Oysters and Pearls

A grain of sand, upon entering an oyster, becomes so agitating to the creature that it will surround the sand with some sort of oyster saliva to ease the itch. This eventually hardens and in turn continues to aggravate the oyster, which angrily reacts the same way it does at the very first – that is to say that it spits upon its problem and makes it bigger. In this way, a pearl is formed.

Ideas can be placed in just the right circumstances to grow into something awe invoking. Today’s pearl began as most do – in a very small way a few hundred hours ago at a work Christmas party. The event was typical of such a gathering: it was a small group of employees, some with wives or dates, cracking jokes and receiving superficial awards. The food was excellent, consisting mainly of stake; chicken; salad; a variety of beverages; and something long, flat, and breaded that was offered to me as “[something inaudible] fries.” I asked for the name to be repeated and heard “bulf rinds.” Too proud to ask a second time, I made my wildest of guesses and decided on fried bullfrog. I’d heard that frogs are tasty when prepared correctly and so decided to try one, thinking that if I’d missed my guess whatever it was couldn’t be any more outlandish than what I’d already anticipated and that at the very worst I’d accumulate another experience for my cultural repertoire. (I mention here, that this unknown foodstuff became my proverbial grain of sand – a preparation for a gem of an experience.)

I sampled this new fare after dipping it in cocktail sauce and decided that it tasted almost like shrimp though a little beefy. The flavor, the chewy texture, and the appearance of this unknown delicacy all layered themselves rosily about its pestering animosity; as did the next layer of truth which was willingly placed at my feet by an obliging universe in the form of an overheard conversation:

“You’re not really going to eat that?” said a female coworker to the male one at my right.
“Why not?” said he.
“Don’t you know what that is?”
“Certainly.”

At this point I rudely interjected and asked, “What exactly are those?” I also quickly consumed my last morsel of the meat in question, fearing that I might not want to do so upon hearing an answer. This proved to be a very wise move. The man chuckled, turned to me with a knowing look and a twinkle in his eye, and leaned closer to me. Looking intently at me, like a vulture about to gobble up its prey (or more accurately, like a person about to immensely enjoy a beautiful moment at my expense), he replied in conspiring tones, “Well… you’ve heard of Rocky Mountain Oysters?”

I had.

For those of you who have not so heard, I will expound. You may be mystified to know that every bull owns two oysters which he carries with him always. When these are stolen from him he is considered a steer. I had just eaten a breaded and fried oyster, removed by force from a rightfully indignant bovine – tactfully dubbed “Bull Fry.” The puzzle solved, my pearl came into full view, and I gazed speechlessly upon it.

Our story, however, does not end here, for the next day at work (I work at a private school) the cafeteria was serving leftovers from the past few days, including from the party. One boy heard “fry” and loaded his plate despite the lunch lady asking repeatedly: “Are you sure? Do you know what that is?” (His reply each time was “Yeah. Bull Fries. You told me already.”) A little while later he gained view of his own pearl, and I will confide in you that while I’ve never actually seen an oyster spit at its pearl, I am nearly certain that one could never match the vigor with which this young man spat at his.

It is a rule at my school that students are to eat every mouthful of food that they take. My resulting pity for the boy got the best of me and so I offered moral support in the form of taking a second contemptible abomination. As I chewed my fare I thought heavily upon that age old adage “ignorance is bliss.”

-Schlange

In honor of this particular occasion I follow this experience with a favorite poem:

The Oyster by Baxter Black

The sign upon the café wall said OYSTERS: fifty cents.
"How quaint," the blue-eyed sweetheart said with some bewildermence,
"I didn't know they served such fare out here upon the plain.
"Oh, sure," her cowboy date replied, "We're really quite urbane."

"I would guess they're Chesapeake or Blue Point, don't you think?"
"No ma'am, they're mostly Hereford cross . . . and usually they're pink
But I've been cold, so cold myself, what you say could be true
And if a man looked close enough, their points could sure be blue!"

She said, "I gather them myself out on the bay alone.
I pluck them from the murky depths and smash them with a stone!"
The cowboy winced, imagining a calf with her beneath,
"Me, I use a pocket knife and yank ‘em with my teeth."

"Oh my," she said, "You're an animal! How crude and unrefined!
Your masculine assertiveness sends a shiver down my spine!
But I prefer a butcher knife too dull to really cut.
I wedge it in on either side and crack it like a nut!

I pry them out. If they resist, sometimes I use the pliers
Or even Grandpa's pruning shears if that's what it requires!"
The hair stood on the cowboy's neck. His stomach did a whirl.
He'd never heard such grisly talk, especially from a girl!

"I like them fresh," the sweetheart said and laid her menu down
Then ordered oysters for them both when the waiter came around.
The cowboy smiled gamely, though her words stuck in his craw
But he finally fainted dead away when she said, "I'll have mine raw!"

Darkness - First Installment

I've not blogged or written for my personal enjoyment for a long time. Today I started a short story - it is by no means complete, but it's there. I'd love to have some feedback. Schmetterling, if you could take your red pen to it, I'd be much obliged. - Schlange

~

Nathan walked to the fridge. He opened the door and moved down his mental list: eggs… yep, right on top - a giant clear container holding about 30; rice… rice… hm… last night's lasagna. "I could eat that I guess," he thought, "nah… I don't feel like taking the time to get it out and microwave it… Man. I'm lazy. Oh, there's the rice. Now the ham." He opened the meat drawer and found a small plastic wrapped square of a previously round cured ham. "Mom's been working on this - guess that's why she suggested I eat it." He took the ham out of the package. It was yellow and firm. "Pfft. Cheese."

As he ambled back to the fridge to renew his search, Nathan wondered, "If I'm too lazy to microwave lasagna why in the world am I making ham fried rice?" His first four reasons didn't feel very motivating: he didn't feel like eating Italian tomato sauce this early in the day; he was hungry and ham fried rice would feel good going down - not so acidic as tomato sauce; he shouldn't start the day with a granola bar; mom suggested it. He really just wanted to bag eating… didn't really want to do anything.

Sis'd come home at lunch. Mom had also suggested this for lunch. Maybe he ought to practice making it before serving it. He'd had enough stupid food mistakes over the last week that this seemed slightly more motivating despite the simplicity of the meal.

Nathan recognized through his late morning grogginess the kind of day he was having. He'd had it before. This was the kind of day where a familiar dark cloud would embrace him like a good companion should. He wouldn't feel like eating - particularly if he had to prepare the food. He wouldn't feel like cleaning up for the day. He wouldn't really feel like doing anything, actually. He'd have dark thoughts - not evil thoughts, just depressing ones.

Understanding what he was feeling Nathan worked to combat it. He'd had this kind of day frequently in the past - fortunately it was less common now. The struggle was the cloud. It constantly whispered despair to him, and obstructed the light shrouding all about him with gloom. In the past Nathan had tried to physically shake the doom mist from him. It clung effortlessly to him like a parasite on a dying host. He'd run from it. It was faster than he was. It was also faster than his car. He'd wrapped it around his fist and beat it against his father's fence. Unfortunately, this was more damaging to both the fence (which gained a fist sized hole) and the fist (which gained a fence sized array of slivers and cuts). The cloud actually gained ground at the fence rally - it dove into his newly opened blood stream like a genie entering a bottle. Then it laughed at him from his insides. It took Nathan a confrontation with his parents about the fence (and a wall) along with several weeks of secret crying to bleed it out of his system.

These lessons weren't lost on Nathan. He no longer fell into the physical foolishness. He did, however, fall into emotional foolishness. He'd been on long midnight walks to the middle of a park and tried to shout the black demon away. He'd subsequently fallen to the ground in moments of great agony as the incorporeal taskmaster shouted back. He'd retreated and escaped reality - usually through fantasy novels and video games, and also through an occasional film. He wasn't much of one for TV. His trips to fictional places were generally very long - usually never ending until the well into the early morning. He would sleep fitfully through much of the day. Often the shadow would be sitting by his side as he awoke cheerfully greeting him an oxymoronically good morning. Nathan missed a good deal of school. In part, this was due to the amount of sleep he was generally missing. The other part had a great deal to do with illness. Nathan had once been relatively healthy. The demon saw fit to change things. Whenever Nathan breathed in, it would breath out - spewing a subtle stressing poison into his lungs. It had the effect of tightening his chest and stomach. The poison fooled Nathan's heart which seemed to never quit ejecting adrenaline - keeping him awake at night (on nights when he wasn't in fantasy land) and making him miserably tired in the days. Nathan's stomach gained a talent for self destructiveness - eating it's self a little more with every problem that came his way.

