baz.com - Brett Thomas' Blog

In an otherwise unremarkable review of three mysteries, Ron Rosenbaum notes that, while he loved David Foster Wallace's "cruise ship tour de force," [sic, I note, self-righteously] he was "infinitely" dissappointed in Infinite Jest.

We share in common a great love of Wallace's nonfiction. Everything and More was an excellent book, marrying great literature, math, and history into a unique work. I read it on a foggy weekend-away vacation while the inlaws watched the kids and my wife and I hung out in a hotel in Half Moon Bay, and I remember both the vacation and book as being extremely pleasant.

Infinite Jest was the first item of his I read, and it was a great joy to me to go back and read his nonfiction, after, and see him develop his voice. Perhaps, also, I have a personal connection with the novel - my late step brother was a near-tennis pro who got so involved in drugs and alcohol that they ended his life. It was hard not to see family and friends (and myself) in many of the characters, and the unfolding of the story was masterful. Wallace had as throw-away side plots devices that most authors would base a whole novel on, and Infinite Jest has to rank for me as one of the most satisfying, frustrating, funniest and unpredictable books I've ever read.

His essays, in general, I found to be slightly less than his final (I presume) novel. While they were enjoyable, I think they had a certain easy elitism to them. "Ticket to the Fair," in which he attends the Illinois State Fair, is funny, but has many cheap laughs at the expense of uncultured flyover-state denizens.

Far and away the worst example of these, though, is "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," the aforementioned tour de force about taking a cruise. In this, a boorish Wallace takes a cruise on the Zenith. He decides beforehand to take no companions, eschews shore leave, and packs a tuxedo t-shirt for formal night. Surprisingly, he finds cruises to boring.

I am of course, obligated to note that I'm not much for cruises themselves, either. My wife and I took one to Alaska some years ago, and we had a lot of fun - but mostly by avoiding the cruise ship itself as much as possible, and spending the time we were aboard reading and watching Alaskan scenery pass by our cabin's balcony. Making fun of cruise ships as being uncultured is like...well, making fun of state fairs. Anyone can do it. I suppose I can understand complaining that Infinite Jest is full of "derivative, post-Pynchon, oh-so-tiring tricks." I just can't understand the same pen celebrating an essay that rechristens the Zenith the sophomorically obvious Nadir.

When we went up to Bear Valley a few weeks ago, I decided to do some cooking other than what I usually do. Most of my cooking is limited to stir frying (though I like to think I have a fair range on that) and grilling. I dabble in things like Mac & Cheese - once a year at Christmas - and spaghetti sauce, but mostly if I cook it, it's in the wok or on the grill.

I took one cookbook - The New Best Recipe, which Betsy refers to - not without justification - as The New Most Complicated Recipe. One of the things I was interested in trying was making my own pizza, dough and sauce included. I was a little worried by my lack of a pizza stone (a heavy, generally ceramic "stone" used to hold heat and cook a pizza, quickly), and the fact that pizza dough is a yeast-risen recipe, and I was making it at 7,000 feet for the first time.

Making the dough - the first time I've ever made any yeast-leavened dough - was very simple. The recipe provided didn't have any sugar, just flour, yeast, salt, water and olive oil. Completely winging it, I took a pizza pan and decided to pre-bake the crust a bit before I put the toppings on it, so the oven heat would have time to cook the crust first. I then pulled out the crust after six minutes (the cookbook recommended 6-12 to cook the whole pizza with a stone), topped it, and put it back in the oven. I was a bit nervous when the cheese melted and started to bubble, but the crust was still flour-white after six minutes. However, finally, after another six or so, for a total cooking time of about 18 minutes, the crust browned a little, and I pulled it out. The result was crispy and chewy, and very popular.

When we got back, I started researching how the whole "pizza stone" thing worked. You need a stone (obviously), and a pizza peel. The stones are generally available for tens of dollars at cooking supply stores, and the pizza peels have similar prices. My first thought was that the peel was simply wood - and I had a shop full of that, so I resolved to make my own. I then further read that it is possible to purchase an unglazed paving stone at Home Depot for $.99 (I found one for $.97, on sale).

Saturday, I cleaned out the shop and made the pizza peel. I made it with the last birch scraps from Blake's table - my first woodworking project. As soon as I cut into it, the smell of the sawdust really took me back. I also used as a template for the curve on the leading edge the template I used for Derek's bed. The peel itself was pretty straightforward to make, and I chose a handle length I liked (longish) to make getting it out of the oven easier.

Sunday was pizza night, and all the work finally came to fruition. I heated the stone (getting to 550 took a little more than an hour) and stretched out the dough. Cornmeal scattered on the pizza peel, I topped it with sauce, cheese, and pepperoni:

...and, onto the stone it went:

I was astonished at how quickly it cooked compared to my experience in Bear Valley. Six minutes later, the crust was brown and the toppings done:

Using the pizza peel to take the pizza off the stone took a little learning - you need to get the peel about half under the pizza, pick it up, bring it out, and slide the pizza onto the peel.

I was very happy with the result. If you're not making your own peel every time, the dough and sauce are easy to make. Pizza is a mature technology - I'm sure any recipe you find for sauce and dough are a reasonable jumping-off point.

Unless we place the "post-human" point so that its mile-marker is already distant in our rear view, it is one we have not yet passed. Many of the legs Aimee proudly displays (such as the beautiful hand-carved ash set) would certainly have been possible in an earlier time. Perhaps the society that would allow her to display them is a bit newer. The true "post-human" age, however, will not arise until people begin maiming themselves on purpose to have faster legs, or cameras in their eyes - and until such actions are seen as normal.

Mr. Spence's eye will have to not just record his vision, but send it to his brain, and more, before many will choose to replace their peepers. It seems likely, that some - filmmakers, like he, perhaps - will desire this sort of change before the rest of us. Even before the technology improves, that much. Speculation on this topic hit the mainstream when Oscar Pistorius was allowed to tryout for the Olympics in 2008. Should prosthetic-legged sprinters be allowed to compete with naturally-shanked ones, the former will begin to win, and a non-zero number of the victory-at-any-cost latter will become interested in trading up.

Medical ethics - still saddled with "First, do no harm" - is unlikely to adapt to these desires, quickly. The first brave pioneers of these technologies may actually have to injure themselves in order to get surgeons to repair (and improve) them. Putting one's eye out is an unpleasant business, though possible enough to do "accidentally" - and without further accident. Self-double amputation will be more ill-starred.

These ethical concerns will obviously not stop the truly motivated (or insane) from improving their bodies, as technology eventually begins to beat evolution in feature-set. Some people already feel that truly nothing would be better than the limbs they have, now. Applying Moore's Law to the human body (and mind) will be a long-term good. The ethical tangle between here and there will be nearly as impressive as the technology we'll create. More impressive still is how quickly we'll be caught in it.

I believe I have fixed that, now, and this post is intended as proof of that.