For the first time on my own, I tried to make some baguette today. The process is quite a bit more time-consuming than I thought: not including the preferment the night before, it took almost four hours to finish (which was fine, since I woke up at 5:30a). But the tactile experience, the nature of using your fingers and hands along with raw ingredients to create something, the anticipation, the wait, it all belongs to the experience of baking bread.

So how did it come out? It looked great. A nice brown crust on top, a nice shape, and it felt great too, the crust crunches, the insides soft. The taste? It tasted pretty good, but I'd be lying if I said it was the best I ever ate; after all, I live in the Bay Area. If anything, I think I just need to tweak the recipe to get the exact taste I want (for example, adding a little sugar for sweetness and a bit more rise, or adding some whole wheat flower to give some more flavor) but the basic look and taste was spot on.

I wouldn't call it perfect, but its pretty damn good. Definitely going to try again.

If the memoir sounds too outrageous to be true, it probably isn't. In the past week, two different memoirs have been outed as complete fabrications; in both cases, it amazes me that nobody was immediately suspicious of the far-fetched melodramas the authors attempted to sell.

Exhibit A: Misha Defonseca, six years old and alone, on a solo search for her Nazi-kidnapped mother and father in snowy WWII Europe, collapses from exhausten in the middle of the forest but is miraculously rescued and adopted by a pack of wolves. The story is beyond ludicrous; that it took ten years before the fabrication was revealed is, perhaps, even more amusing than the laughable obvious fiction of her tale. In fact, the woman, who claimed to be a Jewish victim of Nazi oppression, is the catholic daughter of a collaborator. What could possess someone to build a tale so outlandish is beyond me. I can understand, being six years old and orphaned, how a little girl could construct a fictional story around herself, but to keep up the charade, write a memoir, get a movie deal, and through it all stick to a story that apparently nobody ever questioned--- to bank upon the suffering of others, that's plain sick.

Just as foul is the second exhibit, the purported Margaret B. Jones, half white/half native american adopted drug dealer on the killing fields of South Central LA, a light-skinned Blood. "Ms. Seltzer told The Times last week, 'One of the first things I did once I started making drug money was to buy a burial plot.'"

Of course, as the New York Times says so blithely, "The problem is that none of it is true." The writer is actually Margaret Seltzer, who grew up in Sherman-fucking-Oaks, is white, and never had anything to do with the so-called gang life except, supposedly (and I think this is as believable as the tales she spun to begin with) stories she encounted while "working to reduce gang violence" and meeting "some gang members during a short stint she said she spent at 'Grant' high school" (apparently in SFV).

And what a cliche this woman is. How many white people claim to be half-native (and usually, half Navajo or half Cherokee) to gain some kind of authenticity among people of color? What is this obsession with native americans anyway? Further, this woman tries to justify her exploitation of real people who live through harrowing circumstances by saying "I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to." In effect, justifying her speaking-for by saying that nobody'd listen anyway.

There Will Be Blood is difficult to watch and an uncomfortable experience during most of the pivotal and climactic scenes. It is stark, powerful, and some of the power of all that comes from the sound design. Which is brilliant. The film opens with twenty minutes of no dialogue essentially, little sound (except for one big one, which I won't give away). In a sense, the discomfort of the film comes from the use and non-use of sound; the faraway sounds when a scene is far away, evoking deafness, or the blithering cadence of preaching, or the complete lack of any musical cue when something huge is about to happen. It just happens. Suddenly.

I thought I read an article that said this was on purpose, but now I can't seem to find it. I think it is brilliant, denying an audience used to musical hints (think of how thrillers have music that stops right before the scary scene, for example) and jarring them over and over with these sudden loud sounds. And fire and explosion. In between it all, the rhythmic, cyclic sound of pumping oil. The movie works because of the combination of the visuals, the incredible acting of Daniel Day Lewis, and the startling sound.

Which reminds me of Steve Martin's thoughts on being funny, wherein he outlines his beliefs and techniques for humor. Martin noticed, when watching Jack Leonard, that sometimes Leonard crack an audience up into raucous laughter by simply slapping his stomach. "One night," Martin says, "I noticed that several of his punch lines had been unintelligible, and the audience had actually laughed" without knowing what the joke was.

So Martin decided to deny his audiences these cues, to force them to build and build tension, until they were forced to release it at whatever time they could. "But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation," he says-- "This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told..." He removed the formula from his comedy.

