Brain Drool - Musings from a Concrete Jungle

Dear Self, You are a sad, helpless, horrid creature. You are an empty shell of organic matter...

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:34:59 -0400

Dear Self,

You are a sad, helpless, horrid creature. You are an empty shell of organic matter simply waiting to drop dead. Your only modus operandi is to love yourself. Your only care in the world is the satisfaction of your 5 dull senses. I look at your life and I see no love. I look at your heart and I see no good.

You insolent fool. You ponder the depths of human knowledge, but you ignore the mysteries before you. You engineer even light and invent new devices, yet fail to be awestruck with wonder at things great and unknowable. What will it take for you to see clearly? What will it take for clarity?

“There are no good answers. There are no new answers. There are no happy answers. There are no satisfying answers. There are no clear answers. There are no accurate answers.”

Stop believing the lies in your own mind. Do not listen to the late night whispers that haunt your slumber. Awaken to the possibility of truth and reality. Be upheld by the potential for joy in confusion. Find comfort in the unknowing glories of life’s unexpected gifts.

And while the brevity of existence bears no lasting significance, there is a truth to be known. There is a reality to be discovered. There is a mystery to be cherished. It is all there.

So quite pouting, stop whining. Get off your lazy ass and discover life. It’s been there all along. He’s been there all along.

Love,

By golly, I seem to have run out of things to say in the past few weeks. This itself is a rather...

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 23:18:34 -0400

By golly, I seem to have run out of things to say in the past few weeks. This itself is a rather remarkable occurrence - those of you who know me can attest to my usual verbosity.

So I just thought I’d give y’all a simple life update: I have finished Psalms and am currently reading Proverbs, have been awarded funding likely through the end of my Ph.D, have been involved in some wonderful weddings and have finished another year of classes.

The future holds even more excitement - research leading up to my 2nd of 3 tasks to complete my Ph.D, a drive to Wisconsin and back, a trip to Seattle and Vancouver, and sending my wife off to Africa for a few weeks while I get trained to assist some local high school teachers in the classroom.

Ah, life is exciting, bizarre yet routine, and delightful.

Senior Design Robotics Competition

Sun, 23 May 2010 22:17:57 -0400

Senior Design Robotics Competition

Thanks for a great birthday outing!

Sun, 23 May 2010 22:09:43 -0400

Thanks for a great birthday outing!

Photo

Wed, 19 May 2010 23:11:07 -0400

A Duo of Unique...Creations

Wed, 19 May 2010 23:08:36 -0400

Whilst mine online presence has taken the backseat burner of late, I have still had the opportunity to experiment in the kitchen. So behold, a duo of my latest creations:

Indian Crepes Gone Wrong

I was given a most generous gift of Indian goodies a short while ago. I thought it would be a good time to cook one of the items in the pile. So I made what was supposed to be some kind of Indian Crepe…but my skills in both pouring and thin batter-like substances are nascent at best. Thus, I made a mix between a strangely flavored pancake and mashed potatoes.

I then topped off the pan-cooked/fried dough with onion and tomato cooked in a whole lot of garam masala and garlic, then topped with fresh chopped cilantro.

Despite my epic failure with the dough, the meal itself was actually rather satisfying and tasty.

Blackberry Cream Scones

So the other day I made a blackberry cream sauce as an accompaniment to some pound cake. I wanted to use up the leftover blackberry and luckily was scheduled to attend a pot luck in the near future. So I came up with a wonderful idea: substitute the heavy cream I typically use in scones and make blackberry cream scones. The result was…well, a cookie made love to a muffin who was previously married to a scone, resulting in the following:

They tasted fine, though only the color of the blackberry came through. And people actually ate them!

1st Anniversary - Come and gone without a hitch! (Pun intended)

Mon, 17 May 2010 08:51:23 -0400

1st Anniversary - Come and gone without a hitch! (Pun intended)

"Any generation gaps that exist between teens and adults today is superficial compared with and far..."

Mon, 03 May 2010 22:05:27 -0400

“Any generation gaps that exist between teens and adults today is superficial compared with and far outweighed by the generational commonalities…most problems and issues that adults typically consider teenage problems are in fact inextricably linked to adult-world problems.”