Cruel Irony

If I had to sum up the English language in one word I think it would be a toss up between Cruel and Ironic. Maybe i'd petition the use of a second word and say Cruel Irony. It's not enough for English to be the epitomy of Hypocracy, making usage rules for the sake of breaking them - even breaking rules that govern the breaking of rules; and it's not content to torture us with unnatural spellings and pronunciations; no English doesn't have the universal decency to stop at anything less than mockery of the handicapped. I submit to the jurry three examples. Let us begin with the letter "R":

I met a man from Boston the other day. His surname is Dumarri - note the presence of two R's. This is a horrible problem for any Bostonian because they don't use R's. One day some discriminatory Boston official said,

"Cast out the R's! Make them a hiss and a byletter! From henceforth replace the sound made by any R that approaches with that of the letter 'W' or the word 'ah' (which ever sounds better with the surrounding vowels and consonants)." And the dpeople listened and obeyed. Infact they obeyed so well that their style of R-shunning entered the gene pool and became classified as a speech impediment. now this was no crime made by the unjustly isolated R; however, the way in which it retaliated was most cruelly ironic: it placed the banished noise within it's own appelation, punishing the newly impaired and their children and their children's children and so on until the present day.

Mr. Dumarri can neither say nor spell his name aloud and be understood. For example, he may call a restaurant in Utah to make a reservation. The conversation might go like this:

"We'd be glad to hold a place for you sir. May I have your name?"
"Yes, it's Dumahwi"
"I'm sorry, did you say DoomOnMe?"
"No, Dumahwi. Let me spell it to you: D-U-M-A-awe-awe-I. Dumahwi"
"I'm sorry sir. Did you say Dumah'i... D-U-M-A-A-A-I?"
"No no. It's only got one "A" and two ahhws."
"Pardon me, I think there's a problem with the connection. Two whats?"
*Mr. Dumarri sighs* "Aahhwws. AaWwahs! I'm fwom boston and we don't use them... awe as in 'wip' and 'widge.'"
"Excuse me, did you say 'W' as in 'whip' and 'wig?'"

We leave Mr. Dumarri now as he plants his face in the palm of his hand and examine an ugly word: "lisp." Again eglish mocks the verbailly impaired. The test to check for a lisp is to have the candidate say "lisp." If a person can't say it then he's got it, so send him to get some professional help with it. English rubs salt in his wounds as he goes home to tell his wife that he needs to start seeing a "Thpeech Therapitht."

Finally, we close our case with the fear of long words. A fellow with this problem can get along with english decently on any given day - depending on who he's talking to. However, should he ever hear the name of what he suffers it could take him the rest of his life to recover from the jolt he gets from his "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia!"

Mattel made WHAT?

And now, for the first time ever, a Barbie that boys will like more than girls: complete with angry ravens comes the Barbie from "The Birds." Too bad Hitchcock isn't around to see this. I wonder if they are going to put out a new Alfred line... maybe we'll get a “Vertigo” play set complete with Monastery Bell Tower.

Just pray that they don’t decide to honor Edger Allen Poe…

High Adventure

I've had an extremely eventful few weeks. I crossed one of the top items off my list of things I want to do before I die by throwing my fragile body out of a perfectly good airplane (along with some cousins and close friends) at an altitude of 13000 feet. I helped to cater a post-wedding dinner for my older brother and met my new (and first) sister-in-law. For the last five days I've been camping and hiking and building sand castles next to a mountain lake with my extended family - a party of about 30 or 40 people. Today or tomorrow some of my cousins and my family are headed out to Starvation Reservoir to do some boating, tubing, and water skiing. If I ever have to point out a two week period of my life that's been filled with adventure, I don't doubt that this one will be high on my list of times to consider.

My conclusion after all of this excitement is that I have the most enjoyment and satisfaction when I'm doing things with my immediate and extended family. I get a bigger thrill out of being with them than I do from plummeting to the ground at a rate of 120 miles an hour. I gain more satisfaction from them than I do from breathtaking views and serene landscapes. They are the highlights of my life. Our traditions (of which we have many and yet are forming more) approach sacredness within my heart - particularly the ones that call us all together. I am the richest of men because I am often blessed with the company of many people who I love deeply and who return that love. I am even more blessed to know and understand that these relations are eternal, and that not even death can permanently erase them because of the power provided through the love and heroic sacrifices of our Lord, Jesus Christ. To Him and to His Father - and our Father - goes my deepest gratitude and love. They ever have been and ever shall be the willing way to joy and peace within this life and throughout the next. Because the Godhead has all power, and all knowledge, and fullest love I have no fear that in the end all will be well for all who follow their perfect Plan of Salvation. I marvel that this is true, but I know that it is.

-Schlange

Claymation Christmas

[Post 28]

Today is blogging day: right after my last post I added some entries to my food blog. One of them was Wassail Punch. This sparked memories regarding a favorite Christmas special we'd watch when we were kids called "A Claymation Christmas." It's got the California Raisins in it, for those of you who actually know about the California Raisins. (and no, I haven't embedded any California Raisin clips, but here's a link to one. I embedded 2 clips from you tube into the wassail post, and then watched a few more. The following clip introduces what was one of my favorite segments way back then and the clip after that is the segment (coincidently they fit right after the carol introduced by the first clip on my food blog).

Comfort – Life - Enjoyment

[Post 27]

I went for a walk yesterday and was thinking about why people work – what the purpose of work is. I've come to this conclusion: We work to provide for ourselves or for a group comfort, life, or enjoyment. Comfort includes not only physical conveniences but also comfortable emotional states: peace, contentment, etc. Life includes the wherewithal to eat and physical, emotional, and spiritual safety. Enjoyment includes thrills, satisfaction, etc. Work accomplishes this for the laborer generally through the receipt of money (which allows the purchase of the work of others) and hopefully for the satisfaction of a job well done. Work is done for the hirer who has something he's trying to accomplish towards those ends. The ditch digger, the architect, the paper pusher, the president, and everybody else who expends energy all have the same goals and functionality. Some are selfish and labor only for themselves – perhaps at the same time denying these things to others, while many are generous and labor for themselves and others. Focus varies – some struggle to keep living and focus only on that. Others are so preoccupied with enjoying the moment that they literally stop living. In the end I think it comes down to at least one, and most of the time all, of these things. What do you think? Am I right?

-Schlange

Old People are Cool

[Post 26]

Ok, so by "Old People are Cool" I mean my Grandparents are cool and that I can't wait to be old and just like them (making the assumption that I get married and have kids and grandkids - hey, it could happen.) Today I got a good reminder of just how cool they are.

So, My 14 year old brother and I go down to our grandparents' house today for various reasons and while we're there Grandma offers us a slice of her special chocolate cake fresh out of the oven. Now, I'm not usually a fan of chocolate cake, but I am a fan of Grandma's, so I'm pretty excited. We take a plate to grandpa first, then my brother runs over with his plate and I amble over with mine. By the time I get my dish back to the table my brother's large piece is a little more than half gone (the boy is like a piranha sometimes). Grandma notices and bellows, "Dear Boy! You ATE IT TOO FAST! NOW COOL-IT! "

(My grandmother is one of the only people that I know that can make me run out of ways to increase the emphasis in sentence; makes me wish that I could add a crescendo symbol from f to ff.)

Grandpa looks over at Bro.'s plate and says slowly in his deep rumbling voice, "Well… maybe he'll need another one." The boy looks up happily and says cheerfully. "Yes. Maybe I'll need another one."

"NO!" Grandma pronounces as she stomps one foot. "I have to take this cake to my relatives in Bluebell," she finishes much more softly but with an air of annoyance. We all look at her quizzically. She answers, "It's for a Christmas party."

"A Christmas party?" I ask (note that I'm writing this in June).

"Yes, a Christmas Party. My brother is having a June Christmas party."

"??" say the eyes and slightly tilted heads of my brother and I.

"It's so they can get in two," chuckles Grandpa holding up the peace sign.

"Is this a yearly thing?" I ask.

"I don't know, but I think so," says Grandpa.

"Do they put up a tree?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," says Grandma, inflicting the consonant with the vigor of a first grade teacher (this isn't suprising because she was a first grade teacher.) "The oven was hot, and I just had to think of an excuse to go down and spy on their party, so I made this cake." We all chuckle as Grandma turns and leaves the room to finish getting ready for Christmas in June.

