Stuff...

My Favourite Filosofer.

The mind is a hand, even moreso the heart. They do not passively receive the world like some kind of empty rather. Rather, our souls our prehensile. They reach into the world and grasp it, holding it's hand in all the modes that hands are held: lovingly, fearfully, respectfully. To be bored is not to have a hand on anything. To be bored is to stubbornly place the hands in the pocket an refuse to touch, to reach, to grab, to be seized.There are things that seize beyond our will. We cannot help but be interested. But inter-est is primarily an activity, a cultivation, a choice, the will to love. -AJax

The Raw and the Cooked or Adventures in food (and lessons hard learned) or That was just gross...

So as anyone who knows me even a little is aware I love weird food, especially organ meats. This stems mostly from a love of serious french cuisine and a serious lack of shame about what I put in my body. I dream of working with Escoffier, the Frenchman I most admire, (seen right) some day and cooking foie gras, eel, the gonads of untold species, coque au vin, and make veal stock with that man. So it was with little trepidation that I set out to go sweetbread hunting with my dad. The place to go looking for this kind of product is in little Mexico of my humble town. I found the market I had heard about (and their meat counter which is a foodies dream) and we set about the hunt. Amongt the tubs of tongue, tripe, quail, liver, pigs feet, chicken feet, gizzards, freshmade chorizo, kidneys, hearts, whole goats, and cow heads we found our quarry. My father picked out three of what he deemed to be the freshest pieces and then encouraged me to get something. I chose fresh calves liver and a whole beef kidney. I thought I could handle this with grace and ease. I threw some fresh peppers and rip avocados (when do you find those in the store?) and a bottle of hotsauce I had never tried in the basket and we were off.
My dad came back to prepare the sweetbreads (as they require a lot of work in order to be edible and my mother was NOT going to allow it in her house) and I set about what I assumed would be the easy task of cleaning the kidney. I do not have a picture of my kidney but it looked very much like this:
Now what you cannot see in this picture is the underside of the organ. If you turned it over there would be this thick mixture of fatty membrane and tubes. But that is decidely not the first thing that you notice when you lay hands upon a fresh and tender beef kidney. Not is the smell. Imagine the smell of strong urine and rust. I admit I was a little daunted by this pungent smell but my father assured me that I was on the right track and that I should get to it. So I began with a small paring knife to deconstruct this disgusting bit of beef. Deveining, de-mebraning, detubing, etc this little bastard took forever. I eventually got about half of it done and decided to try and cook half of it to see if continuing was going to be worth continuing. (doing half of it took almost 45 minutes). So I once again deferred to my father and he said pat the bits you have done dry, shake in a flour and ground pepper, and then saute them lightly in butter. Butter! How could I possibly go wrong with butter! So I set about this per my father's instructions. It was just as I was throwing them on that my father commented that he himself had never prepared kidney. My heart skipped a bet and all of the sudden the smell of rusty-nail piss became over powering. I reached for the new bottle of hotsauce I had just purchased and tried it. It was spicy as shit and good. I set this beside the plate covered in papetowels I prepped to put the kideny on. The sauce was going to be necessary. My father by now had finished blanching his sweetbreads and was standing around looking amused at the whole scene (and smell I suppose) around him. I shooke the kidney in the browning butter one last time and fished them out and put them on the plate. I looked at my dad and we had the "You go first. No you go first" moment before he gave in and tried it. He chewed and chewed and chewed and eventually shrugged his shoulders and declared them "strong but alright." Now, I think that we can all agree that "strong" is NOT an adjective we want to describe our meat. Whiskey drinks or Hulk Hogan are strong, not animal tissue we plan on eating. So I saunter up to the plate and pick up what looks like the crispiest bit.
My reaction was instaneous and unfortunate. I spit it out. It was the most awful thing I have ever tasted. I can't explain other than to say that the tast of them cooked was much like the smell of them raw: like piss and rust. My father (who actually will eat anything) accused my reaction of pyschosomatic. That I knew what I was eating and that was just tainting my thinking on the subject. I tend to ALWAYS know what I am eating and this was still awful.
My dad then read the Joy of Cooking entry on kidney and proceeded to tell me that (inspite of doing everything he suggested) I had gone about the enterprise all wrong and that I should have soaked the kidney in milk for at least two hours before cooking it. This did not make me feel anybetter. It took me two hours to wash the smell off of my hands. I found that using bleach did the trick and that is the end of my kidney cooking days. But my next project is duck I bought as well. Updates to follow on that.
I would like to dedicate this experience and resulting blog post to 3 people and 1 restaurant and the night they all came together. I want to dedicate this post in memory of the night that K, Ch, R, and I went around the corner to that carribean place in Bushwick and supped on blood sausage, pigs ear and all other manner of tasty things. I miss you guys.

