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By Katie Kish, December 23, 2008 4:18 am

The Best and the Worst of 2008

It’s that time!

CDs

5. Sarah McLachlan – Closer: The Best Of … I’ve always loved S.M. I used to joke with Sam that I have a “Sarah Sense” because I’d always seem to find her music on the radio. She has probably been the most consistently admired and loved singers since I was like 10.
4. Josh Martinez – World Famous Sex Buffet …I love a little hiphop
3. Mr. Scruff – Ninja Tuna
2. Bright Eyes – Cassadaga
1. Girl Talk – Feed The Animals …I read an article recently about “girl talk killing music” because he uses clips of essentially illegal bits to make his music…but gets around it because they’re all online samples and stuff. …His mixes are amazing.

That category is always the hardest, other bands who released beauties: Tokyo Police Club, cat power, tv on the radio, the walkmen, mates of state, british sea power, …and others. sigh.

Movies

5. The Dark Knight – I’m still having a hard time deciding if I like this movie because it was so entertaining and so like…comic book looking, or if its because Heath Ledger died so there was a huge hype around his acting. I’ll say this – he did a great job. But some people were saying he should be given an award for it…even though he’s dead. I don’t really think that’s necessary. Anyway, I think the movie was really good. It was dark, but it was also a lot like the Batman with poison Ivy in it – it had that cool comic book feel to it.
4. The Strangers – this movie was weird.  …I love Liv Tyler and it scared me to death.
3. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian – i think CON are really cute stories. Despite the obvious religious undertones to them, I really really like them.
2. Sex and the City – much anticipated and not disappointed …although I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much in a theater as I did when I saw this movie. It may have been the fact that we were drinking wine in the front row, so we were a little tipsy, or it just could have been that it was so tragic to see the girls is such sad situations. Sigh.
1. Wall-E – not only was it mine and John’s first date movie…it has a great message about the environment and mocks our consumerism. Which I always like It was by far the best movie John and I could have seen on a first date. Robot love? Seriously, it doesn’t get any better.

Books

5. In Search of Time by Dan Falk
4. The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
3. A Madman Dreams Of Turing Machines by Janna Levin
2. Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg
1. Factory Girls by Leslie T Chang

Gadgets:

5. Nokia N95 8 gb – My new phone! 8 GB worth of space, Wifi, 5 mp camera with carl zeiss optics, radio, mobile e-mail, vision tv/radio, a gorgeous screen with DVD like video capabilities, 35mm headphone jack, 8 gb internal memory, gps with preloaded maps… and best of all, it doesn’t have a full keyboard. I was so sick of the full keyboard, bulky shape and “smart phone” look of my blackberry. The Nokia looks like a normal phone, but totally does more. Its great.
4. HTC Diamond – my brothers phone… it’s sleeker and more easily customizable thank the iPhone. The only reason I didn’t get this over my phone is that it is a touch screen. They seem to be all the craze right now, but I just don’t like them.
3. Flip MinoHD – a tiny HD camcorder for only like $200… mostly because it only has 4gb worth of space…
2. The nikon D90 – *drools* an HD camera. …
1. Optoma Pico PK-101 – the MP3 player projector… I really need to get me one of these. Its the size of a regular iPod, plugs in and plays your movies on the wall. …awesome.

Games
I dont really do a whole lot of game playing…

5. Wii boxing…i played it once
4. Rock Band …I pretty much rock at everything except the drums. But…i’ll get to those in 2009
3. I started playing WoW a couple days ago, i’ve played twice
2.Sims!…one of the expansion packs came out this year, i dont remember which one. But thanks to john i have ALL the expansion packs and have WAY too many options. Its awesome.
1. Spore…. cooool

Hits of the financial crisis:

5. AIG’s credit fiasco
4. No more Fords and Chevys – the Detroit big three went belly up! the earth is happy, but hummer drivers are not.
3. Citibanks 75 000 job cuts
2. Greenspan – people are living in tents!
1. Iceland …is broke, needing to take billions of dollars from the IMF, Sweden, Germany, Denmark and Finland.

