3pm meeting at work.    I need to build up my defenses in other ways to make this work.

Then maybe one day I can battle the Munchies every time….and win.

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

I am a huge fan of sour cream and this was such an incredible lack of judgment on my part, I just have to share — to warn and advise.   Mostly to warn.   Strenuously.

Like many of you, I try to be conscious of what’s sliding down my gullet and I’m all about choosing products that are lower in fat, salt, sugar, and anything else determined to be cancer, heart-attack, stroke, or stupid-causing.   I will happily defend my consumption of diet pop, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (really — it’s not that much of a stretch), and low-salt gravy not in the name of them being exactly like the original products, but close enough proximity that the sacrifice of flavor is more than made up by not coating my insides with lard and corn syrup on a daily basis.

Not so much luck with Lite Sour Cream.

I don’t know why I picked it up — I guess I saw the label, like above, and figured that whatever was lost in the pursuit of something that doesn’t stick to your hips as readily would be acceptable.   Boy, was I mistaken.

Have you SEEN lite sour cream?   It looks like a plastic bucket of cold whale spooge and has the consistency of snot.     Immediately upon opening it up I checked the label to make sure I didn’t accidentally stop by the “Spawn Your Own Salmon” department instead of the dairy case.   I was dubious about it crawling out and throttling me as I stood there, let alone trying to flavor my baked potato.

But looks aren’t everything and one shouldn’t judge a book by its…gelatinous appearance…so I proceeded to slop it onto my baked tubers and give it a shot.    To say that it invokes a gag reflex is being kind and gentle, I assure you.

Whether or not it has any flavor besides “disgusting mess” is hard to determine as your tongue backs away from it in a damned hurry.   What little made it down my throat before I decided that starving sounded better had a strong essence of moose spit and rubbing alcohol.   I’m unsure whether or not there is actually any, “cream”, inside and if there is, I’m probably better off not knowing what sort of cream it really is.

Let’s not kid ourselves — sour cream is one of man’s finer culinary creations, right up there with butter, but it’s horrifically hard on your body, what with a ton of fat, calories, and so forth.    But my god it’s tasty and goes perfectly well smothered ontop of any number of food items.     So why wouldn’t we look for something that’s a bit easier on the paunch yet still gets the point across?   I understand the motivation at least.

Lite sour cream, however, is not the answer, unless you are so sadistic that you enjoy self-torture with food products.   Clearly this is one area where a healthier alternative has not been achieved and we would all do better to simply use the real thing in moderation or shrug and ladle on great globs of its creamy, sour whiteness with glee and screw the consequences.

Whatever the outcome, I guarantee you’ll be happier than if you had used something lite-er.

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

Yes, I have a confession to make, World:   after 32 years of spinning around on this blue-green ball, my Rocky Horror Picture Show virginity has finally been taken.

One of the small advantages to being sick, as I was for Friday and Saturday, is that while attempting to avoid the family and between moaning and groaning in bed (and not in the nice way), you get to catch up on movies.    Thus it was that I finally broached that phenomenon that is Rocky Horror.

I know, I know…I can hear you all now.   Where have you been!?  Whaaaaaa…??? If you ask my friends, they’ll happily tell you that I’ve seen Jack Squat NOTHING in my time compared to what they have, and I’ll heartily agree.    My youth was mostly regulated to a G/PG experience so many of the ‘classic’ movies of that age passed me by without so much as a peep and these days I’m so busy, well…the Tivo is lucky it gets my attention at all.   For instance, I was college-aged before I saw any of the Brat Pack movies.

It was fortunate for me that I went into RHPS without any pre-conceived notions about what it was about or what to expect; my friends had all been good enough to simply say, “Well…you just have to watch it, really,” and left it at that.    To have a preconception of RHPS is like thinking that Alice in Wonderland or Labyrinth are children’s movies, because they are decidedly NOT.

In short — I loved it.    I mean, RHPS is one of those things that just grows on you and you can’t help but getting through it and thinking, “My god, that is fucked up,” and yet you are singing the songs in your head for the next week.   It’s just that perfect mix of the strange, macabre, hallucinogenic fog, and crazy out-of-the-map storyline that sticks with you.   Or maybe I’m just screwed in the head in general.

Tim Curry was nothing less than BRILLIANT. I never thought, given what I’ve seen him in lately, that he could pull off a singing, cross-dressing mad scientist easily, but he truly was the character of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

Second on my list for favorite characters was Columbia, simply because I think Little Nell put so much into the acting of the character that you couldn’t help but appreciate and sympathize with her.