Things purchased today at a local bookstore and other stuff...

So I went to my favourite big box book store because I had a coupon today and I bought a few things.
1st)

My previous copy of this book was left in good hands in NYC. But another less marked copy was necessary. Buying this was like purchasing a new bible. King James Version.
2nd)














This one I attempted to contact a colleague about after leaving a voicemail I bought. I read the preface and introduction in the car in the parking lot. A choice purchase.
3rd)














Shut up...

Well here I am writing a blog while my dressing mixture cools. I have been slaving in a hot kitchen soothing my frayed nerves with cold beer and the sweet sounds of the Joy Division. I think my stuffing will be the best thing I have ever made. I have a dynamite white cornbread recipe, some great local sausage and fresh tarragon. My grandmother is sick and my parents kitchen is under renovation so a great deal of the cooking has fallen to me as I have the only functional kitchen and can be trusted with heat sources. I have mixed feelings about this because it is yet another sign of the loss of youth. Cooking large meals was always an adults respsonsibility and now here I am making homemade mac and cheese, fresh greenbeans, dressing (not stuffing mind you), and the gravy. All homeade with no aids from betty crock-o-shit. Yeah, that gray will be roux based! What of it? The turkey, pie, and rolls are left to someone else. But probably about 75% of tomorrow meals will have my sweat, dollars, and spillt beer in it. I do not bemoan the work or cost but simply note the transience of time and notions of "being old enough." I think we are supposed to think that stages in life are atomistic and discrete events but this seems to not be the case. Some things are ceded early than others. I suppose W. James was right about this.
Tomorrow I am thinking of having some of my older cousins over for drinks. That is where we will make the decisions about what to do next. This will be the last F family christmas with the family in this configuration and that is sad. But back to cooking for the time being.

Happy Turkey Day (Almost)!!!!!!!

(Observe the man in the background.)
Sarah Palin: harbinger of turkey doom!

Updates and What Not...

Well fall is here in the durty south and that means PBR, network television, peppered bacon, and reading all kinds of shit. I have been busy (as my lack of pointless blogging shows) and as such have not had time to devote myself completely to anything. This is an uneasy situation but I am soldiering through. I have enjoyed keeping up with the cabinet appointments and as usual there is more Clinton bashing to witness. It is unknown to most people but we here in the Natural State tire of the endless hating the Clintons. It is simply pathological in some people and just down right disturbing in most. How could you hate someone that bad? I know people who honestly believe that anyone who died in Arkansas between 1978-1993 was ordered to be summarily shot by Bill. I know I guy who claims to have done coke with Bill. And I believe him! But the point is that for us here in that state of greatness this is old hat. You may not like these people but there is nothing mysterious about them anymore. Hell I have an autographed still shot from Bills 1987 colonoscopy. That is right, I have seen the inside of this mans ass. So enough of it already people. Sheesh.
I have been cooking a lot as well. I continue to dedicate my meals to friends near and far. My housemate and I are contemplating cooking liver this friday and I know which Bro this shall be dedicated to. But my egg in a basket, cornbread, and greenbeans have all been success and as soon as I get a camera I will put some pictures up so that you may salivate.
My thesis drags a little. I had a huge burts two weeks ago. I called in sick and went to work like nobodies business. But that was then and this is now. I am trying to get some work done studing for the LSAT. But my biggest stumbling block is my greatest pleasure which is that feeling that I should not have to be doing philosophy. That I am not in school and if I want to go to work, come home and make dinner and than read a biography of Richard Nixon or watch the Daily Show and go to sleep without the guilt of not having finished my Philosophies of Dialogue reading than by god I will! And it feels good. And now for some thanksgiving shopping!

