QuestionAbel Parenting

From the Rick Riordan Blog

And so, we know the title of the book.  I think it’s somewhat funny Riordan points out that the cover is not the real cover.  Although, it would be a pretty cool cover for the final book in the series.  I think it is, but there might be seven.  I don’t know for sure.

It will be interesting to read for fans like myself.  I was disappointed in the fourth book, but I am certainly excited for another stop in the series.  I hope it breaks the formulaic presentation of the first four, finally.

Rose Levy Berenbaum

Well, tonight we had Rose Levy Berenbaum’s crust.  Berenbaum has authored The Bread Bible from which the recipe is taken.  She has a couple of “Bibles” involving the art of baked goods.  Her recipes are unique in being really damn hard to make sometimes.  You’ve got to love this bread you are baking.

But it is worth it.  Her pizza crust is amazing, thumbs up from both myself and Sam.  After dining on this I am not sure if I can eat another pizza anywhere ever.  It was crispy, yet soft and chewy.  Kind of like a soft pretzel, only not that hard on the outside.

This was also the first chance I got to use my pizza peel which was pretty awesome.  Also the pizza stone, which really helps crisp up that crust.  Wicks away moisture.

Rose uses all-purpose flour and advises a long cool rise.  This allows the yeast to impart some flavor to the dough.  The longer, the better as far as rising is concerned.  It’s more of a ripening than a rise.  After you shape it, you let it rise once again.  Then, cook it!

This is similar to the Better Homes recipe in that you par-bake the crust prior to applying the toppings.  I don’t know what difference it would make.  But I followed the recipe.  I have decided to switch up the toppings after all.  Tonight we had ham and pinapple which was great.

Only crust 2 and it could be the winner.  Next week I am thinking the cookbook or beer crust.

Well, I am up to a few things today.  First and foremost is the awesome clock I made for the baby’s room.

I also bought a pizza peel today for The Quest, which I will update tonight.  I am using a recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum out of The Bread Bible. More on that tonight.  There’s more news!

I was thinking about The Quest and my baking and food stuff.  And I was thinking about this here blog which is really to focus on my writing/drawing.  The cooking is out of place.  There’s lots of neat things I’d like to write about involving cooking which wouldn’t really fit in with a blog about time travel and communal showers.

So there is a new blog.  Yes, my friends, a blog about cookery.  For the first few weeks I will cross-post, here and there.  But in too soon a time I shall break the two in twain!  And Cooking Without Onions will take on a life of its own.

I’ve done so before.  Time Travel is pretty interesting stuff.  It is not impossible, I don’t think.  My theory on not being able to change the present is posted somewhere back in the sands of time.  Basically what I said was that changes to the past would always remain equidistant from the present.  So if you changed the past fourty years ago, it would take fourty years to change the present at that time. So, you know.  It wouldn’t catch up to you.

But that’s not what I’m thinking today.  I’m thinking about the fact (yes, fact) that time travel has never been invented and never will.    At least not here on Earth.

My proof:  Lack of nose-rubbing.

We can’t really do any time traveling until it’s invented.  And those assholes in the future would come back here and rub our noses in it like the assholes they are.  Jerks.  With their tower farming and mag-lev multi-state transport system.

“What’s up, I’m from the future.”

“Awesome.  Can you take us back?”

“No way.  You sluggos from the past can’t handle it.”

“Asshole.”

There’s no way there could be “strict regulations” on that type of thing.  Some douchebag would come back and start blasting things with mecha-bees or whatever they have in the future and blow the whole story.  Would we get a chance to try it out?  No.  The future people would keep all that awesome technology to themselves and we’d never get to try it.  Until it was invented.

And then we’d go back in time and rub it in those rubes’ faces!

As I was showering yesterday I thought.  Which is what I do in the shower.  I have no shower crayons which I desperately need.  Except we have metal flashing in the shower.  WTF?

The point.  I was writing yesterday about translations and genres and couldn’t get my brain off of the topic.  There’s so many different genres/translations/fields and it’s interesting to think of different ways to present them.  How do you determine the best?  Subjective, of course, but there is generally a majority agreement.

I thought about Silent Movies.  Long ago.  When film could rely, really, only on what was visually shown.  There was no sound only title cards every once in a while so you had to watch or you would miss it all.  Biting dialogue wouldn’t really work.  Did people quote silent movies?  I wonder.

But nowadays you can put on a movie and not watch it but still know what is going on.  The dialogue must be present or no one will really enjoy it.  There are exceptions.  I think of “Wall-E” here which really only works as a movie (I would argue that Pixar’s movies are in their best translation).  We all know of books that shouldn’t be made into movies.

And I thought about poetry which is even more interesting.  It’s rare indeed for poetry to be translated to another form.  Why would you turn a poem into a movie?  There are exceptions like Jabberwocky and silly things of that sort.

Poems, though, are translations themselves.  Depends on the poet of course.  But I have never had a plum or seen a wheelbarrow better than the ones William Carlos Williams gave me.  It’s just amazing.

