Busy Days

It's been a busy day. I made some bread which is proofing overnight in the refrigerator. I read some Homer and realize once again how much work I have to do. I have also been addicted to listening to iTunes U classes from Berkeley and various other places.

Earlier today, Servia sent me a clip from the Tony Awards. I didn't watch it since I'm not much of a fan of musical theater post the 1960s (I am a big Fred Astaire fan). This, however, was pretty funny. Especially Brooke Shields, who apparently has some minor stage fright (or so she claimed when she spoke at a graduation at my high school a few years after my own-- but that is a story for another time).

Enjoy!

Real and Fictional Bookstores

When I read trashy fiction, I tend to read books about books. The Thursday Next novels, The Club Dumas, Shadow of the Wind (which was fabulous and not at all trashy), etc. I am a total bibliophile: I love books, libraries, bookstores, and most places that worship the written word. I read much more slowly now-- as I primarily read nonfiction, and read more articles than books, but I love books in the same way that I did as a child.

In all of the books-on-books, there seems to be some vision of a perfect bookstore or library. Often the bookstores are in exotic stone buildings or have underground tunnels with musty shelves and rare volumes. In my lifetime, I have yet to encounter such a place. Powells (Portland) and Elliot Bay (Seattle) are fabulous to be sure, but they lack the grandeur of my dream bookstore or library. As it turns out, some of these bookstores still exist, or did until recently. Servia sent me a wonderful piece on an old man who ran a bookstore devoted too early editions of Jules Verne. I am not a fan of the author, although I read plenty of Verne in my time, but the bookstore sounds marvelous enough to be out of one of my trashy novels. It must have truly been a magical place, and I wish that I had been able to visit Paris in time to see it while it lasted.

Primordial Musings

Yesterday, I read an incredible article on jellyfish in the New York Times. I realized that they were a primitive life form, but I had no idea that they were three times older than the first dinosaurs and had survived five mass extinctions. The article is quite fabulous and I highly suggest it to anyone interested at all in marine biology.

Infinite Summer: This is my fourth (?) day of Infinite Jest, and I still have little good to say about it. I feel slightly less in the dark than before because some of the characters have been given names instead of obscure nicknames which makes them significantly more identifiable. My greatest compliment for it is that it is is more articulate and sophisticated in verbal style than the stories to which I have been comparing it (Oy, The Dogfish Series), but, on the other hand, "The Dogfish who Swallowed the Universe" was written by a twelve-year-old.

Speaking of primordial, I reread "The Dogfish who Swallowed the Universe" today, after my Infinite Jest allotment. I realized that I glamorized the story significantly because I spent so many hours of my formative youth arguing over it [1] with it's author (who, for convenience, I will refer to as Sockhead [2]). I was even inspired to write a similar work of my own around the same age that was a historical and religious parody instead of a social commentary. However, there is still a life and a humor in it that is not only precocious, but still holds up to this day.

"So it was that a cluster of naive lunatics met in a pub" (DSU. 1) and the story is off describing each of the characters. I wanted to quote one of the funniest sections, but most of them require references from earlier in the work to make sense or included a set up that was simply more than I wanted to type out. One vignette-like struck me as amusing. It lacks the subtlety and humor of other scenes (in fact it isn't particularly funny) and the writing lacks a degree of verbal artistry built up in the sequels "Hell Heck" and "Trousers," but in a stand-alone moment it provided a snapshot of the staccato absurdest style that reminds me of Infinite Jest.

"We decided to walk to a place we had sighted on the way to the inn, two or three blocks away. It was a Liberian fast-good pub called Ye Olde Liberian Fast-Food Pub. All of the rooms had themes. Our table was in the "fluffy fire-hose room." Our waiter looked like a cross between a stereotypical caffeine-addict and a stereotypical boy scout. He introduced himself as John and promptly died. I guess Abilio Manuel Guerra Junqueiro was correct. The manager said our waiter was under some stress because there had been a lot of complaints directed toward him. When I asked why, he said that John was more than a waiter; he was also a curator. He curated the rooms. He was criticized for putting stratified rocks in the ocean room. He thought that all stratified rocks came from the ocean. I guess he trusted Abraham Gottlob Werner's theories too much." (DSU 6).