After a moment my brother gets up and steps slyly over to the cake, making small movements so as to emphasize his "sneakiness." "Better leave it alone," says I, "that's Grandma's ticket to the party."

Grandpa's eyes sparkle as he leans over and says in a conspiring tone, "Perhaps if we cut a long thin slice off the end it won't be noticed." As he finishes speaking he's already standing up and shuffling over to the cake pan. In the time it would take to say "slick" he's already trimmed off the most exact cake sliver you've ever seen, and divided it into two long pieces and one short one. "I'm going to need somewhere to put these," he mutters with a shifty wide-eyed look that says – "hurry, or I'm going to be in trouble."

Plop, plop, plop. Two long pieces on the grandkids' plates, and one short one on Grandpa's plate. Grandpa shuffles back to the table and everybody sits down and takes a bite. Enter Grandma, bright as the sunshine. "Well, I s'pose I'd better be off."

"We'd better be off too," I say. "We've got stuff to do at the house." I reach over and give my smiling angel Grandma a hug. "Thanks for the cake." In the same motion I look over her shoulder squarely at my grandpa (who happens to be grinning from ear to ear and silently laughing so that his belly is bouncing up and down). "Yes," I say, "thank you for the cake."

मिलाग्रो - AKA Milagros AKA Milagros

Post 25

मिलाग्रो is a Hindi word for "Milagros" which is an English word for the Spanish word Milagros literally meaning "miracle" or "surprise." According to Wikipedia (yes I know, "never cite Wikipedia as a source"... but I'm lazy and not in the mood for extra research - if you're really that interested in source correctness go follow the references Wikipedia lists) Milagros are offerings made of various materials carved into one of many shapes and sizes and offered at alters to help focus a prayer toward the reason for the prayer - healing of a body part, romance, travel, whatever you feel like, and is carved in a way that represents the focus... a leg for a broken leg or traveling or a heart for romance or... um... heart disease? मिलाग्रो is displayed here in the mangal typeface of Microsoft Word, and is how it was displayed to me when I looked up Milagros using some translative device from Google that also mentioned that Milagros appeared in other languages and listed samples... such as मिलाग्रो. I learned that mangal was the typeface when I was curious as to whether I could copy मिलाग्रो into my text editor. मिलाग्रो looks nice, and that's probably why I'm posting. Wikipedia lists the following in response to a search for mangal (I was looking because I figured Mangal was a language and I wanted to know who it belongs to):

Mangal may refer to:
Mangal, a Turkish way of
barbecuing
Mangrove swamp, woody
trees or shrubs that grow in coastal habitats
Mangal
(Мангал), a Bulgarian word meaning gypsy (but with a racist connotation)
Mangal Pandey, a sepoy (soldier) in the
34th Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry of the British East India Company
In an Indian context, mangal (मंगल) means "good auspicious"; it also refers
to a Mangal
Font for the devanāgarī script used for Indian languages [note that
mangle (मंगल) is typed in the Mangle typeface =D]
Mangal
is a typeface in Windows XP
Mangal, a Pashtun
tribe
Mangal,
an Afghan singer
Gulab Mangal, an Afghan
politician
Mangal,
Afghanistan

In short, mangal must mean anything and everything. Use it as a place holder the next time you can't think of the word you're looking for: "I was looking at that famous painting by... uh... Mangal...." or "I need an um... a mangle... " or "Oh... I left your priceless diamond ring over at... whatchaMangle's house" or "You are soooo.... *logical gap*... mangle..."

Oh... I ought to tell you where this whole research project came from: Some Mexican guys where my sister works started referring to her as Milagros or if not that, something else that sounded like it.

Now that I've figured all this out I'm turning in. By the way, if you are looking for some cool symbol to represent your name you can either do what Schmetterling and I did and super impose the letters of your name over each other, or you can be lazy and just type your name into word using the Mangle type face.

*a few moments later*

Doh! no you can't. I just tried to type Schlange in mangal and it came out in the English alphabet. Sad. Oh well. G'night.

-Schlange

Butt Munch

(Post 24)

Pardon the potentially offending post title, but that's really what we're talking about today - grasshoppers that stay on the move to prevent their hindquarters from becoming lunch. For those of you who want to read the whole thing you can read it here.

The main idea of the article is this: swarms of locusts get where they are going because the bugs in front are afraid that the bugs in back are going to nibble their bottoms. There were two paragraphs in the article that made me think about life in general:

The defensive movement away from the perceived threat sets up a domino effect,
as each individual locusts' movement causes them to touch another locust, which
then makes the second locust move away.

"You have millions of individuals all going in the same direction, because if they change direction much, they are likely to come in contact with each other," Sword said.

I think that sometimes people are just like this. We all move defensively away from everybody else, often because we are afraid of getting a "but chewing." That's what defines the direction of society. We all move in a direction that minimizes the negative contact we have with other people - thus we don't really go where we want to go, we just go where we all herd each other to.

Now, the locusts have a legitimate problem. They're cannibalistic and if they don't head for food they become food. We on the other hand have a tendency to imagine the things that other people are going to think. Most of the time we're wrong. Even when we're right we're spineless.

It's a pity.

-Schlange

Change

(post 23)

Things change way to quickly. It can be very hard to keep up some days. You live at home for 20 years, then you take off to go get some learning, then you move home for the summer and then move out again. Every time you change venues everything else changes: the people you're around, your sleep schedule, your degree of control over what you do (or maybe more specifically WHAT controls what you do - is it house rules, or the need for some $$$$), who you work for, your work hours, everything. It's hard to adjust to change, and it always seems that things are changing at exactly the same time you feel like you got used to the last change. I remember writing something poetic about this on my mission. Maybe I'll dig it up and make a post out of it.

-Schlange

Mother's Day

Today, I take off my hat for mothers around the globe and particularly for my own sweet mother. We've got some kind of a connection, she and I. She knows the state of my inner self without asking from a tested distance of 144 miles - I'm not sure what her actual range is, and I'm not sure that I'm willing to move to the other side of the world to find out. She can therefore support me emotionally in a way that no one else can. I'm grateful for that - it's been a huge blessing to me on top of the many other needs she has met for me at the expense of her own personal goals.

Of course there are also several other fine ladies, my grandmothers and aunts, that have always been there for me. I have a close knit family, so I've really been raised by most of my relations. Good things to have, relations. They give life extra zest! My heritage is one of the most important things I've got. I know where and who I come from. That's important to me.

I've got a series of books that my Grandfather and some Aunts put together - the Merrell Books. It's got the biographies and autobiographies of a big chunck of my extended family for a few generations back. I'm even in short paragraph of it.

Today I was reading an account written by my Great-Great Uncle Porter. He was born on Jan. 15, 1900 and died on Dec. 25, 1999. Needless to say, he had a lot of good stories. Besides that, he had a glass eye and he liked to play games that ended with me holding fistful of coins. The man was my hero. Following is something that he wrote about his mother. He wrote a good deal more regarding her communities and church duties, but because we're talking about motherhood, I edited them out for brevity (Keep int mind that Porter was one of 12 children):

"Another interesting side light on Mother..she always breast-fed her babies. This of course, took time and she was not about to just sit there, that would be wasting time. She always had a book or magazine where she could pick it up. In this way she was always well read. She could discuss most issues intelligently. She had a very good understanding of the scriptures. Another trait i admired in Mother was her clean mind.[...] I have never heard her suggest covering up or being deceitful in the smallest degree. Everything had to be honest, even if it hurt.

"My mother worked more than anyone I have known. With this large family, just the food preparation was staggering. It took eight large loaves of bread each and every day; more than fifty pounds of flour per week and everything else in proportion. She kept any rag or piece of clothing, cut them into strips one inch wide, sewed them together and wound them into balls. When she had enough she would set up the loom and weave it into a carpet. Our home, except the kitchen, was covered with Mother's carpet. Straw was put on the floor, then covered with carpet. Each spring the carpet would be taken up and cleaned, the old straw taken out and new straw put in, and the cleaned carpet replaced on the floor. mother made dresses for all her girls. She washed, carded and spun sheep wool into yarn then knit socks, mittens, caps and sweaters for most of the family.

"Many times snow was melted to wash clothes each week. Washing was done with a tub, washboard and soap Mother had made. Washing machines came much later.[...] She did a lot of crocheting, tatting or making flowers. She patched our clothing and darned our stockings. She was up early and retired late.[...] She was and is a wonderful mother."