So, perhaps, in the weeks to come I will discuss this topic again.  I have already thought of a few book/movie combos it would be fun to talk about in greater depth.  The equal, (Fight Club), the better (High Fidelity), the worse (Catch 22).  But who knows if I will get around to it.  I have so many pizzas to make.

I’m up to a lot of things.  Nothing gets finished, but I work on writing of various forms when I can.  Real Life Job gets in the way a lot, but hopefull NaNoWriMo will help me get back on track.  When I write, a question I often ask myself is am I writing in the write form?

Clarification:  This generally happens with most ideas.  And the debate is between movie script or story.  I have lots of ideas and several split me on this question.  I read a lot.  I watch a lot of movies.  I want to do both.  What should be what?

Some are easy.  My screenplay, “Karma,” works best as a screenplay.  I can’t see anyone picking that up as a novel and saying “Wow.  What a life-changing novel.”  Counter-point a rough draft I just wrote about a woman with lots of cats.  It could feasibly be a short film, but it would be terrible.  It works better on paper, on the page, letting the reader decide.  Other items work for both and still others work as comics or poems or even sentences.

One Sentence stories are awesome, digression handled.

There are a lot of movies out there made from books.  The argument becomes one of book v. movie, which was better, the book always coming out ahead in many arguments.  I neither agree or disagree as I think it depends on the book.  It depends on the director.  It depends on that items cross-genre-ness.

Take “Fight Club.”  Okay, Palahniuk hit the big time with this excellent book.  We, the readers, were lucky to see a great film-adaption.  Some may argue, but I found the movie an excellent translation of book to screen.  The important parts were left in and things were handled well and I think the two items complement each other.  It is a good idea to read the book AND see the movie.  Perhaps I am naive, but I think several folks might agree.  There are a few other items one could discuss.

Sometimes a film is far better than the book.  I recognize this may not be agreed upon, but the film of “High Fidelity” is a much better translation of the Rob Gordon story.  That’s a pretty good way to put it – a “translation.”  There is a story and it must be translated into a story we can understand.  With “High Fidelity” part of the problem may be the contrasting settings of the two books.  However, the theme remains the same.

The best genres to study what I will now refer to as translations are Science Fiction and Comic Books.  Some comic books work well as (holy crap!) comic books.  They don’t work as well as movies.  The X-Men movies were awesome while at the same time neglecting an amazing amount of backstory.  A film trilogy couldn’t handle the years of storyline – important storyline.  Some comics’ storyline isn’t so important.  Remember when Superman’s head grew ten sizes due to red kryptonite?  Yeah, me neither.  Of course, that’s a different discussion involving rebooting.

That’s not to say the comic book can’t be translate.  “The Dark Knight” translates the very core of Batman uncannily.  I would be willing to claim the film superior to most other translations of Batman’s story.  Including the bulk of the comics.  The closest other translation would be the Animated Series.  But enough Batman.

Science Fiction sees translation often since it lends itself to action and adventure and we love that.  But translations can be confusing.  And terrible.  Poor Isaac Asimov and Philip K Dick have had their ups and downs.  For every “Blade Runner” (better translation) there is an “I, Robot.”  (Jesus Christ)  “I Am Legend” still has no decent translation to screen.

So, the question is:  How do  you best translate a story.  I think there is one ultimate translation that tells a story far better than any other.  It depends on the story and the translater.  “The Dark Knight” had an excellent ensemble of translators and you understand what it’s all about.

The translation idea is best encapsulated in comic books, I would say.  So many writers and artists.  There’s a big difference between a Jeph Loeb story versus a Stan Lee.  Art adds a dimension.  Look at any comic rack.

But that’s that.  I am not so much searching for genres as I am languages.  Translations.  The best a writer can hope for is nailing that language the first try.  Or hoping someone else can find a good language to translate it into.

Well, tonight I began the quest.  The Quest for the perfect pizza crust – which will ultimately result in the perfect pizza.  Tonights crust choices were a two-fer.  Out of a box and out of a tube.

The box was a disaster.  It requested I par-bake before toppings and despite some spray and cornmeal, it stuck so incredibly to the pan that I destroyed it and cracked a tube open.

The tubed crust, from the biscuit section of the store, was surprisingly good.  It requested I put it in a baking pan, which I did.  The result was a somewhat soggy crust that still was well-baked.  Sam really liked it.  She described it as croissant like.  It was obviously the easiest of crusts I will be checking out.

If you’re just making pizza for fun it is certainly okay.  It is by no means the best crust I have ever had, but it was passable.  I doubt the pizza snobs out east would dig it, but it gets the job done.  My complaint is the amount.  It is designed to be used in a half-sheet pan type thing which makes it had to slide onto a baking stone.  That could have resulted in a less soggy crust.

Thus far, control is done.  Next week I will probably be utilizing my Better Homes and Gardens recipe and see how that rolls.