Maybe my problem is that as much as I appreciate parts of Infinite Jest, I find it rather joyless and have not laughed or even cracked a smile at those things which I believe are supposed to be funny. While silly and unrefined, I found myself smiling and laughing at "The Dogfish who Swallowed the Universe." I am certainly a proponent of dark humor, but joyless humor seems like an oxymoron.

Endnotes

1. The story at once a bizarre fantasy, an exercise in humor, and a social parody of our social group. Any understanding of social dynamics I possess came from discussing, nitpicking, and expanding the social commentary from this book. My interests in social dynamics became so focused that in "Hell Heck" (the second story) my character was described thus: "Gruiforms had sort of become a "watcher." She merely watched (and watched and watched)" (HH 2). Obviously, my opinions are skewed.
2. At the time when this story was written, the author of the story constantly wore an eccentric gray beanie (for lack of a better term) which, when not being worn, looked a bit like a sock. This vague resemblance caused the author to refer to himself as "Sockhead" when some pseudonym was required.

Books and Science

Back when I was in high school, I read Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Although, as with all of Dan Brown's plots, it focuses on the conspiracies withing Christian hierarchy and doctrine, the specific plot centered around a container of antimatter. This, however, has not been an achievable feat. Only recently have scientists been able to keep antimatter particles around for 1000 seconds (specifically antihydrogen). Servia sent me an article about it.

Update on Infinite Summer: Maybe I have poor taste, but I am still not a fan of Infinite Jest after reading another 2%. Although the language is erudite and interesting and the images are eccentric, much of what gestures toward humor relies upon a type of gross imagery that gets rather boring and repetitive. When I heard about the book, I was expecting something like an absurdest-humor non-fantasy version of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell with a plethora of footnotes and backstory. I'm going to stick with it for the moment.

Infinite Summer

 

Twitter recently alerted me to a project called Infinite Summer, which is a blog project that guides individuals through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest during the summer. I think that the idea is that Infinite Jest is a "hard" novel, by virtue of it's length and plethora of endnotes, and that people need guidance. I need guidance, rather, because I often find it difficult to stick with fiction because I often find non-fiction much more interesting. At least four of my friends have recommended Infinite Jest to me, so I thought I should try it. I have read just over the 1% required to start (I am using the % because I do not have page numbers in the kindle edition) and I am following the Index of Guiding Posts. I am going to try to stick with it.

Initial Thoughts: I am not a huge fan thus far. To me, the book reminds me of a combination between Kurt Vonnegut, Dave Berry, and mild nausea. To be fair, the last one may change tomorrow-- I happened to spend a large portion of today moderately nauseated. Actually, the closest thing to Infinite Jest that I have read was a series of three short stories my best friend from elementary wrote called Oy, the Dogfish Series, which was impossibly clever. I know this is going to sound like it's stretching credulity but I have a feeling that this friend may have read a portion of Infinite Jest because of the similarities in the style. This is the same person who, in fifth grade, goaded me into following his path reading Animal Farm, 1984, Lord of the Flies, Lord of the Rings, and various other novels usually over the head of kids that age (many of which I did not understand until years later). What may seem even more absurd is that I actually like "The Dogfish that Swallowed the Universe" and it's sequels significantly better thus far because voice of the narrator was more charming even with the same verbal gestures that I have observed thus far in Infinite Jest. This may be part of why I was not an English major.

Spiked Sourdough Ciabatta

Ciabatta!