There Will Be Blood does the same. It forces you to release all that tension and buildup of suspense, fear, nausea, disgust--- the emotions of seeing the descent of a human being. With no comforting cues to guide you.

I saw it snowing for the first time in years last week when I went to a work retreat near Tahoe City. Snow for me always means quiet; I have never seen city snow, only in and around quiet wilderness peaks. The floating, surreal quality of a gentle snowfall. Because I have seen it so rarely, it always seems unreal, a dream-interpretation of stories/books/movies and their snow.

But living this close to the ocean, fog is familiar, a wet wall in the distance, something you can never quite touch except with your eyes. Walk into it and it just seems the same distance away. This city is fog. Night fog, early morning fog, midday fog, it is all this city that creeps from warm(ish) sunny winter day to foggy wet in minutes. Weather defines a place like its smells, builds frames for memories to square into. Fog is home.

I wanted to accompany this post with a mix of songs, but with my mixer broken and my backup not working adequately (I'll spare the details), I've decided instead to just post the tracklist. Would've been nice to have an actual mix though.

2007 Mix

Lots of songs I'm sure you don't like--- but I do. Preserved the order I would've mixed them in (i.e. these aren't rankings).

1. Amy Winehouse - Rehab (Desert Eagle Remix)
2. Timbaland - Way I Are
3. Nelly Furtado - Say It Right
4. Diddy & Keisha Cole - Last Night
5. MIA - Boyz
6. J-Ro - You Call That Love
7. Blue Scholars - Joe Metro
8. Public Enemy - Long and Whining Road
9. Kanye West - Good Life
10. Lil Wayne - Hustler Musik
11. Ghostface - Rec Room Therapy
12. Keisha Cole, Missy, Lil Kim - Let It Go
13. Common - The Game
14. Kanye West - Glory
15. Brother Ali - Take Me Home
16. MIA - Paper Planes
17. UGK & Outkast - International Players Anthem

Favorite Albums

For me, the album I listened to the most was Graduation. A number of reviews I read said it was underwhelming, but I think it had enough good tracks for me to keep listening over and over. Later in the year, I gave a ton of listens to MIA's second album, as well as the Aretha Franklin unreleased album, which would be my second choice for best album. Even at (supposedly) not her best, Aretha is amazing. Perhaps because the tracks on here are rawer than her released ones.

I also really enjoyed both the Blue Scholars and Brother Ali albums. I'm no backpacker, but they were both enjoyable, well put-together. I think Brother Ali could use a lot better production (too many of his songs sound way too similar) but I liked it nevertheless.

Worst Album/Song

This was a bumper year for horrible music--- and this is coming from someone who appreciates Lil Wayne, put Diddy on his mixtape, etc. So when I set out to try and figure out who/what was the worst in music this year, there was a plethora of candidates.

To begin with, I think the Black Eyed Peas are so horrid they deserve lifetime achievement awards for terrible music. Fergie takes inanity to a whole other level. And Will.I.Am's singles this year were disgustingly bad. So congratulations, you two.

And then on to T-Pain. Wow. And chipmunk-voiced Akon. Yikes. Combine Akon with Wyclef (who has lost all relevancy, sorry: his bizarre diatribe in Chappelle's movie telling kids to write letters to the mayor to solve problems of inequity was the picture of a man who's lost touch), a Wu reference, a mediocre Weezy verse, plus an imitation of Nelly, and you end up with the worst song of the year: Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill).

The remix is just sad. Just makes me ask where the hell Raekwon's album is, because he sounds like he still got it.

Music Resolutions

This year, I was not nearly proactive enough in listening to a broad variety of albums and genres to expand my musical knowledge and taste. This year won't be the same: I'm starting by checking out each of the albums on Pitchfork's top albums list. And of course, always open to recommendations.

This is my attempt to write down, in raw form, what I have been thinking about in the past year: ideas, events, epiphanies, and so on.

On Eating

One major idea on my mind has been the notion that food and eating are now political statements. More specifically, what you choose to eat, in terms of where the raw ingredients come from (and the associated environmental, social, and labor impacts) to who prepares the food, to how the leftovers are dealt with--- all these things are important factors in understanding the impact of food. As a result, I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is his travels down the road of discovering and understanding food. Saw the excellent BBC mini-documentary about food by Meades as well, where children are asked "Where does meat come from" and not a one has any idea. This detachment from sources of food production is one factor I believe that contributes to both the downward spiral of health as well as the depressingly terrible environmental/social/labor impacts of modern eating.