My blog here is slowly dying.  This is my fault.  I had the awesome luck of the Poetry competition in the spring to ensure I updated.  Hopefully in November I will update everyday with a NaNoWriMo thing.  How then to fill the space?  Well, last Spring I was getting heavily into baking.  It is something I greatly enjoy doing and it has been far too hot lately to do it.  With the weather cooling off, however, I feel far more comfortable getting back into the swing of it all.

I wish I had the organizational skills to have separate blogs for all my interests, but categories will have to suffice.

The Quest is my name for a quest.  The Quest to find the best recipe for a certain item I really enjoy.  Last Spring I was amazed at the wide variety of pizza crust recipes I found.  There were so many variations on time of rise, amount of kneading, amount of yeast, oil added, and the most controversial topic:  The pizza stone.

My hope is that every Friday I will be able to cook a pizza.  After consumption by myself and my beautiful assistant (Samantha) I will describe it here.  If copyright allows, I will reprint the recipe, but I will more likely link to it.  There are several recipes out there, so I cannot be sure how many I will utilize before I finish.  There will be a few rules I will try to follow:

1)  I will use the same sauce for each pizza.  Once the crust is achieved, the Quest for Sauce may start.  Or it might not.  Whatever.  In the interest of time, I will be using plain storebought sauce.  Any additions for flavor will be noted and kept throughout.

2)  Toppings will be consistent.  The fairest thing to do would be a simple mozzarella/sauce combo with herbage.  If it’s a good crust this should be sufficient – but the store-bought sauce could negatively affect this.  This rule could change.

Those are all I have so far.  Now, there will be additional recipes added no doubt.  But the ones I plan for sure to use are:

Alton Brown’s Pizza Pizzas recipe which uses bread flour
Rose Levy Berenbaum’s recipe which does not.
Beer Crust Pizza – I will find the source
Jiffy brand Crust – Is it just as good out of the box?  I doubt it!
Store Bought Crust – Probably Boboli, just to be fair
Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook – The classic checkerboard cookbook offers a tasty pie as well.

And so we have six contenders at this point.  I may axe the pre-made crust but if my ultimate goal is the best pizza possible I should take it into account.  Right now, my money is on Berenbaum or Brown but anything can happen in The Quest.

I will hopefully make the first pie tomorrow and post it up post-eating.

I don’t have much to say.  It’s been a busy day what with sleeping all day since I work at night.  I’ve spent my time job searching and swimming.  Also, I submitted a story to Fantasy and Science Fiction.  We’ll see how that goes.

Okay, first there’s this cartoon:  Right Here

WARNING:  This is inflammatory stuff.  If you’re a Republican, you shouldn’t read it.  You’ll just get all pissy and leave nasty comments.  I mean, I would if the shoe were on the other foot.

I’ve been thinking about this election thing we have coming up.  Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal.  We all know how I feel about it, so there’s not much to really say here.  What I think I’ve stumbled upon is what I call “The Secret Plan.”  It involves John McCain, War Hero.

JMCWH is a pretty level-headed, stubborn guy.  I would agree that politically he seems to be running as Bush 3, although I think he’d throw that in the wastebasket if elected.  He used to be pretty cool, now he’s kind of a seeming jackass.  Unfairly portrayed as such, that is.  The man truly cares about his country.  He really wants what he thinks is best.  And what McCain thinks is best isn’t what his campaign says.

McCain still thinks we should stay in Iraq.  Now, if they wanted us there, I would actually be in the minority as well.  We screwed up that country and it’s really our responsibility to fix it.  Except they don’t really want us to help them anymore.  Why is he being such a beanbrain?  Is it age?  I don’t think so.

Several of his stances parallel Bush’s own.  It depends.  Thankfully, he’s very different as far as environmental concerns, but not as good as Obama.  Speaking of Obama, the man is just great.  Anyhow, the media spin on McCain is that he’s Bush 3 and that’s all people will hear.

His VP choice Sarah Palin seemed pretty bold.  A woman!  That way, no matter the party elected the moment would be historic.  Already Palin seems plagued with sorrow.  There’s Troopergate, the pregnant daughter, and the open letter.  Surely, McCain knew these things?  He should have also known the polarizing effect of a woman running mate.

(Side note:  Some people are jackasses and won’t vote for women because they are women.  Still.  In 2008.  People still go to bed hungry, so what can you do?)

Anyway, looking at all of these items tells me that McCain is either A) Not politically savvy or B) Not really in it to win it.  I think it’s B.  I think he took a good long look in the mirror and told himself he wanted to, but he is subconciously fed up with the whole thing and is sabotaging his chances.  He may not even be aware of it.  In fact, deep down, I think he’s hoping Obama wins.

Deep down, I think he wants Obama to win because he’s a better choice.  McCain may look better in many ways but right now this country needs a young symbol of hope.  Even if Obama entered office and stumbled a bit – which I don’t think he will, he’s smart enough to listen to advisors – he would still be a big symbol of hope and change and excitement.

That’s McCain’s secret plan.  He wants Obama to win.  And he’s doing what he can to not look like a blatant fight thrower.