I'm going to close this post with two toasts found in the book "Toasts - the complete book of the best toasts, sentiments, blessings, curses, and graces" compiled by Paul Dickson:

"Here's to the happiest hours of my life-
Spent in the arms of another man's wife:
My mother!"

"We have toasted our sweethearts,
Our friends and our wives,
We have toasted each other
Wishing all merry lives;
Don't frown when I tell you
This toast beats all others
But drink one more toast, boys-
A toast to - Our Mothers."

God bless mother's - past, present and future (and especially mine!)

-S. A. Taube

It's Alive!

Post 21

Schmetterling had a brain child in the comments of my last post - he said I could make another blog with my family recipes. I made up some plans, hooked the kid (Smetterlings brain child) onto an operating table, ran up my lightning rod, and vuala! I now have a new blog: "The Secre(s)t Collection" - name may be changed to protect the innocent. There's one detailed post about honey candy. I need to add an introduction and adjust the layout and give the two permanent links to each other, but it's there. Thanks Schmett, you're brilliant as always.

In other news, I left a comment on Shmetterling's latest post that's long enough to be a regular post on this blog. You'll have to go there to read it, which will be good for you anyhow because Schmetterling's posts are always fun to read. Maybe you should hang out there for a while and read some of his other posts. One of his recent and highly recommended posts is this one.

I Am What I Eat

Post 20

(The following is lengthy. Here's a summary so that you can skip or read at your leisure. I started by talking about about my love of candy making and how I gained it. I was going to talk about being excited to make some caramel truffles with Schmetterling but I never got there. My comments morphed into something a little more meaningful to me. Part of my rich cultural heritage revolves around food. I've listed off tons of foods. These are meaningful to me not just because they are good foods but because of the good feelings they give me in relation to other people. My family ties are laced with foods and I don't think I ever really noticed that. Making unique foods (or common foods, or even buying certain foods at certain times) is a part of personality and family bonding, because of tradition. I eat and enjoy food as much because of who I eat it with and when as I eat and enjoy it because of it's flavor. My last line is really what sums it up: "I'm a social eater. The best foods in life are no good if they aren't eaten with people you love.")

I love to make candy. I really do. I can see myself in the future as the grandpa who everybody loves to visit because he makes candy. I'll BUY my grandkids' love and nobody can stop me!

I can take this back to some few people that have been a great part of my life: To start with, my Grandpa Jim and Grandmother Beth, and my Aunt Allison who assists them - along with anybody who happens to go over to their house at the right time - make candy. Fondant is a favorite and is sucked off the spoon like a Popsicle or hand coated with chocolate. Dates and candied cherries are also hand dipped in chocolate. Whatever is chocolate coated stays out on 5 or 10 cookie sheets until they've been emptied. That never takes long when there are 20 grandkids in town. Another favorite is Divinity. I'm not sure how to describe that except for that it's named well.

My recently departed Great Aunt Pauline Winkler was a candy maker. Dear dear APW. She was a hard core candy maker. She was amazing! At her funeral last week every speaker talked about her honey candy. She taught school for 30 years and the kids sent cards and letters that were put on display at the funeral. There were several binders full of them. Almost every one of them talked about honey candy. They wondered who was going to teach the new kids how to make it. I didn't realize it until funeral, but this woman would make over 100 pounds of this stuff every Christmas, getting up early before going to school to make 2 or 3 batches at a time. Those of you who have never made honey candy may not appreciate this properly so I'll help you:

The ingredients are simple: 2 cups sugar, 1 cup honey, 1 cup cream (half and half). You combine these in a pot and boil them, using a wet pastry brush to wipe the edges above the liquid to keep it from crystallizing. Somewhere around 260 degrees you poor the molten candy onto a slab or tray that's been greased with butter (a marble slab works best). You let it cool until you can handle it, but you don't want it to cool long or it won't be workable. I don't do well with this part... I usually try to work it when it's too hot and end up with blisters... think touching something that looks cool but that's actually lava hot and sticks to you. Not very pleasant. Up to this point you've spent an hour or so in preperation and cooking... we'll say that because Pauline had this down to an art she did it in 30 min. After that you pull the candy (butter up your hands first). When you start it's pretty pliable but as you go it gets much firmer. It's tough work to pull honey candy - Pauline had shoulder problems for the last several years of her life, so this wasn't easy for her. When the candy has a white and creamy look to it and is difficult to pull you string it out on your slab and cut it up into pieces about the width of a finger with scissors and then toss those into a bowl of powdered sugar. You use a strainer to toss the candy to get excess powder off, and then wrap the pieces individually in wax paper. I've never spent less than 3 hours making a batch of honey candy unless I skipped powdering and wrapping it, but I'm not a pro like she was. I did this with her a few times and I loved it. It was amazing to me that I could do it. It was inpsiering to me that it was a part of my heritage. This is something that was done in my great grandparents frontier home in Bluebell, Utah (where Pauline lived till last week) from about 1940 till now. My Great Grandfather Ulrich Bernard Winkler built that house after the one he'd just built burned down. I've done a lot of things there, and making honey candy is one of the things that stands out the most. It's difficult for me that she's gone now. She was a bossy lady, but I liked her that way. Time spent at her house -either alone with her or at some annual family party (she hosted several)- was always time well spent. I learned a great deal from her.

Pauline also made some amazing butter mints. These were way better than the ones caterer's pull out of the shelves. I never learned to make them, but I think my grandmother knows how. I need to have her teach me.

Come to think of it, certain foods are a part of who I am. They have deep roots with my family traditions and with my heritage. The best tomato soup I ever had was consumed in Pauline's kitchen. Her sister, Grandma Beth makes an amazing fruit concoction we all call "Grandma Juice." If it ever shows up at a party, and you see it before it's noticed by the mob, protocol demands that you poor yourself a full glass so that you can drink it most of the way, fill it back up, and then alert everybody else. If you're lucky you get another glass. One Thanksgiving while I was on my mission I was living close to my cousin, Maren Kijek. She got grandma's recipe and made a jug for me. She dropped it off in the mission office for me. That was the best part of Thanksgiving that year.

Before I opened it I thought that the Grandma Juice was wassail. That's another big tradition. The Kijeks live close to us and Christmas/Thanksgiving at their house means wassail. Wassail is a tangy spicy holiday beverage.

In cold seasons Aunt Mareen Kijek makes Spanish Chocolate that she learned to make in Spain. It's hot chocolate but different. I'm not sure how to describe it except for that if you've never had it you need to get some.

My dad makes homemade jerky. You've never had anything better. If I was a betting man I'd stake my life's savings on it. My mom makes a raspberry pudding that's reserved for those with a refined sense of flavor. If you don't savor it and make contented noises while you eat it slowly you don't get any more - we don't waste the good stuff on people that like the generic stuff just as well. My parents grill lemon pepper chicken and BBQ'd chicken.

We used to make a tasty salsa as a family activity - it was when my dad was having sinus issues and thus tasting issues; as a result of his lack of satisfaction we would make each batch a little hotter and ended up with 4 labels of salsa - wimpy, mild, HOT, and 2HOT. 2HOT was way too hot for anybody but dad. A few years later dad found some 2HOT and got really excited. He'd resolved his ultra-congestion and after a sampling he decided that it was too hot too.

Grandpa makes a special cheese dip, and a pepper jelly. Everybody loves the cheese dip. Only a few of us like the jelly, but we revel in the comradery of loving something everybody else hates. Oh, and can you say chili? Grandpa's Chili is as famous as Grandma's Juice. Allison makes eggnog and pies... coconut cream is my favorite.

The more I think about it the more foods and peoples I get. There are certain food items that just belong to certain people. Chili. Whiskey Sauce! Root Beer. Chocolate Cake (I'm not a fan of most chocolate cake, but this one is amazing). Ginger Snaps. Spaghetti and Meatballs. Peppernuts. Minted Lemon. Spinach and Beans (only once a year... this was a tradition involving money and luck... we hated it but loved it simultaniously). The list goes on and on. Thus far limited myself to my mothers side, but My Grandma Merris makes/has food that's equally important to me in flavor and tradition: Pies, Cookies, Grilling on the Back Porch, The Candy Jar, Halloween Popcorn Balls, etc. If it wasn't 1:30 AM, I could make a list for my dad's side that is as long as the one i made for my mom's side.

Even my roommates are becoming associated with foods. Shmetterling = popcorn. Danny = chocolate malts. Chad next door = cookies EVERY TUESDAY NIGHT! I'm trying to make a name with smoothies and honey candy.