Susan Sarandon!   Well, there’s a name I didn’t expect to be associated with something so far off the radar, but there she was, and I have to say I thought she did a fine job with it, too, even though the majority of the acting required was to look scared, cold, wet, or all three.   There is also something to be said for spending some quality time watching her youthful jubblies bounce around on the screen.   While these days she should try to contain her assets, in 1975 she was quite lithe.

While the writing was done well, I thought Richard O’Brien as Riff Raff simply phoned in the performance.   I wasn’t convinced at all by his acting that he gave a crap.   But I guess you always have one of them in the show.

If you are the sort that loves mainline, standard Hollywood movies that typically show in the theater, get mass reviews, star popular actors, and fall easily within a specified genre, RHPS may not be for you.    But if you’re the sort that appreciates a really strange, twisted, and yet creatively fresh movie swimming in your brain, you would do well to serve yourself up a hot plate of Rocky Horror.

I’m sure glad I finally did!

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

MEN ONLY

REMEDY FREE.

Manhood restored; parts enlarged. I have found a means of certain self cure.  I will send the recipe FREE (sealed) to any sufferer.   It cured me after all else had failed.

The Paperwall Feature: For the next few weeks, this blog will be running a regular feature called, “Paperwall”. You can view all postings in this category by clicking here. These are small excerpts from very old newspapers that were used as wallpaper backing in a house I used to live in.   When I redid the bathroom and pulled down the walls, these were exposed.   I kept a majority of the very large pieces and have scanned them and poured over them for interesting bits and pieces.    The newspapers I can identify are The Des Moines Leader of Des Moines, IA; The Sheffield Press of Sheffield, IA; and The Weekly Constitution of Atlanta, GA.   There were only two datelines I could find — November 16th, 1886, and October 30th, 1888.   The sheer age of these papers and that they’ve been preserved this long is impressive.    I found it terribly interesting to see what they had to say.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

What a deal!

I went on a coupon shopping trip today.   I armed myself with a fistful of carefully prepared bargains, braced myself for the inevitable waves of dirty miscreants, and entered Wal-Mart with one intention in mind: Savings!

A great deal of you probably have your hands out right now, demanding that I hand my Man Card back in to be unceremoniously recycled into confetti, but hear me out!   Times have changed, technology has progressed, and this ain’t your grandmother’s coupon book anymore.

I can also hear a whole bunch of you saying, “Geez, man, where have you been?   This is old news!”   (Yes, I’m looking at you, Stacey.   Don’t piss me off, lady, I got yer number. So I’m not the first to discover this underutilized resource — shoot me — but suffer me for a moment while I expound on it, eh?

To alleviate the fears of those out there who now envision me, curls in hair, stockings over leggings, smokin’ a Marly and pushing a wobbly cart through the bra section of Wallyworld, let me paint for you the picture I’ve developed for myself on how to do this ‘coupon thing’ and still retain your masculinity in a soccer mom world –

Nathan’s No B.S. Coupon Policy

1.   Don’t screw around trying to get the damned things. — It used to be that in order to come across a plethora of good coupons and deals, the person responsible for the weekly trips to Hell would have to sit for hours at a table, armed with Fiskars, pouring over the Sunday paper and every one in between just to glean a few crappy, “30¢ off a sloppy-beef tostada” coupons before collapsing into a heap and promising to get together with neighbors the next day to swap collections.

These days, a computer, a printer, and a sense of, ‘ah ha!’ is about all you need to successfully make it in the coupon world.  Sites like The Krazy Coupon Lady, Coupons.com, Smartsource, and others make finding and printing these things a cinch. It’s so easy it’s guaranteed you’ll spend more time searching for female celebrities in thin shirts and cold weather than you will for your weekly grocery-run.    Time is money and/or sitting on your ass drinking beer and watching tube.   Keep it in perspective and exploit the tech.

2.  Not every thing that claims it’s a deal really IS a deal. — I don’t mess around with anything less than 50¢ off and it’d better be pretty specific or cheap if I go below $1.   Anything less and I’ve just burned up my time, energy, gas, toner, and sanity trying to squeeze a penny.    Using a coupon on a brand-name item to bring it down to a price that’s still above a comparable generic is also stupid — you’re NOT saving money, you’re just blowing less of it.   Repeat after me, “Most Coupons Are Not Worth It”.   The one part of this that actually does take some work involves winnowing out the chaff and picking out the really sweet, wheat deals that you can be proud of.   But that’s kinda fun.

3.  Having to buy multiples to just use a coupon is almost always a lose-lose. — Sometimes you can make this work to your advantage, but you have to do the math.   For instance, tonight I used a, “Buy 4, get 75¢ off” on some cans that were 60 cents each, so that’s a good deal, and it’s something we use all the time.   But most of the time, once you add in the amount of money you have to spend FIRST to get the item, especially if you won’t use it or won’t use it much, it’s a screw.