SciFi, Futures, and the Present

This year, I (re)discovered science fiction as an outlet to comment on the present. I read Spook Country by Gibson, who explains that science fiction, at least good science fiction, is always about the present: extrapolating from what is going on around to construct dystopian futures, or, alternatively, constructing utopias that themselves riff on the present world. Personally, I'm a a fan of dystopias. I also read Rainbow's End, another difficult-to-categorize scifi book that is really about the dystopia hidden behind an apparently ideal future.

Of course, the pioneer here is Philip K. Dick, whose work at the time must've read like paranoid delusions. He is the visionary who brought us Blade Runner, The Minority Report, and others that foretell futures that reflect terrible directions the present is going.

Torture Camps

For the first time, the reality of our nation's inhumanity was revealed when CIA torture camp survivors spoke out about their experiences. Unbelievably, this year the political question was whether so-called waterboarding is torture; one man even waterboarded himself to see: his conclusions are telling.

It is unquestionable that the US tortures. Prisons inside the US aside, there can now be no question. The US tortures.

Failure of Terrorism Trials

And at the same time, efforts by the government to win convictions against terrorist suspects to trial have been absolute failures. In almost every case, the US was dealt with defeat because of flimsy evidence and, in fact, it seemed most times that the people who were being tried were guilty of nothing at all (like those in Miami, who's alleged plot was 'aspirational' rather than operational, according to the FBI). Things got bizzarre in the HLF case when initially the verdicts were announced as not-guilty, but then for some reason three jury members disputed that that was the verdict; I can think of no rational explanation for this other than the government pressuring them to ensure a mistrial instead of a not-guilty verdict. The latter would prevent re-prosecution. In any case, there was little success in the government's efforts at prosecuting people it accused of terrorism, and the overarching reason seems that none of the people were actual terrorists.

The Hacker's Role

This current regime, the surveillance society of torture we live in, would be impossible without the support of several classes of people, people who find themselves caught in a difficult role to navigate. The doctor administering/overseeing lethal injections (is it better to not do this? Certainly if the absence prevents executions from occurring, but if the alternative is a botched, even more painful death, what should a doctor do?), psychiatrists monitoring tortured prisoners (again, are they using their knowledge to enhance the torture? or are they protecting the human who is being destroyed bit-by-bit? it seems from firsthand reports it is unfortunately the former), and people like me, computer scientists who enable such things like total surveillance (data mining at the network backbone level, for example)--- are we protecting lives or enabling the government to oppress?

I think it is a difficult question. 2008 finds me thinking about this more and more. I have no answers yet, reading A Hacker Manifesto, which gives a neo-Marxist reading of the issue. Will have to think about it some more.

Nerddom and dorkitude have become mainstream. This, a masterful first novel, draws the connections between geekery and superstition, the intersections of family curses and comic book worlds. The neo spirituality of the internet era. A wikipedia worth of footnotes, combined with Diaz's distinct voice (and I mean that--- the book reads like he speaks), this book is a harbinger of a new fiction, a scifi of color (distinct from that of authors like Octavia Butler), a people's storytelling that combines the newly-almost-okness of being obsessed with some nerdery or other and the life of us, people of color at the intersection of our diasporas and the shrinking of the world into just one corner of an internet age.

But it is not just the way the story is told. The story itself, the antihero who is really a Hero, who, for all of us who were outcasts or nerds growing up, represents the person We Could Have Become. If things went a little different. Diaz nails it.

Verdict: Recommended.

Although the translation is sometimes difficult to read, and the vignettes are, at times contradictory or repetitive, this first part of Nawal El Saadawi's autobiography is essential. Chronicling the development of El Saadawi from a rebellious daughter (refusing all suitors, pursuing writing, education, and medicine even as those around her judge and put her down) to a budding doctor and activist, A Daughter of Isis, written during her exile after being placed on a death list by fundamentalists, shows how in some ways El Saadawi was an "accidental" activist--- she never really set out to be one, but because of her ethical views, her ideas of right and wrong, and her righteous anger, she became one.

That is not unique. Most people who change the world seem to not set out to do so, but are forced to fight for what they believe in because of their inner sense of justice, and because they see the injustice around them. El Saadawi wanted to write, but her writing and her life became forms of activism because she refused to accept gender, religious, and political discrimination and the multiplicity of ways in which these oppressions multiplied in her life.

Verdict: Recommended.

...again. Iteration #5, I think. I couldn't stay away too long.