It's time for me to cut off. My list of unwritten foods and people is growing exponentially. I haven't even talked about Christmas, the 24th of July, Weddings (A catered reception in my family is rare. We do way better on our own), or Thanksgiving... actually I've hit on thanksgiving a little... mmmm... Whiskey Sauce! In short, I'm a social eater. The best foods in life are no good if they aren't eaten with people you love, but the worst foods become good foods when you have somebody fun to exchange looks and or gaging noises with. Memories around the dinner table, the hand grinder, the candy slab, the apple bobbing barrel, the blender, or the dutch oven are some of the best I've got. I think it's because I get to recall them and add to them every time something goes in my mouth.

I have all sorts of other memories I'd like to share... the kinds of foods I eat with my mother - the kinds of foods I eat with my father - these include not only that which we made but that which we purchased. Sorbet's, Rafello, Fresh Tomato Sandwiches.... stop stop stop. sleep Schlange. sleep.

G'night.

-Shlange

Chastisement

Post 19

My buddy Schmetterling is a prolific blogger and is the fellow who got me into the blog scene. His brother Th is also a blogging addict. I read a post today where he referred to me as Schmetterling's "barely-a-blogger friend."

"Owe, owe. It hurts me so." (Rocket Man)

Granted, his statement is accurate. I've not been a regular poster. I repent! I'll post. I promise!

(by the way, chastisement is good. If I don't get any I am a ba- er... a bad man... well you can read it in Hebrews 12... if you want enlightenment (of which much is to be had) you can read Hebrews 12:6-14 as follows (this is the recommended option)...but if you just want to find out what I would be if I never got chastisement you can pick it out in verse 8 (remember, Paul said it, not me). Maybe that will make you feel a little better the next time you get called to task! =D


-Schlange


Hebrews 12:6-14

6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?

8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

10 For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.

11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;

13 And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:

Bl-ah-g

Post 18

I just posted a post in the which I made apologies for being away for so long and posting a topic that I'll discuss soon. The "cyber-ether" absorbed it with some mysterious error. I think the keeper of the void has it in for me. I still apologize, but not so nicely. Unpolished topic intro follows:

Topic will be:

"Most things you consider to be evil are really just lonely and lacking in social niceties"

Feel free to comment on the topic before I do, as I can't right now. Consider this virtual circle time.

Write in such a way that if your blog is called upon to die prematurely (as mine are prone to do) they'll have a happy reunion with the good blogs of the past. However, it's likely that their tarnished descendants (like this one) will end up going to the postMaster Demon (and yes I know that's not what it is, but Demon is far more appropriate than what's his bucket)

-Schlange

Polar Dream

(Post 17)

I had a lengthy and involved dream this morning. At the end I was talking to animals and getting ready to hunt polar bears using hardened snowballs. I remembered that I was hunting penguins earlier, so I ran outside the polar cave to the polar slope. I saw the penguins and ran towards them shouting in a very reassuring way," I'm not hunting you anymore! I'm hunting polar bears now! Anybody want to help?" The penguins all shouted" yippee" (with hi pitched, but not obnoxious voices) and ran towards me with snowballs in hand. The most popular of the penguins said loudly "Hold on! Only one of us can go!" He then looked at me hopefully and said "Right?" (I understood his intention – he wanted to be the only one to go so he'd have more prestige and influence with the other penguins) All the other penguins looked downcast because they knew that I'd choose the popular penguin. However, I needed lots of help so I said "Nope, you're all coming."

The popular penguin protested "But then, who will win?" He wanted this to be a contest so he could somehow find a way to be the best at it. I wasn't about to help him boost his ego, so I said, "Nobody. Just whoever kills the polar bear." (In my dream I didn't articulate very well, but what I ment was "all of us… we're all going to kill it, so we'll all win") The popular penguin looked down sadly for just a split second, but then he looked up and around and said importantly in a drawn out let-me-have-your-attention-I've-got-something-mischievous-to-say sort of way, "Or….. Whoever sits on him!" And all the penguins went "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOh" (that's a drawn out ooh, not oh) with excitement for this new dare.

I woke up chuckling at the penguins' juvenile behavior. It was very refreshing and I felt very good for several minutes until my body looked up at me and said, "what are you chuckling about!?! You've got the flue remember! Don't you dare think you can be happy today! Smiling is right out!" I'm going to have to help it find some childish penguin love of life here pretty quickly or it'll likely lord over me all day long.

-Schlange

----------------------------------

post-Post Post (A post posted post the post of the privious post) - ok... maybe Post Script:

So, considering that I have the flue and ache all over I went back to bed. I woke up unable to go back to sleep because a dream startled me into an adrenaline rush. I was standing in a vast universe of colorless nothing (not black or white... just no color - I can't even picture it, but I guess dreams get to reinvent the laws of reality). One of my roomates (who happens to share my first name) was there, but I wasn't aware of it yet - he was behind me. He's taller than me in real life, but in this case he was 3 feet taller, with his neck being double it's lenghth and his head was as big as my chest. I turned around to see that he was bent over with his hands on his knees and his neck streched all the way out so that his nose was about 6 inches from mine. He said "Hey, J-Dog!" and I woke up with a start.

I've decided that dreams can get weird when you have the flue.

The Origins of Schlange

(Post 16)

(Note: Somehow my post editor is having issues. Most of my whitespace (Blanklines between paragraphs, 5 spaces in front of a new paragraph, or anything else that I've tried to use to make my paragraphs look nice) is disapearing every time I save. Sorry, but you'll have to bear with me.)

As part of giving my blog a facelift I'm changing my profile. I'm putting the old contents of what was in my profile here and editing it:

Schlange A. Taube nearly sounds like a real name doesn't it? Why did I pick it to post under? I've got a buddy Schmetterling who got me interested in blogging (his blog is The Eccentric Sage). He's got a unique pen-name and I was jealous.

He told me that his came about because of an experiance with a fellow who was a great fan of Tolkien. Apparently, Tolkien has an insignia that places his initials (JRRT) over the top of one another in a cool way. This fellow wanted something cool like that for himself, so he worked one out with his initials. Schmetterling subsequently made one that looked like a butterfly and thus created an alias (Schemtterling is German for butterfly).

We explored using the same method for me. We started superimposing the letters in my name over the top of each other to see what we could get in the way of a picture. We came up with several possibilities, one of note being the dollar sign ($). The one we went with looked something like an "A" hooked into the back end of a snake. That made me "A snake." Because everything sounds cooler in German we looked up the German translation of snake: "Shlange." That has pizzazz so I kept it. However, I didn't want to feel like an evil villain all the time so we started looking for something to go with it. Somehow I remembered Matthew 10:16, and that gave us a dove to go with my serpent. It also gave me a good name for my blog. Dove in German is "Taube." Stick an "A" that looks like a snake into the center of a German SnakeDove and what do you get? Schlange A. Taube, at your service.

-Schlange

Appendix for “Inviting Yet Fruitless”

(post 15.A)

I've linked this post to my last post. If you haven't read it yet this one won't make any sense. It's likely more enjoyable reading anyways, so go there now. I originally wrote what follows underneath the original post but then decided I'd prefer to keep them separate. This accounts for all the references to "this post." I was too lazy to fix the wording. If you want to, you can pretend that this post is at the end of the last post.

~

I've decided to append a little something to this post for the following reason: I have a good friend, Schmetterling, who told me he has linked this post to one of his posts. He told me a little about it, but I haven't read it yet. I don't intent to read it until this is written because I'd like to sum up the deeper feelings I was having when I wrote the above post BEFORE I read what someone else says that I was saying. "Get it? Got it. Good."

This little pastry story really sums up my feelings about most things in life. There are a lot of things in this universe that look incredibly good. Some of them "taste" just like they look. Others are hollow. Some are filled with poison. Sadly it can often be difficult to differentiate between the three, especially when just looking on their outward appearances. (Note: in my original post I said that sin is like a hollow pastry - at this point I'm making a redefinition. "Hollow" means lacking in substance and "poisoned" means dangerous to the body, mind or spirit. I suppose that both of those conditions could exist in the same pastry at the same time.) Now, I'll be the first to admit that I eat copious amounts of hollow pastries - and half the time this blog may be fairly hollow, for which I am truly sorry - but I really do believe that we all need things of substance to survive in this world or to gain any semblance of joy. Hollow things -pastries that is - consume time and resources. Feasting on them and them alone leads to malnutrition.

Consider Isaiah 25:6

“And in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.”