- The American University in a Post-secular Age

For the first time in my life, my All Star Ballot contains no...

Mon, 03 May 2010 22:01:19 -0400

For the first time in my life, my All Star Ballot contains no Phillies players…

I’ve got a golden table….

Sat, 01 May 2010 22:36:07 -0400

I’ve got a golden table….

Spent last weekend in New York and had a blast with my good...

Sat, 01 May 2010 21:34:06 -0400

Spent last weekend in New York and had a blast with my good friend Jeff. Since the wife was away, I gave myself permission to do my hair in a new and exciting style while we “partied it up” in NYC…

Looking for a New Language

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:06:40 -0400

I was wondering if any of my readers out there or anyone who reads this on Facebook has a copy of Rosetta Stone in any language. I’m in the mood to learn a new language and was hoping someone would have some dusty copy of the software I can borrow for a little while.

I’m open to any language. Seriously, any language.

Enjoyed a nice, albeit wet, Phillies game this past weekend!

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 08:00:00 -0400

Enjoyed a nice, albeit wet, Phillies game this past weekend!

A Doughy Oops

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:17:00 -0400

Today I tried to take my kitchen to Chicago. I made it my goal to create a Chicago-style deep dish pizza.

All homemade pizzas need a custom, homemade crust. But, in a stroke of pure genius and incorrect formatting on Food Network’s website, I ended up with this:

Yes, that is the largest pot we own, filled to the top with a massive, inhuman blob of dough. You see, food network’s dough recipe has 11/2 cups of water. And, as any good engineer would do, I simply used 5 1/2 cups of water. Unfortunately, the correct amount was 1 1/2 cups of water. Not wanting to waste my recipe, I merely scaled the necessary ingredients…mainly flour. So much flour that I ended up having to combine white and wheat flour. The kitchen was certainly a mess.

And obviously I put together two Chicago style pies. In case you’ve never been to Chicago or had an authentic Chicago style pizza, they are incredibly thick. And the sauce is on top. I tried to be relatively authentic, although I had to top the thing with a nice layer of parmesean cheese.

But before I baked the pizzas, I had to use some of the other dough. Thus, I needed to get creative. My first creation???

A garlic-knot inspired french bread, slightly undercooked. It is nonetheless tasty.

So after cooking the “Garlic French Baguette” I stepped up my game and cooked the two pizzas.

While not exactly the same as chicago style, they were quite good. You see, I made the sauce myself by using chopped and crushed tomatoes, some sugar and absolutely insane amounts of garlic, oregano, basil, rosemary, and crushed red pepper. The sauce mixture was simmered until it became a thick paste, which I used on the final pizza product. It tasted full-bodied, flavorful and had a subtle yet pleasant spiciness to it.

But, I still had quite a bit of dough left. Unaware that I could save the dough for later, I decided to bake a loaf of pizza dough bread.

So if you’re looking for some homemade bread, we have a LOT. Please, stop by, pick some up…

…there is also still pizza left.

Many people feel that editing your photos in photoshop or other...

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 21:59:53 -0400

Many people feel that editing your photos in photoshop or other software is cheating. Yet since the beginning of photography, imaging artists have tweaked their creations in what was known as the dark room. The dark room has merely become a digital construct.

Here is my example of how similar pictures can all be interpreted vastly differently - why the digital dark room is so integral to the expression of photography as an art and communicative tool. These are 5 separate photos, taken within about 30 seconds of each other, all edited entirely differently.

These Mushrooms don't take no Shiitake from You

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:04:46 -0400

So I decided to pick up some Shiitake mushrooms for my april ingredient. After looking up many recipes and considering the contents of our kitchen, I thought I’d try to make something a little creative: Shiitake mushroom cream sauce and meatballs over orzo. The orzo turned out great…but for some reason I couldn’t get the cream sauce to thicken. Normally I do pretty well with this sort of thing, but I was trying to use up some left over heavy cream, and perhaps that inhibited my usual thickening method in some manner. Sadly, I am no molecular gastronomist.

The dish tasted fine, although it needed a little more salt. In case you’re wondering, the meatballs were cooked in butter and parsley til browned on the outside, then added to the cream sauce at the last minute. As you can tell when you look closer, the sauce itself was too runny and fell to the bottom of the bowl.