Classic.

My New Postion...

So, my employer reassigned me last week. I moved out of the deaf school and into the alternative school of my home district. From this school my clients are culled. If you have never been in an alternative school (visiting or pupil or otherwise) you should. These truly are the forgotten of our world. Turfed around until they finally land in a place that heralds optimism but where hopes are few. Few of these kids teachers expect for them to graduate and that seems to create a cycle. I am not that the teachers can truly be blamed too much. They work hard but restraints from everywhere and seeing their good work undone at home defeat them at every turn. This is not the school of Foucault and far from the democratic hopes Dewey envisioned for modern America yet this school is all too American.
I like the kids. The are earnest and for themost part tolerate little bull shit. From anyone. In any form. There are even a few with gravitas. We will see how it goes.

My feelings about the whole things are still mixed but I concede that I am caught up in the excitement...

Happy Sunday My Good Readers...

Well I am here today cooking. I am trying to prepare a grilled salmon salad with a fat-free creole mustard vinaigrette dressing. I am also working on something that will be on the side: boiled new potatoes with a spicy arkansas black apple/onion/carraway seed "relish." This will be served cold and if I can hunt down some goats cheese that will go on as well.
I have this bottle of wine and I am drinking soda water to cleanse my palate so I can tell if it is good or it it is vinegar. God I love bottom of the barrel scraping!
Other than that it has been a good weekend. I will try to take pictures of dinner.
PS-Everyone should eat eggie in a basket at least once in their life. And that has nothing to do with sex.
PPS- You should also listen to The Replacements.

Update-I have just burned my tongue and so will drink wine regardless.

But I'm still fond of you...

So, several years ago I quit listening to The Smiths. It is a long story. Actually is stupidly short but I will spare you regardless.
So, I have been listening to them in my head. You know those moments when you decide to listen to some song you have stored up in the synaptic gaps? The whisky soaked, cobweb cloaked, smokey, hidden synaptic gaps in this case. Well I am back baby. I am fucking pleased about it. Bring me a black shirt and the hair gel! Oh you handsome devil you still make my bits quiver.
Just thought you should know...

"Dasein does not eat."

So I played hookey form work today so I could stay at home and write and figure out my student loans. I also have a TA app I want to work on. There is also some laundry to boot. I was transferred from one division of my company to another abruptly on monday evening and needless to say I am not pleased about it. It doesn't say much about how much company cares about me or the continuity of care for my clients. So, I said fuck-it. Took some time off coming to me and decided to job hunt inbetween the previously mentioned. So here I am on a cold rainy day.
My thesis topic is going to be on Foucault and Dewey and conceptions of the body within their conceptions of the function we loosely call "the subject." I think it is going to work. I like the idea. I like that it came from a dream and that Cornell West is involved. Now I must got open the back door and let the damp in.

I had a dream about Cornell West and now everything is different.

I am not one to put much stock in dreams as having any real meaning but I do find that they inspire some good thinking.
I have had what now is a series of dreams about my mom calling me to discuss my eduction. When she does I am doing something else. Usually something antithetical to my receiving of a good education. This particular night I had actually gone to see Cornell West speak. But just minutes into the talk I began having stomach troubles. I ran home and began having even more serious problems. I will not elaborate. My mom called me in the midst of all of this to talk about how I need to get my shit together. There was more to the dream. I think Dr. West died. I was in a car heading west on I-40 on a cold gray day. I can't remember the thread or theme of the dream after that. And then I woke up. So there I was, on my back, in the dark, awake thinking about Cornell West and the new (and much cooler) thesis topic came to me...

Enough of that for now. Here is a present.

A Natural Ghost from Wilson Wolf on Vimeo.

Some reflections and Some Promises...

