Ralph Pullins

I seem to define my life with soundtracks, playlists that encompass epochs or periods of change or development.  My earliest music was my mother's: Van Halen and Judas Priest, Def Leppard and AC/DC.  I remember a friend of hers explaining to second grade Ralph that the big balls that Angus was singing about were parties, but even then I didn't buy it.  My teen years were heavy on grunge, Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and that was the first time that music ever felt like it was mine , that I discovered by myself or through the radio, or like minded friends, that was the first time that I took it and owned it and loved it, and even now I'll hear Black Hole Sun or Rooster or Smells Like Teen Spirit on the radio and back I go. In the fifth grade, I moved to Kelso, Washington. I want to say that it was hard, but what I remember mostly from childhood is just this sense of taking every day as it arrived.  What else do we have except our own experiences to measure th...

I built a table, out of wood.  I made a thing that wasn't there before.  I cut and sanded the wood, I drilled in screws, and now we have a table where we didn't have one before. It is real and solid and you can touch it, you can feel where I cut poorly, see the rough edges where I didn't join the wood correctly, you can lift it, feel its weight.  It is a real thing that I made.  I made a table. This is not a table, this is a nothing, a series of random thoughts that I had in the shower, which is where thoughts come from. What if our souls are soap bubbles, what if we spread ourselves too thin, stretched out and flattened? What happens when it pops, would you even notice, would you even care? What if we are meant for something more? I am already behind schedule this year I've got work to do, I have things to accomplish, friends ask me questions ask for favors and all I say is yes yes yes and- What is this?  What am I hoping to do here writhing I meant to write "writ...

So its been a while huh?  Usually if I spend a long time away from writing, it is because I am either feeling pretty content, or because I have been busy. In this case it is both. I have been busy, both with the holidays and related events, and with the pay job, and also I have been working on a super secret surprise mystery project that I am not quite ready to talk about, but it is cool as hell and I'm stoked to bring it out and wave it around and harass my family and friends to tell me what they think and to tell everyone that they have ever met to check it out. But that is later. It is 2018, folks. Twenty. Eighteen. Since I am so behind in everything, I figured I would just blob everything together in one big-ass beginning of the year/end of the year rant/review/announcement pile of words and see where it goes.  Let's just jump in shall we? --  Unbelievable, but I'm turning forty years old in August, an age that I wasn't sure I was ever going to see, and one that I ...

Something I would have Tweeted today: I saw a wild turkey in flight today.  Not really relevant to anything, just something that I have never seen before. Pretty groundbreaking stuff. So you may or may not have noticed, but I have quit social media. I had a long standing belief that it is poison, and I still believe that. I didn't like the way that it made me feel about others, people that I would normally like and forgive I was judging harshly. I didn't like that it drove divisions between people.  I didn't like that I had pretty much stopped reading books in favor of looking at trash on my phone. Listen.  The things you do and say, even through the anonymity of the internet, matter.  You affect people's lives every day whether you mean to or not.  When you hold the door open for someone or don't hold the elevator, whether you smile to the clerk at the grocery store, it all matters.  We create ripples when we move in the water. Some become nothing, but some become ...

There are traditional anniversary gifts, and people have heard of the majors, twenty five years is silver, fifty is gold.  Seventy-five is diamond, incidentally, and holy cow, how do you make it to seventy-five, was it the end result of a child marriage, maybe?  My wife and I have adopted the practice, and over the previous years have adapted it to our purposes, because we do not usually give each other actual, physical gifts, reasoning that we are both adults with jobs, and if we want something we can just go buy it for ourselves, and we don't need to torture the other with the responsibility of attempting to guess.  So we either make something using the material, or we do some related activity together, my mere presence, apparently, being gift enough.  My wife is excellent at this, at giving, and will present me with the most thoughtful and amazing gifts, and then I will look at whatever garbage I managed to cobble together and hold it up like a kid presenting a crappy half-fired...

A normal healthy person may not know this, but if you watch too many episodes of a show on Netflix consecutively, it assumes that you have gone to sleep or have died on your couch.  It asks you if you are still watching, and you have a moment to consider your life choices and the events that have led you to this moment, where a program on your television is asking, somewhat judgey, somewhat incredulous, are you, a human being gifted with choice and personal will, going to watch yet another episode of Law and Order, or House of Cards?  Are you seriously going to do that Netflix seems to ask, I mean, seriously? NETFLIX: Are you still Watching Parks and Recreation? Yes, Netflix, I am actually.  Because I want to believe that there are people like Leslie Knope out there, that work hard for the good of their communities, that care deeply about things, that believe in friendship and sacrifice and altruism.  I want to believe that there are officials out there that aren't only interested ...

I have been criticized, fairly I think, that what I write here is not representative of who I am, that there is much more to me and my experience than gets represented here.  This is true, I believe, for a couple of reasons.  First, I tend to write when I am bothered by something, or have been wallowing in self pity or despair, or when I am angry about something, or when I have been awash in nostalgia for times long past, untouchable and crystalline.  If I'm feeling good, if all is right in my world, I usually am too busy doing cool things or being happy that I don't sit down to write.  The second reason is that I have a hard time making nice equate to interesting.  I like nice things, and am often attracted to nice media; I love Winnie the Pooh, for instance, and its non-threatening stories and characters, there is a lot to be said for TV and movies and games of the same stripe; I love Stardew Valley, and Viva Pinata, The Good Place and Parks and Recreation. I can see the appe...