Oh well, you can’t win them all. It wasn’t awful, just not finely tuned as a tasty monthly ingredient meal should be…

In case you’re wondering, this is a part of a year-long series I am doing on the use of novel ingredients in my cooking. My other previous ingredients include rutabagas, habanero peppers, gelatin and chayotes. Feel free to suggest other ingredients for future use.

Out'n'about

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:52:58 -0400

An Experiment…

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:36:13 -0400

An Experiment…

Park-age

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:37:00 -0400

Last week my wife and I fell upon a gem of a place in Fairmount park. Everything was a fresh, vibrant green.

The water fountain below, inscribed with “For the good of the public,this will be here forever.” Notice the water fountain no longer exists…

Water still exists elsewhere, however.

Politics - Personality or Issues?

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:59:07 -0400

In response to my previous post on politics, I received a most intriguing response from my good friend Jeff. It reminded me of our many conversations during our cross-country road trips almost two years ago.

Jeff’s Comments:

[In relation to my suggestion that we should investigate political issues to a deeper extent] “i’m interested in personality. …i suppose you can’t debate personality, but by showing an interest in the personalities of who is in charge, it can at least help you understand why they’re doing the things you do… any books you would recommend on key political personalities? … of course, it may be a little more difficult than that: i think politics, as you’re using the term, is complicated by a misplaced passion for “issues” instead of for people … the people in power may have money and prestige, but the poor … their ‘politics’ is very different. To solve their ‘issue,’ you gotta invest time in being with them, listening to them, offering them a hand from below (‘cause you wouldn’t want to ‘reach down’ in a condescending way) … and i think that would be time better spent than time spent doing research on healthcare or immigration …”

“It’s funny too that you’ve turned nostalgic … wishing for a return of the good ‘ol days, when men were men, and political debates were for dinner tables …”

My Response:

I’m not sure I really wish for the “good ol’ days,” in a sense. I merely wish that politics wouldn’t be something only religious and philosophy types discussed. In all honesty, both groups have their heads in the clouds too often, and sadly the practical people are often left out of the discussion. I’m more suggesting bringing traditional American pragmatism to the political realm. Sure, there are underlying philosophical debates, often ones that cannot truly be reconciled. Yet laws are still passed, decrees still made. And those laws contain very specific rules and values, often agreed upon arbitrarily, by people with no real problem solving skills whatsoever.

While I’m on the subject of disagreeing with [Jeff], I both agree and disagree with your “issues” versus “people.” Issues arrive as a result of people. Healthcare is an issue because 1. there are millions of people in this country who need it and 2. millions of people who go into debt trying to afford it. So to say an issue is a standalone, faceless cause is remiss. And to interact with those faces, to help them is important. But whether you like it or not, the rich and powerful are the best equipped to make and institute sweeping change. The Magna Carta, accepted begrudgingly by the king at the time, was only possible as a result of his approval. We like to think that Revolutions occur at the will of the masses. Yet behind any large group of people are those with power. It is the way society maintains its order. So to focus on issues and candidates is not insensitive, nor does it neglect those who need face-to-face interaction. The reason people need to focus on “issues” such as healthcare is that currently, society just ignores them. We do our good deeds. If we’re lucky we get to know other people and truly care about them on equal levels of humanity. Yet we fail to see the sweeping decisions made by our government that may either help or hinder the situations of the very people we’re trying to help. We simply bemoan politics and relegate it to another realm, as if our little actions alone will change the world. More times than not, especially practically, decisions must be made about the “issues” to really make a difference. I know that this stance flies in the face of all the cute and fuzzy social activism of micro-loans, inner-city teachers and helping out at the local soup kitchen. I’m not criticizing those things. But they are interdependent on the rich and powerful who make decisions whether to help or to hinder the propagation of greater social good. And since we do vote, time spent understanding specific issues is not time wasted. We need Mother Teresas, Catherine Drexels, Nelson Mandelas, George Bushes and Barack Obamas. Dislike whom you choose, but communal ignorance on political issues is a grave mistake in a holistic approach to corporate social change.

Your Turn:

Now you’ve heard what we think. What do you think?