So thanks to the world of blogging we can barf our thoughts on anything out into the open air of the interwenbsnet. And of course most of thoughts now drift to that hazy business we call "the future." But, as I am a weary sonnabitch, I have a few reflections on the past for those of us still hungover from our election night antics:
1) What if the economy had been much better? What if it had waited 6 more months to shit?
2)What if McCain had picked a better VP. Someone who could have galvanized the right more strongly?
3) What if McCain had run a more efficient campaign, more on par with Obama's?
4) Watching McCain's consession speech I saw the real McCain. The McCain that I though wasn't such a bad guy 8 years ago. What would have been scariest would have been seeing that man run against Obama. It would have been a more meaningful and issues driven campaign but it also would have made an Obama victory that much harder.
Things are always tenuous and open to temptation and change. Things could have been different and we should reflect on the steps that brought us here and try and learn from them.

Now some thoughts on the future. I am a long term thinking kinda guy so even though the economy, the two wars, the ever present threat of Al Queda (as I am told) my first thoughts about what our new president will be up to settled square on the gorgeous monolitgh of a building on 1st street in Washington D.C.. That's right. You guessed it: The Supreme Court of the United State of America. It is an institution that shapes our very lives yet we know so little about it and pay it even less atttention. This attitude is dangerous and helpful to say the least about the most.
President Bush had the honor of placing two justices on the bench during his two term tenure and in so doing shifted the court much farther to the right then it had been. Until Roberts and Alito the court stuck the middle and followed public opinion (whether it liked or intended to or not). And chances are that at least 3 justices will retire. At least two of these were Democratic appointees and appointees have been known to wait until a president comes into office who will appoint someone of the same ilk as themselves. I am going to say right now that I think John Paul Stevens (who is older than Jebus) will be the first to step down. Who will replace him? I can't say. But I promise that this blog will be a go to place for keeping track of how it goes down. I would say that we can expect at least one justice to retire before the mid-terms. So get ready.

The Round-Up from Arkansas or I am REALLY FUCKING SORRY!

So last night we here in the Natural State lost our fucking minds and totally fucked up. This is How I break it down is this way:
1st: We voted for McCain by a healthy margin. We fucked up. I apologize.
2nd: We voted to bar non-married, cohabiting couples (i.e. homosexuals) from being able to be foster parents. We fucked up. I apologize. But shame on you California!
3rd. We voted to start a lottery. We fucked up. I apologize.
4th: We voted to allow our state legislature to meet every year (if you were from Arkansas you would realize how bad this is). We fucked up. I apologize.

On a positive note: The nominally Democrat senator won by a 80% to 20%. The thing is though that the 20% was not for a Republican but for a Green Party candidate. I voted in that 20% block.

Once again. We fucked up. I apologize.

Thoughts Before My First Drink of the Evening...