God wants us to have (infact, he wants to GIVE to us) things of substance: fat things, things full of marrow, and I told you before – His magnificently crafted grapes. (if you aren't yet sold on the grapes, just ask Schmetterling. He'll set you straight.)

Now consider Isaiah 24:16

"From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, even glory to the righteous. But I said, My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me! the treacherous dealers have dealt treacherously; yea, the treacherous dealers have dealt very treacherously.”

Besides the bolded bit there sounding like it could be an awesome start to a classic piece of poetry, it's got me thinking about the peddlers of the world selling us that which is without substance. We waste away for lack of nourishment, and we pay for the privilege! Enter Isaiah 55:2

“Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.”

It's all about getting fat my friends. "Eat that which is good." Stop paying physical and spritual curency (including resources like time or talents; and "bread" we already have, like peace of mind or joy) for that which isn't meeting needs. In media, and activities, and everything else in life we ought to be seeking substance for ourselves and offering substance to others. Whatever we choose to do, we had better get substance out of it, and when we find that what we are investing our "money" or "labour" in isn't yielding substance or satisfaction, then maybe it's time to look for new stocks. At least, that's what I had better do, and if I don't then I may find myself going to the same tables over and over just to find that the proffered pastries still deliver absolutely nothing that I'm looking for.

-Schlange

Something that is a part of this topic, yet that is apart from it is the concept of Becoming Something. I really want discuss that at a later date and when I do I'll create a hyper link here.

If you're interested, here is a talk by Elder Oaks (an apostle for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) that speaks about getting the best out of the good things in life:

Good, Better, Best (Ensign, Nov 2007, 104–8)

Inviting Yet Fruitless

(Post 15)

I just had a hollow experience. I attended an activity where food was provided (likely as an incentive to improve attendance). Amongst the table's insentivery chief weaponry were gourmet crackers with ranch dip, grapes of two varieties, orange juice, and a twinkling gem: pastries of some wonderful nature or another, glazed with gleaming sugar, and most temptingly oozing apple or raspberry filling from every crevice. I excitedly took one of each kind, found a corner free of distractions that might take from the experience, and lovingly lifted the apple pastry to my salivating taste tester. I placed the treat delicately between my teeth and applied pressure slowly, so as to extend the sensation of watering my tongue with sugary fruit goodness.

The expected flavor bomb never arrived. I began to chew vigorously and discovered that what should have been a masterfully crafted vehicle packed full of natural (but chemically enhanced for preservation) gifts for the nerve-endings in my tongue was nothing more than a thinly breaded carpool of the gasses that make up air. It was as a fig tree full of leaves but barren of fruit. (Fig tree's produce fruit before leaves… seeing leaves on a fig tree means you can expect ripe fruit).

After the crash of disappointment I looked at my raspberry pastry. "Little raspberry manna-cake," I thought to the sister of the sinful apple hypocrite, "your counterpart must have surely been a dud. You most certainly will not fail me. Not with such beauty in your figure and promise in your eyes… or icing in their absence." So I popped the raspberry pastry into my mouth. More disappointing than the first, this air pocket gave a hint and promise of forthcoming flavor that vanished with the breeze generated by the air escaping it.

I was crushed. But I yet could not believe that what I had sampled was the standard for all the beckoning desserts upon the table, so I ate four more. Whited sepulchers, all of them. It was like watching the food channel, but worse. Everything you see looks amazing and you wish that you could reach into the screen and pull out a sample. Well in this case you can, but when you bite into it you find that cable can't broadcast substance (which may be true in more senses than this one).

I'm fairly certain that the heinous company that made these tempting little heart breakers isn't going to make it through Armageddon. Particularly considering that the amount of residue that the filling on the OUTSIDE of the pastry left on the box they came in was greater than the filling occupying the centers of these great and spacious baked buildings.

So, I have some parallels to draw and re-reference; morals to extend; and lists to number:

• One: Don't be like a Pharisee… you don't want to end up like the cursed fig tree.
  
• Two: Sin is like a bad pastry. It tempts one with much, and leaves him with no fruit fillings. The more one places it in his mouth because he thinks it'll be better this time, the fewer flavors he'll have in life, along with a continued longing for the realization of never to be fulfilled promises.
  
• Three: A handful of God's own good grapes can make the world right when all joy has vanished.
  

-Schlange

~ Sunday, February 24, 2008 ~

The meaning beyond the satire.
(Stop here if you just wanted to read a rant about pastries. If you're looking for more substance click here. Also Schmetterling's post on The Eccentric Sage links this post to another fellow's post for the sake of making an interesting point. I recomend that you check it out.)

Minute Man

(post 14)

So, I have this Java Professor. He's a pretty cool guy, and I like him. He also works very much like a clock. He starts speaking at precisely the moment the bell rings and stops at exactly 12:50. Once I got to class 10 minutes early and slipped in the back while he was still teaching a different class. Just for fun I took a glance at the clock and took note of what he was saying. When he reached that point in the lecture in my class the clock said exactly the same time (one hour later) as it had in the previous class. The man is some sort of machine. Today, he had something important he wanted to add at the end of class. It was 12:50 and people were starting to leave. He said, "I'm sorry for keeping you, but I need one more minute of your time." He taught what he needed and then turned to the class and said, "thank you for the extra 58 seconds of your time. I hope you got something out of it." I've never been anywhere when someone actualy ment one minute when they said one minute.

I wonder what the world would be like if everyone could accurately estimate and stick to a time frame. What if "just a second" ment just a second, instead of "just 5 minutes", or if "just a minute" ment 58 seconds rather than "sometime between now and an hour."

A few years ago I saw segments of an 8 hour show from 1989, "Around the World in 80 Days," staring Pierce Brosnan as Phileas Fogg, with Eric Idle as his butler. In it, Phileas is the most punctual and predictable person in the universe. He arives at exactly the time he says and does what he's always done at that time and place, to the point that resturants know when he's coming and what he's eating and have it prepared and set before him as he's entering the doors. He bathes at exactly the same time and expects his water to be precisely 83 degrees.

If life was like that would things be easier or harder? I'd have all my assignments completed and on time. That'd be nice. Aside from that, I'm glad that things are the way they are - though I probably ought to work at making what I say be what I mean...

-Schlange

At A Later Date

(post 13)

Sadness.

I haven't been on a date in somewhere between two and three years. Much of that has to do with me volenteering two years of my life to teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I've been back from my mission for 6 months and just haven't got the guts up to ask anybody to go with me. So, I finaly did. I worked myself up to asking a pretty, nice, and funny girl to go ice-skating with me over the period of about 2 months.(That is to say, it took me 2 months to ask, rather than asking her to go ice-skating for 2 months.) I called her today and asked if she'd like to go. She said, "If you mean Friday or Saturday, I can't. My family is coming into town and I'm going to spend the weekend with them."

OUCH - not so much because she had other plans (and if I were her I would have said exactly the same thing), it's just that I spent so much time freeking out about it for nothing. Now I feel a little ackward about asking again - the same casual invitation, if repeated next weekend would now be not so casual by way of the repetition. How long are you supposed to wait before asking again? Maybe I need to ask someone else to go with me. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so akward asking later. (for those of you who are laughing at me, remember that this is a big thing for me right now... I'm soooooo out of touch with how to deal with women). *Sigh*

If anybody who lives close to me reads this I'd appriciate it if you'd keep this to yourself. If you're a woman who lives close to me reading this, then forget you read it. Think of me as suave and debonair. =)

-Schlange

“You Never Win”

(post 12)

I just had a unique opportunity. It came about because I've been up so late blogging. (I always forget what I want to blog about, and tonight I kept thinking of things, so I kept going… it's now 3:17 am and I'm exhausted – by the way, if my parents ever read this it's ok. It's a 3 day weekend and I just wired myself by programming for several hours. – These kinds of things are important to parents of college students who are suspected of staying up way later than is healthy.) Anyhow I had just finished the last post and published it to the web; I about to power down (I had an update threatening to turn off the computer in 3 minutes anyways) when my roommate started talking in his sleep. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get it down and remember it… when I ever do wake up to the noise other wake up in their sleep I can never remember what was said or done. So, here it is:

Sympathetically: "I'm sorry."

*Pause*

*Soft laugh – the type reserved for the humor of cruel irony*

*Pause*

With humor in voice: "You never win."