4.  Buying stupid, worthless crap because of a coupon is idiotic. — Occasionally I’ll buy something I wouldn’t have normally or upgrade from generic to brand name if I have a coupon, but it’s almost always a trap.   You don’t like kumquats, you wouldn’t have the first faint idea on what to DO with a kumquat, so why waste the $4 just because you have a 2-for-1 coupon?  Don’t be a moron.   Buy what you normally buy and wait for the coupons to appear for those things.

5.  Be Thee Armed and Prepared.  — When you enter the store, have your weapons (coupons) organized by section and ready to check.   Don’t screw around with walking up and down the aisles, seeing what else is on sale — remember, you’re here on a mission.   Avoid distraction.    Don’t spend too much time — if the deal isn’t apparent, move on.   If you have to do calculus to figure out your savings, ditch it.   Be cutthroat and ruthless.

6.  No matter what, coupons are still Marketing; Caveat Emptor. – Remember that stores and manufacturer’s aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their heart.    They are out to get you to buy in some form, fashion, or otherwise, so keep your thinking cap on and your gun cocked because you never know when they’ll try to get sneaky.   You can game the system to your advantage, but you have to stay alert — saving $15 on your bill when you’ve just bought $300 worth of shit means you still paid out $285 for a cartload of crap.   Don’t be a dumbass.

In conclusion, you CAN be a man and still use coupons successfully and without feeling like you’re entering into a world of Better Homes and Garbage.   While printing and cutting out coupons hasn’t made me rich, allowed me to afford a yacht, or paved the way to get laid by a girl made entirely of breasts, it has enabled me to shave off some money on regular items we get and that feels pretty damned good at the end of the register, and when was the last time a bill total made you feel good?

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 4 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS

Get Yer Regulatin' On!

Every Month many women suffer from Excessive or Scant Menstruation; they don’t know who to confide in to get proper advice.   Don’t confide in anybody but try  Bradfield’s Female Regulator a Specific for PAINFUL, PROFUSE, SCANTY, SUPPRESSED, and IRREGULAR MENSTRURATION.   Book to ‘WOMAN’ mailed free.  BRADFIELD REGULATOR CO., Atlanta, Ga.   Sold by all Druggists.

A bit of research turns up that the Bradfield Regulator Co. was known for its “female” products, including ones to, “assist organs in childbirth” called, “Mother’s Friend”.   Here’s commentary from “Digger” on BottleBooks.com about this company and its products:

The Bradfield Regulator Co, in Atlanta, GA began using the name Bradfield Female Regulator about 1897. The name “Mother’s Friend” had been used since 1887 according to patent office information but another sources indicates advertising going back to 1876. The company advertised the Mother’s Friend as a remedy for female use for female disorders and for the relief of the suffering incident to child-bearing. The company ran afoul of the Food and Drug Administration who filed a suit against the company. Here is the text of that case Bradfield Misbranding. The trademark has been renewed four times. The last being in 1988 and it is still active but the ownership of the name has changed.

I guess this proves that, at least in the late 19th century, one had to be pretty careful with the claims of advertisers about what will help your intimate bits.

From another paper written by Dr. Allen Vegotsky, M.D., on the subject of old remedies and bottles comes this little snippet about the Female Regulator:

As an example of one of the museum’s products for women, we can consider Dr. J. Bradfield’s Female Regulator. This medicine was, as the name implies, intended strictly for woman. It was manufactured by the Bradfield Regulator Company of 89 ½ Forsyth Street in Atlanta. The package indicated that the product was “entered according to the act of congress of 1869 by Joshua Bradfield…” so it is one of the older products in the museum. If you’re wondering what was being “regulated” by this medicine, it was the menstrual cycle.

In the 19th century, physicians worried a lot about any deviations from what they considered normal in menstruation and these deviations were interpreted as diseases. The trademark on the container is a woman in a lacy Victorian period dress with flowers in her hands and flowers in her hair. Typical of the time of manufacture, the container gives no clue to the medicinal contents of Dr. Bradfield’s Female Regulator other than the presence of 15% alcohol. Dr. Bradfield’s medicine was to be used “for the treatment of non-surgical cases of weaknesses and disorders of the female generative organs, such as depressed or delayed menses, and at the change of life.”

So, not only could you get your woman bits all fixed up, but you could get soused in a socially-acceptable way as well. “No, seriously, Jim Beam is the latest in cough medicine!”

Let’s all be grateful that medicine has progressed to be a bit less arcane, eh?