My second grade teacher, who was a great influence in my life well past second grade, is moving away to be closer to her kids. I have not seen her in some years, but Servia has kept in touch with her. I wanted to go see her and bring a loaf of bread as a gift so we could all have a parting snack. I wanted to make a sourdough, but something that was not overly sour (as I do not know her tastes very well) and I wanted to make sure it was fresh. I didn't have the full three days to make Tartine Bread, so I decided to make Norwich Sourdough. Unfortunately I left my "elaborating" sourdough starter out on the counter all day until Servia reminded me about it at about 11pm. At that point, it was going to take to long to make the sourdough. Instead, I doctored the Sourdough Pizza Dough recipe to make it into ciabatta. Here was my process:

Ingredients:
Sourdough Starter

• 100g mature sourdough starter
• 65g bread flour
• 65 water

Final Dough

• 500g bread flour
• 15g whole wheat flour
• 400g warm water (95 degrees F)
• 14g salt (2 tsp)
• 1/4 tsp dry active yeast
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions
Day 1:

• Make the sourdough starter. Let it sit for 4-12 hours.
• Mix together the sourdough starter with the water, salt, and yeast.
• Then mix in the flour until you have a smooth-ish mass. Let sit for 5 minutes.
• Drizzle the olive oil over the dough and kneed the oil into the dough for about 2 minutes.
• In the bowl or on a lightly oiled surface, use the Peter Reinhart stretch-and-fold technique: do 2 stretch and folds, wait ten minutes and repeat, wait ten minutes and repeat, and wait ten minutes and repeat.
• Cover the dough with plastic wrap (or similar) and place it in the refrigerator overnight.

Day 2:

• Take the dough out and place it at room temperature (70-75 degrees) for 2 hours (about 4.5 hours before baking)
• After the two hours, turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Gently make the dough into a rectangle and fold it in half.
• Cut that in half and separate the two pieces of dough.
• Fold each of the two pieces and fold the dough in thirds like a letter. Turn the dough seem side down onto a piece of floured parchment paper.
• Let the dough rise for 2.5 hours. If the dough pieces seem to small to you, after one hour gently stretch the dough into slightly larger rectangles.
• 30 minutes before baking, heat the oven and your steaming mechanism of choice to 500 degrees.
• When ready to bake, slide the dough, parchment and all, into the oven and bake under steam for 15 minutes. 
• Turn the dough around and bake for another 10-12 minutes, or until the bread is 210 degrees F. It should feel hard on top and be extremely light weight.

I spiked the dough with bakers yeast in order to prevent it from becoming too sour. If you want more sour ciabatta, leave out the bakers yeast and maybe tack on another half hour to the final rise (that is a guess).

My pictures were not particularly artful, but both the crumb and the flavor of the bread was wonderful. An easy, lovely, new ciabatta.

The Bread Sings Again: Tartine Style

One of the indications of bread perfection is "the song of the bread" or the bread crust crackling as it hits the cold air coming out of the oven. I have only achieved this once, when my Pain de Campagne was slightly over-proofed during the first fermentation. Once again, somehow, I slightly over-proofed a loaf of Tartine Country Bread during the initial rising period. The bread sang. It was wonderful. It was light and fluffy and tasted amazing. It did not have the irregular crumb that usually characterizes Tartine loaves (as the bulk fermentation was too long), but it's pretty good.

Crust

Crumb

I also made a version of what I have begun to call my "breakfast bread" which is the 70% Whole Wheat Tartine bread with flax seeds and steel-cut oats.

Over-proofed dough.

I hope the whole wheat one is decent.

Paleontology Geek: Hominin Evolution

In some form, all mammals require exogamous (literally, from the Greek, marriage-outside) mating patterns. Apparently, most mammals send the males to mate outside the local group, and the group is continued by females. For chimpanzees and early hominins, this functioned the opposite way. According to chemical composites in the teeth that scientists analyzed, all the males in the area were local while at least half the female skeletons apparently came from father afield. The article on australopithecines I read came from the New York Times.

Note: I thought originally that hominin was a typo for hominid. Apparently hominid has been expanded as a wider definition and hominin now refers to human ancestors. For reference, see this article from the Australian Museam.