The year’s first working day discovers you
Once more under these fluorescent lights
Considering and counting false and true
Collating and curating days and nights
And tuning past too-quiet scanner sounds
For lures of action doled out by dispatch
To reporters upon appointed rounds
Fishing for briefs and releases to catch
Pursued by dutiful photographers
And editors assembling story lists
Into order and focus out of blurs
In hopes of capturing what others missed.
I think these newsroom clocks are just for show,
symbols of all there’ll ne’er be time to know.

After black coffee for me and black tea for her, Ankita assembled our year’s first meal: black-eyed peas with tempeh bacon, swiss chard with onions and vinegar, and rice with saffron (this time without turmeric, as we’d forgotten to get some to add to it). It never gets old, sitting together food that looks like both of us, and that draws on who we are and what we choose to be and how we choose to live.

We found our way later on to the Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco and saw “Pariah,” the debut movie from director Dee Rees. It’s a powerful story, one you must see if you get the chance.

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• REVIEW: Dee Rees’ “Pariah” (boldaslove.us)
• A Brooklyn Girl Who’s Just Not Frilly (movies.nytimes.com)
• ‘Pariah’ director Dee Rees confronts disapproval (sfgate.com)
• ‘Pariah’ review: Brooklyn girl heeds her heart (sfgate.com)
• Film: Movie Review: Pariah (avclub.com)
• Kim Wayans and Adepero Oduye discuss ‘Pariah’ (thegrio.com)
• ‘Pariah’s’ Scene Stealer (thedailybeast.com)

I ended the year the same way about a dozen feet from where it started: standing next to Ankita at a house party in South Berkeley with a plastic flute of Champagne in one hand. This time, instead of standing in the middle of a crowded room, we stood in the hallway of the house.

We’d spent most of the evening there, as it was roomy and mostly unobstructed, and it turned out to be a great spot to see and greet and hug most of the people who were there trying to move from one part of the house to another.

Every place looks more and more like some kind of user-experience setup offering lessons in how people use social media and mobile devices and location-based platforms.

It feels like the world keeps elbowing me in the ribs and saying “Hey, did you see that? That’s a pretty big stack of unfolded and piled-up newspaper pages. No, not that one, the other one — the one over by the three older gentlemen squinting into their mobile phones” or “I wonder if that woman waiting for her macchiato is using the  Starbucks app on her phone to track her drink orders? Or another app — no, probably her Twitter followers or her Facebook friends — to check local news?”

If the lab is all around me now, what do I do with the results it’s showing me?

Berkeley Bowl shoppers / it’s as if they have no manners/ I’ve got my fair trade organics / and they’re going bananas #bowlsohard

— George Kelly (@allaboutgeorge) December 27, 2011

So I Bowl so hard shoppers wanna fine me, but first shoppers gotta find me
What’s 50 items to a shopper like me? Can you please remind me?
Bowl so hard – these lines crazy, y’all don’t know that they don’t phase me
The clerks could take until 2082 and I look at you like “They’re not lazy!”
Bowl so hard – they shop weird, we ain’t even ‘posed to be here
Ball so hard – since we here, it’s only right that we trade fair
Recyle — I’m liable to eat local, take your pick
Reduce, reuse — my produce, organic

(and I’ll fill out the rest if someone doesn’t beat me to it, heh)

This cyclist caught my eye while he was weaving south along 4th Street. I wanted to stop and tell him there was nothing wrong with his haircut that a bike helmet wouldn’t have improved. It feels like I see people all over without them on, and I feel concerned for their safety, like I wish I could carry around a trailer full of helmets in bunches of sizes and hand them out. I don’t remember seeing him after East 10th Street, as I was headed over to the Embarcadero and its southbound Interstate 880 on-ramp.

I stayed at the Tribune’s office later than planned, but I did reap at least one benefit.

So, yeah, Adele, pretty much overall.

Amy Winehouse’s “Lioness: Hidden Treasures” sounds more like her and better than I expected, sadly. Destroyer’s “Kaputt” wound up neck-and-neck with The Roots’ “Undun” and The Weeknd’s output for album of the year (because, good G-d amighty, it’s not like Dan Bejar released three free mixtapes in one year, or spent the year as the best small-screen band).

Radiohead’s lovely remixed work (and Jamie XX’s mix for a high-level overview of others’ work — not to mention his work with Gil Scott-Heron on “We’re New Here”) was solid too.

I enjoyed plunking down for Cut Copy, Washed Out, Little Dragon, Raphael Saadiq, Bon Iver, Feist, Muhsinah, Shabazz Palaces, James Blake, Blood Orange and a few others who’ll come to me soon.

One nice thing about a slow day at work is that there’s just enough time to explore upcoming Android builds. So far, Ice Cream Sandwich hasn’t melted me yet. It’s just left me cold and wet and sticky and frustrated.

I keep looking around for builds to try. I’ve tried the Galnet MIUI version and the OneCosmic build release candidate versions of the ICS Galaxy S port. ”Maybe this one will work, bugs and other features won’t be so alpha-slow.” But no, no joy so far.

I get it, though. The cats at XDA Developers are hacking as fast as they can, with an eye toward learning as they share. I can’t be mad at them for the progress they’ve made.

I just have to wait for them to produce a daily driver, since I can’t code and I can’t rely on Samsung to update other than through leaks. (Note to self: While I wait, I can still continue to push my comfort level with non-userspace.)

Related articles

• Samsung Galaxy S Ice Cream Sandwich ROM hits release candidate (ubergizmo.com)

OAKLAND — A local man’s reflections over the course of a simple, quiet Christmas morning breakfast led him to experience a minor epiphany about how year-end holiday celebrations don’t have to suck.

The local man, as yet unidentified by authorities who continue to investigate the developing situation, appeared to arrive at the breakfast, consume foodstuffs, drink several kinds of beverages and engage in a series of light-hearted, humorous and insightful conversations with fellow attendees.

Factors related to the absence of celebration non-suckage likely include discussion of travel plans in the upcoming year, a balance of holiday and non-holiday background music, and the existence of variety of spaces for the exchange of attentions and affections.

I’d had a good time last year hanging out with Amy and Tom at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and I hadn’t yet set foot inside the Oakland Museum of California since their renovation (not counting an hour or so in their courtyard on a Friday night earlier this year or late last year watching a turfing exhibition). Getting to combine hanging out and exploring the building with these guys on a low-traffic day was a brilliant idea.

Afterward, I met up with Ankita and we went up to Berkeley’s Shattuck Theater for the Steve McQueen-directed “Shame,” starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. We’re on a bit of a Fassbender tear, I guess, after seeing David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” last Sunday at the Embarcadero Cinema.