The Paperwall Feature: For the next few weeks, this blog will be running a regular feature called, “Paperwall”. You can view all postings in this category by clicking here. These are small excerpts from very old newspapers that were used as wallpaper backing in a house I used to live in.   When I redid the bathroom and pulled down the walls, these were exposed.   I kept a majority of the very large pieces and have scanned them and poured over them for interesting bits and pieces.    The newspapers I can identify are The Des Moines Leader of Des Moines, IA; The Sheffield Press of Sheffield, IA; and The Weekly Constitution of Atlanta, GA.   There were only two datelines I could find — November 16th, 1886, and October 30th, 1888.   The sheer age of these papers and that they’ve been preserved this long is impressive.    I found it terribly interesting to see what they had to say.

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

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS

The author of this posting apparently had a rant about people bathing — or rather, not bathing — and thought he should share with the readers:

I have often wondered very much in after years that the inhabitants of my own dear land did not make more frequent use of this most charming element, water.   I mean in the way of cold bathing.  Of course, I have perceived that it is not convenient for them to go into the sea or rivers in winter, as we used to do on the Coral island; but then, I knew from experience that a large washing-tub and a sponge do form a most pleasant substitute.   The feelings of freshness, of cleanliness, of vigor, and extreme (indecipherable — hiberty?), that always followed my bath in the sea, and even, when in England, my ablutions in the wash tub, were so delightful that I would sooner have gone without my breakfast than without my bath in cold water.   My readers will forgive me for asking whether they are in the habit of bathing thus every morning and if they answer, “No,” they will pardon me for recommending them to begin at once.  (remaining is indecipherable)

The Paperwall Feature: For the next few weeks, this blog will be running a regular feature called, “Paperwall”. You can view all postings in this category by clicking here. These are small excerpts from very old newspapers that were used as wallpaper backing in a house I used to live in.   When I redid the bathroom and pulled down the walls, these were exposed.   I kept a majority of the very large pieces and have scanned them and poured over them for interesting bits and pieces.    The newspapers I can identify are The Des Moines Leader of Des Moines, IA; The Sheffield Press of Sheffield, IA; and The Weekly Constitution of Atlanta, GA.   There were only two datelines I could find — November 16th, 1886, and October 30th, 1888.   The sheer age of these papers and that they’ve been preserved this long is impressive.    I found it terribly interesting to see what they had to say.

For some historical context of these excerpts, Grover Cleveland was President, the Civil War just got over in 1865 and everyone’s still recovering; the Washington Monument was just opening and Jack the Ripper was terrorizing London.   Kodak was just being patented, and the National Geographic Society was just being formed.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS

Title:  Poisoned by Centipede Venom

A family of six persons by the name of Boulding, moving by wagon from Tennessee to Texas, camped on the line of Baxter and Boone counties, in Arkansas, one night.   They had coffee at supper, which was prepared in a tin vessel without a cover.  Next morning Mrs. Boulding warmed over the coffee that had been left, of which she and two of the children drank freely.

Scarcely had the breakfast been finished when the entire party — father, mother, and four children — were seized with the most excruciating pains.  Their screams brought a neighbor to the rescue, who summoned a physician.  When the doctor arrived, the mother and (indecipherable) of the children were dead, and the other members of the family were only saved by the skill of the physician, who administered antidotes for poisoning.

Examination of the coffee revealed the fact that a mountain centipede had crawled into the coffee pot during the night, and had been boiled for breakfast.

(Nathan’s commentary:    Ew.   And did anyone else notice the inconsistency — if only “she and two of the children drank freely”, how did all of them be affected by the poison?   Maybe the others only sipped and didn’t ‘drink freely’?)

The Paperwall Feature: For the next few weeks, this blog will be running a regular feature called, “Paperwall”. You can view all postings in this category by clicking here. These are small excerpts from very old newspapers that were used as wallpaper backing in a house I used to live in.   When I redid the bathroom and pulled down the walls, these were exposed.   I kept a majority of the very large pieces and have scanned them and poured over them for interesting bits and pieces.    The newspapers I can identify are The Des Moines Leader of Des Moines, IA; The Sheffield Press of Sheffield, IA; and The Weekly Constitution of Atlanta, GA.   There were only two datelines I could find — November 16th, 1886, and October 30th, 1888.   The sheer age of these papers and that they’ve been preserved this long is impressive.    I found it terribly interesting to see what they had to say.

For some historical context of these excerpts, Grover Cleveland was President, the Civil War just got over in 1865 and everyone’s still recovering; the Washington Monument was just opening and Jack the Ripper was terrorizing London.   Kodak was just being patented, and the National Geographic Society was just being formed.

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | 2 little comments jumping on the bed. | Subscribe RSS