*Pause*

Trailing: "You never win…"

Here's the best part. I'd forgotten about that update. I never told it to wait. I was just about to post something similar to the above (what he said is accurate, what I said is different), when everything turned off without asking me to save or anything. I had to wait for the power up to retype this because I was determined to win. Today is the same day that I posted "Pain" and "Redemption?" as the result of losing everything I'd written for the last half hour; and "Pretzels" in the which I note that the program I spent 30 hours on over the last week was 2 hours too late to be on time. Everything I posted today was the epitome of " You never win."

*Much Laughter*

Word just crashed on me again (the first time I was writing "Pretzels") and then came back with a message that said something along the lines of "We've noticed that office has crashed on you frequently lately. We recommend that you run our office diagnostic tool." Fortunately, I'd just saved and Word has a good auto save…. I hadn't saved on "Pretzels" and it gave me most of it back. It crashed two times after that and I lost this post both times (I wasn't very far in either time). May I repeat: "You never win." Thanks for the hilarious timing Schmetterling. By the way, office has never crashed before on me, so I'm attributing it to the power of today.

Pretzels

(Post 11)

So, I learned the key to a woman's' heart. (No, not pretzels, that's just a tongue in cheek reference to a talk about the "Soul Kiss" by President Spencer W. Kimball.) Homework. Really. I'm not even talking about 1967 slang, in which the term "homework" is innuendo. What I am talking about is what I witnessed today in the Computer Science programming lab.

So that you'll understand, let me explain the circumstance that today's (today being today, not "this age") programmers faced in room 1119 of the Talmage building:

It's Friday, February 15, 2008. Valentine's day has come and gone. Lab 3 is due for pass off at 6:00 pm. I'm in the lab at 4:05, I ran there the second I got off work. I'm hungry and tired but I've got to put the final touches on a program that's already consumed 30 hours of my valuable time. Suddenly, Armageddon arrives – or I wish it would. My program freezes any time I push a button. I can't do anything but use the Task Manager to kill it and try again. After 50 such crashes it's 5:20, and I still don't know where I messed up. Tension in the room is building. 20 or so other students are in the room and it's silent except for the rainstorm pounding of fingers on keyboards and a few TA's or private tutors talking the mortally wounded through the valley of death. It's 5:42 and every so often someone screams or pounds something or curses the heavens – the resounding "Why?!?" reverberating off the aching eyes of everybody else in the room. A student jumps out of his chair and thrusts his hands in the air like he's on a rollercoaster and its headed to heaven. He runs up and down the aisle and out the door, all the time laughing and shouting "It works! It works! It FINALY works!" We watch him run past the door three times before he dances back in so he can pass off the lab. It's moments like this that make you understand how things like the word "Eureka" were invented. Every couple of minutes somebody repeats this rendezvous with victory until it's down to me, a girl to my right, two Indians in front of her (from India – or so I guess based on the frantic foreign dialogue shooting from their direction that says, in a voice that defies language barriers, that they are as stumped as I am), and a girl with a guy who is helping her work through her code.

It's 5:49; my program is running now and I only have one more basic feature to add. I do it in three minutes and run the program again. -- *BLUG-RA-GOOP!* -- That's the sensation that runs through my body when even though everything else is working, my output is somehow completely wrong. That means I've got to debug – run through my over one thousand lines of code and look for whatever weird glitch I created. My lungs won't move for a second. This project is not going to make it on time, even though I'll still do my darndest to try (I actualy didn't get done till 7:40 or so). I need a minute to breathe and collect myself so I can decide on the smartest way to tackle my newest problem. So I stand up and stretch and look around. Looks like the girl in front of me is having the same kind of problem. She's pale and looks weary. Her buddy is staring intently at her screen. He suddenly gets a bright look on his faces and says "Look! It's right there! You just have to change that ONE word!" She gets excited as she figures out what's going on. With a few quick strokes on the keyboard, her error is gone. I watch them stop breathing while they compile the program and run it. It executes perfectly.

I wait for the victory dance. It doesn't happen. Instead, she grabs the back of the guy's head with both hands and pulls him in for a kiss… she starts with a quick peck and then dives in for the big one. I look away (PDA's embarrass me – I don't know if that makes me moral or jealous or both). I look back up and they're still at it. I try to focus on my screen but they're right behind it. They'll stop soon, I'm sure. I feel grateful as he pulls back, but my relief is short lived. A split second for a breath is all the time she gives him before she's sucking the life out of him again. I think they would have had a full blown make out session right there in the lab if she didn't have less than five minutes to grab a TA and pass off the program. She turns back to her computer so she can add her name to the help/pass-off queue. He's got a glassy look in his eyes. He's obviously oblivious to everything in existence. Neither his head nor his eyes move and his mouth is half way open. That look didn't leave until he took it with him.

Conclusion: If you celebrated the 14^th of this month as "Singles Awareness Day" maybe you ought to learn to debug.

-Schlange

Redemption?

(post 10)

So the point of this post is to attempt to recapture what I lost (see post 9 – "Pain").

Let's see, my main point was that when I participate in different kinds of media I get in different moods. Today that means calm, relaxed, thoughtful. I explored the way that media may have the effect of Pavlov's fabled bell. I figured I ought to start dinging my own bells every so often so that I can salivate on command. (If you're confused by the metaphor its ok… just try reading this post late at night, then you too will likely salivate – more like drool with fatigue and boredom.)

I also explored the way media might act like progressive muscle relaxation on the brain– tightening and relaxing emotions, brain juices, and something-something (my English teacher told me lists of three are always good). Anyhow, the time is 0-100 hours. My brain is tightening but not relaxing. Good luck getting anything beneficial out of this second rate rendition.

By the way… I'm typing this in word and using word to publish it to the blog site. It's an experiment, and a protection against, well, pain. Huzzah for spellcheckers.

-Schlange

Pain

(post 9)

I wrote on this space for 30 min just a minute(or thirty) ago. The title of the blog was "Calm." It was a decent post. Not spectacular, but decent. Somehow I deleted it when I was trying to copy it and spellcheck it. That was ok because the awesome autosave feature kicked in right before I killed it. I only lost my signing out line. Easy to reproduce, no big deal. I felt elated. So I proceeded to copy it to spellcheck it and guess what, I mysteriously killed it again (and it still didn't make it to my clipboard). "So what?" says I, "I'll just go back to the saved draft and grab it again right?" As I think this the autosave does it's job again, only a half second before I could tap the appropriate button. *Deathknell* I'm thinking that the cruel irony is worse than the original pain of loosing it. Besides that, my stupidity is being rubbed in my face.

by the way. no spahellerChecking for this one. ever.

-Schlange

Write Good[sic]

(Post 8)

This post is a response to another blog by Schmetterling (which I recommend to those who are interested in thinking about what makes writing powerful, and which might need to be read to fully understand this post) I'm not going to say anything really different, I just wanted to examine one of the points that stood out to me as having extrodinary value.

So that readers understand that “writing good” is not a grammatically smelly phrase, here is an important and defining segment from Schmetterling's post: “[T]hat a person may write or speak well does not necessarily mean that they write or speak good, and this is the distinction I wish to emphasize.”

Having placed that, this last part of the last paragraph of that post is what I’m basing the majority of this post on because it really struck a chord with me.

"To communicate truth with such clarity and power is a feat of Soul that I can no more than aspire to achieve, but I believe that to do so ought to be the quintessential desire of any person inclined to speak or write."

This was for me the most important thing schmetterling said. I think there is a large difference amongst the categories of writing well (using words in a way that is correct and sometimes pleasing - writing with the mind, as Schmetterling says), writing compellingly (writing in a way that makes people love what you are saying - writing with the heart), and writing powerfully (writing about the things that are a major part of you, that you can thus convey with the power of your soul). All of these things are individual characteristics of "writing good" as laid out by Schmetterling. Additionaly, I believe that these are gradiations of writing... some might take them seperately, but they really do build on each other. Writing with the heart is so much more effective if one can write with the mind - using it to find the words that say what is ment. Writing with the soul can't be accepted or even understood by anyone unless it is written with the heart.

These things are all methods to an end. I wish to aproach the same topic in the reverse. Let us now concentrate on the end. I believe that understanding and seeking the end to which one writes with mind, heart and soul is what causes the development of all three. The heart of writing that which is good is centered in the word truth.

The difference between compelling writing and "writing good" is whether or not the idea being communicated is true. In fact, writing good may not be compelling, and is thus set aside by the average reader because though one wrote good he did not make use of good writing. The result of writing good should possess three qualities that you mentioned: TRUTH conveyed with POWER, and CLARITY. If all words (written or spoken) were designed with this end in mind, then the mind, the heart, and the soul would work themselves out with help from God. Provided that those who wrote and spoke possessed truth, and wanted so much for it to be understood that they learned clarity, and loved it so much that they shared it with power, perfect communication would be the result: those that read and heard would always be compelled to believe truth and to use it. I suppose then that writing good requires an action – the seeking of truth.