Yes it is late to be pouring one's first drink. But here I sit again. In the quiet of my entire house. There is laundry on. The trash and recycling is out. My roommate is out riding in that ambulance that he gets to call his office. And here I sit, as I said. I found a bottle of scotch I had previously believed consumed. But no such luck. An Islay single malt. Cheap, but it will find its mark no doubt. I have developed a little ritual for my consumption of cheap Whisky. I poured it over a tall glass of ice. This lets it chill a little before I had the mixer. In this case Canada Dry Ginger Ale. A personal favourite of mine but I do prefer the little bottles of Schweppes when it can be had. Here in a few I will add the mixer. And what do I add to this mix? Of course! Ryan Adam's new record. One song that gets to me on repeat. Thus I am ready...
"Beyond a shadow of a doubt." What an intellectually dishonest phrase. Can one truly hold anything in such stature? I am not talking about the hyperbole of Cartesian doubt. Pierce was right when he said that such an undertaking was totally unfeasible and even any attempt is untenable. But we can try I suppose. No, I talk not of this overwhelming, earth shattering doubt. These moments are a crisis of faith. No, I speak of just that a "shadow." One of my undergraduate professor's was teaching us about modern metaphysics and in particular ontological commitments. "What status does a shadow have in any ontology? It is not so much a thing as not a thing. But we talk about it like it is a thing. We play with it even," He chuckled to himself. This is not so much some sophomoric attempt to discuss ontology or things being there and not there. That is a rabbit hole I have peered into. Not much there. We are constantly beset but quivers and sensations and whispers that say, "Not quite my friend. Wrong way. Are you sure?" *Adds Mixer*
I thought about this because I found a page from a letter. It must have slipped out. And so I mailed the letter without the offending page. But I read the page and chuckled to myself. I wrote the letter a little over two weeks ago and even now the lines seemed alien to me and my "project." I had a shadow of a doubt about whether or not those words were there yet. If it was the right way. If I was sure. And truth be told I was not. We can see the shadow in the words. But I have come to realize that there are two ways to handle this sensation. One can either step back and get lost in being in a state of doubt. We can do this. This is easy. We can resign ourselves to mull and try and pull the string until it comes together. We can get lost in where to start now. What to do next. But this is not very fruitful or honest.
I have come to embrace doubt. Since we always will be "plagued" by doubt why not use it is a tool. Why not take it on as the gadfly that pushes thought forward. Descartes would have been right if he had just narrowed his thoughts of doubt to see that we do not have the ground fall from under us. It cracks. Here and there. Slowly and deliberately. I think the key is no longer to patch it up and maintain the safety of things. To evade the doubt to maintain what we hope for. I would prefer to jump up and down and fall and see what lies beneath this edifice. It is just more fun that way. I started thinking about this idea because of philosophy. But I think it has more to do with things greater than that small patch of my existence. It does seem pragmatic. To punch holes. To trim. To go on and continue to test. But it is on some other level a natural impulse that I am beginning to grapple with as time goes on. We just learn to guard against it. But then again that is also pragmatic, to relearn over and over. My mind loses its train of thought here.
But I guess there is no such thing as beyond the shadow. We just live it and we play with it.

I got a new bookshelf today. It is tall and natural wood looking (it is not real wood in any sense of the word that a tree would use). It lets me readjust my books and such. I get to triage. I put the one smaller bookshelf in the office. All of my philosophy books "under active consideration" go there: Dewey, James, Brandom, Wittgenstein, Blake, Kaufmann on Nietzsche, McDowell, Critchley, Foucault, et al are there. Plus some german and french dictionaries. The middle book shelf get's my non-active duty philosophy books: Heidegger, especially Heidegger, Plato, the rest of Nietzsche, Hegel, Gadamer, Schoepenhauer, and Derrida (when he comes out of storage) and any more Heidegger. I am also putting all of my DVDs and what few CD's I have up there as well. The new bookshelf gets the rest of the things. This is my proof nerdom (or my section on Ethics depending on how you look at it). My graphic novels, my Harry Potter books, my books on Woodcraft, biographies of Wittgenstein, Openheimer, Russell, my collection of scottish detective novels, and my Sedaris and Copeland. I am not sure why I decided to share this. I guess I just like to share.
That is the point of blogs I guess.

I want to end this blog on a positive note of sorts. As people who read we often attempt to score bonus points by dropping names. Shit. Just look at what I dropped in this post (especially the Harry Potter). It gives us gravitas and gains us something amongst our peers, though what I never quite understood. So I was reading something by a more recent thinker and I thought I would share it as it breaks it down to brass tacks:

"Look. Think what you will. It's not my job to tell you what to think. Only to present this buffet in front of you. You have to choose what you eat, and then be honest with yourself if it gives you indigestion, makes you vomit, is bland, or if it tastes good. The purpose of this talk was simply to get you to think about evil. To be bothered by evil. Continually. To be bothered by the homeless person on the train, to not look away. To pick up the newspaper and say, 'Hey. What the fuck! The world doesn't have to be this way.' However that may fit in with your particular beliefs about God, fine. But there a lot of religion that gets us to explain away evil, to simply dismiss it as the phenomenon of some corrupt individual. No, modern evil, be it banal or radical, is complex, diffuse, pervasive. Many of the classical models of evil (which are religious models) serve only to perpetuate and make us blind to that thousands of small social evils that accumulate and lead to things like Auschwitz or 9/11. Yes. Be bothered by evil. Evil matters."

Good stuff in my opinion. Well my first drink is done. Time for another.