What marks the difference between good writers and writers who write good? Good writers are motivated by self-centered objectives – status, pats on the back, great sales, etc. (and generally lack what Schmetterling called soul, because they cater to a soulless popular sentiment). The writers of good seek the edification of their readers. (Schmetterling pegged this one: "Without meaning, without the honest intention to uplift or improve, without Soul, a work is utterly worthless. If a person has nothing to say, they should not speak.") The writers of good want others to understand what truth is, but they know that they can’t teach others about what is without finding it for themselves.

As a general rule, truth can’t be discovered until other known truths are applied. Generally speaking, writing good is the province of good men.

There it is: Write good. Do it with mind, heart, and soul. Learn how by seeking for truth, clarity, and power; especialy truth. Love the truth. Live the truth. Write about the truths you are gathering about you, and become the epitomy of what you write.

-Schlange

It's the Simple Things

(Post 7)

So, sometimes being a janitor at a dorm full of Freshman sometimes isn't all it's cut out to be... and most don't cut out very much of it. However, there are many many benefits to being a janitor... one of which is the associated Janitorial Zen that can be achieved by select Janitorial Zen Masters. Today I experienced two of those benefits, and I want to tell about them: 1.) There is something sadistically comic about a phenomenon that I as a janitor experience on a nearly daily basis. It usually presents itself in this way: I go to the closet, get out the yellow "closed" sign and set it up in the hallway. I lock the bathroom doors and hook up the hose so I can spray down the showers. Inevitably, before I get a chance to turn the water on I hear a set of sounds that make me as jolly as the Grinch would have been if he'd heard " all the Whos down in Who-ville [...] all cry BOO-HOO!" First the door handle to the left jiggles; then it rattles. Next, the door thumps back and forth on the doorframe. Fists pound the door while someone screams "NOOO!" or "Awe-Man!" or "#$@!" or my favorite, "Not AGAIN!" This is then repeated on the right door. Sometimes I hear one final kick at the door's footplate before I hear frantic running in the direction of the next bathroom. I really start to glow by this time, and my whole day just seems to go much better. Call me cruel, but cruel is as cruel does, or something like that... 2.) You meet interesting people as a janitor - like the guy that dances up the stairwell while his iPod is blasting. Today I met a coworker from one of the other buildings. He's from some Hispanic or Latino country. He makes me feel like I'm living "The Mummy" because he sounds almost exactly like Benny - you know, the guy who says "What friend? You are my only friend." and "It is better to be on the Devil's left hand than in his path." So anyhow... it's the little things that make life good.

-Schlange

Gordon B. Hinkley

(Post 6)

Copied from my journal, 1/27/2008

"President Hinckley [of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints] died 2 hours ago at 7:00 PM in his home in Salt Lake City. I loved that man. More than that I know by the power of the Holy Ghost, and also know now, that he was and is a prophet of God. I know that the succession of the prophetic mantel will proceed in the way that the Lord has set. All will be well, though we grieve and morn for the loss of the man who has led us for the last decade."

Schmetterling said something worth reading about the passing of this prophet.

Unintentional Conversations

(Post 5)

So... I have this incredible power: I'll give you an example first and then tell you what it is.

Two years ago I was in a public restroom stall. An other fellow walks in, sits down in the stall next to me and says in a very friendly voice, "HEY!"

"Hi... " I say in a tone of voice that indicates that my right eyebrow is raised.

"So, what are you doing?"

"Um... " (This was not the kind of question I was expecting.) "I'm using the toilet. How about you?"

At this point my friendly neighborhood restroom goer changes his tone of voice dramatically from one of friendly and outgoing to one of extreme annoyance, and uses it to say, "Hey! Would you shut up please? I'm trying to talk on the phone here!"

I laughed for days. It was really therapeutic actually.

So there it is from time to time I attract a cell phone user who is engaged in a conversation to be around when I'm not aware that they are in a conversation. I then speak and receive responses in a very real feeling pseudo-conversation. I wish it would happen a little more often. Some days I just need a good laugh.

For the Love of Money

(Post 4)

For those of you interested, there is a very interesting post and subsequent thread on The Eccentric Sage about money. The question at hand is this: "Is money good, evil, or somewhere in between the two?" All in all there are some excellent points of view and one spectacular, albeit lengthy, comment (The 3rd, starting " Anonymous said...") containing a quotation of one Francisco d'Anconia defending the inherent goodness of money. It's really worth the time to read.

When the World throws you Lemons...

(Post 3)

Today I've been astounded as I think of some of the great men and women who have taken the lemons the world has chucked at them and made not only lemonade and a variety of pies, but also industrial strength cleaning products and a decent shaving cream!

That's right, today I purchased "Foamy Lemon-Lime: Gillette Comfort Glide FORMULA."

It smells nice, but other than that I really can't tell a difference -- though I haven't shaved with a manual razor for over a year. Maybe my lack of amazement comes from my lack of use.

At any rate, my face is clean and my heart is pure. Hopefully when I arrive at the pearly gates they won't look too carefully under my fingernails...

Speaking of lemons, I was given an interesting statistic today in my Programming Class. Last semester my professor took a survey of all students in his classes (300 or so). He asked a broad range of questions, and statistically analyzed what characteristics belong to students of differing final grades. In the "A" range, nestled along with "Does every assignment" and "Turning lab assignments in on time" was "Being married."

How's that for a tart taste of citrus? I can only accomplish six sevenths of the listed attributes of "A" students... I hope that doesn't reflect on my grade. =P

The Proud Schlange Icon

(Post 2)

*Drum roll*



And there it is! The Proud Shlange Icon. Wave it proudly.

Thanks to Schmetterling for showing me how to put an icon of my own design next to the URL, and thanks to Th for showing Schmetterling.

A New Beginning

(Post 1)

Ah ha! (as in Ah ha! You found my blog, and this is it's first entry, and that's really worth something... especially if you are well acquainted with A. A. Milne, the well renowned creator of the well loved Winnie The Pooh.)

So here I am, Schlange A. Taube, the well unknown creator of this blog: Wise Yet Harmless. "Why wise?" you may ask, "And when is wisdom harmful?" and better yet, "How can we know that S. A. Taube can be described by either adjective?" These are all excellent questions.

I refer you to Matthew 10:16 in the Holy Bible:

16 Behold, I send you forth as ^asheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore ^bwise as serpents, and ^charmless as doves.

And there you have it. An admonition from Christ to be both WISE and HARMLESS. I suppose that wisdom might be cleverness and carefulness, perhaps calculating. In the context of the verse and chapter wisdom might be a type of cunning which saves us from those who are out to get us. The admonition then, is to out maneuver you foes without having malicious intent or laying traps. Later in the chapter an example of true wisdom in both this and the conventional sense is given:

19 But when they deliver you up, ^atake no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall ^bspeak.

20 For it is not ye that speak, but the ^aSpirit of your Father which speaketh in you.

For the physically persecuted the challenge was to get along as best they could, and when they were delivered for judgment to say the things God placed in their hearts and to trust that He would take care of things in his own way and time. Really this was an admonition to trust the timing of God in making things right. He could take care of things immediately or in the far distant future; perhaps even after the suffering or death of the wronged. The trick was to trust that things would work out right in the end and then to give credit to God for the things He accomplished using individuals.

The idea is the same for us. Trust God. Do your best, be obedient, and when you are caught in a snare trust God. He'll take care of things.

So, I suppose what I want in my blog is this: I want to encourage peaceable wisdom. That doesn't necessarily mean I have any, I just want to encourage it.

Note, however, that this blog isn't going to be about religion or morals or tips for success - though some of those things may appear. If that's what you're looking for I suggest you go to the scriptures - the prophets know what they are talking about. This blog is really for me to babble about anything that's on my mind. It's a place to keep my soul, not the deepest or most sacred parts, but the fringes... the things that float to the conscious surface of my being. My goal in naming this soul keeper "Wise Yet Harmless" is really to keep that maxim in the forefront of my mind as I write, and as you read. Much of what you read may not really be wise at all. Some of what you read may be potentially hazardous. In the end though, I hope that what is accomplished is a drawing of both the writer and reader to searching for harmless wisdom.

Happy thinking,

-Schlange