Sciencey Stories:

5. The Invisibility Cloak
4. Bigfoot is a rubber suit with dead animals inside of it
3. a squid with elbows
2. something tugging at the universe
1. The Large Hadron Collider

Absolutely Hilarious

5. The McCain green screen challenge – McCain did an interview in front of a green background, prompting Colbert to challenge his audience to come up with the best scenes to put McCain into
4. Letterman to McCain “You don’t show up for me, America doesn’t show up for you!”…after McCain stood up Letterman, and was shown at another interview instead, it was the core of Lettermans jokes for weeks.
3. The writers strike… so many late night talk show hosts were SO strapped for content. …hahahaha suckers.
2. is america ready for a woman president? – Samantha Bee as Carrie Bradshaw
1. Tina as Palin…and she didn’t change any words.

Personal Worsts:

5. Working in retail – even though I was the boss, i hated it. i hated bending over backwards for jerk ass customers and seeing people spend 800 dollars on clothes. I hated fitting plus women for bras in the summer when they smelled funny and I hated answering to my overly bitchy and micromanaging district manager. She treated me like a moron. I hated that job.
4. I miss a lot of people including Shaneka, Mark, Caitlin, Torrie, Ashley, Dan, Patrick, Karl and family
3. My currently housing situation – my roommates are annoying, they turn the heat up to over 30 (literally!) and leave messes in the kitchen all the time. My door doesn’t really lock and I’m an hour out of the city. I can’t walk around with no pants on and I have to pay to wash my clothes.
2. The York U strike…dont even get me started
1. My grandma died and it was the sadest of all sad.

Personal Bests:

5. Working at acculink where I met Christine and Stacey – two of the best women I’ve ever met in my life. Plus it made me value the 4/10hr shifts a week thing, and loved being on midnights.
4. Moving to Toronto in June. Although I had to shack up with Allen for quite sometime, I love living here and will be sad if I ever have to move out of the city.
3. Getting a job at CFI… my job is to advance science and secularism in society. How cool is that?
2. I’ve lost 20 lbs in the past 2 months! woo!! i love weight watchers…except now the skin on my belly feels really weird, like loose. its kinda gross.
1. June 24th – John and I had our first kiss and were a “couple” by the next day. awe, <3

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By Katie Kish, December 20, 2007 4:40 pm

It’s nearly 2008. I think my favorite part about the last couple weeks in December is looking back at the past year, and seeing what came out of it that was definitely worth the time and effort put into it. So here it is – the my tops lists:

Top 10 albums:

1. LCD Soundsystem – 45:33
2. Rascal Flatts – Still Feels Good
3. Craig David – Trust Me
4. Pinback – Autumn of Seraphs
5. Deerhoof – Friend Opportunity
6. RJD2 – The Third Hand
7. Panda Bear – Person Pitch
8. The Six Parts Seven – Casually Smashed to Pieces
9. Elliot Smith – New Moon
10. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible

Runners up definitely – Feist, Radiohead, M.I.A and Of Montreal
Actually, i think this list of top albums might actually destroy mine… Not only is it a good list, but it’s also 100% Canadian. Woo! Feist!

Top 10 songs:

1. Apologize – Timbaland ft One Republic
2. Hot Stuff – Craig David
3. Toy Solider – Britney Spears
4. Alaska – Camera Obscura
5. The Way I am – Ingrid Michaelson
6. Bartender – T-Pain ft Akon
7. +81 – Deerhoof
8. Blueberry Tree Part II – Husky Rescue
9. My Moon My Man – Feist
10. The Past Is a Grotesque Animal – Of Montreal

Top 5 movies:

1. The Lives of Others
2. Little Miss Sunshine
3. Sweeny Todd
4. Amazing Grace
5. Surfs Up… fo reelz

Top 5 personal moments:

1. Moving home from BC… I miss BC a lot, but it is good to be home. And it looks like I’ll be here for a while, and that’s okay.
2. Getting alcohol poisoning. …I know, it doesn’t really sound all that good, but honestly – it made a good story and has terrified me into drinking less and less each time I go out.
3. The CFI leadership conference. It opened my eyes to a lot of things, introduced me to a lot of people and gave me an opportunity to converse with a lot of open minded, like minded people my age for a few days.
4. My first night out with Future Shop folks. Shit. Show. I established quite the name for myself that night. Gah.
5. Getting to meet Baby AJ! The birth of Baby Ella!

Top 3 games:

1. Oblivion!
2. Guitar Hero 2 – seriously, 3 isn’t really that much better. There are some good songs, but… meh.
3. Bioshock!

I hate halo 3 and the orange box. …so i dont even want to hear it. call of duty 4… it’s more than decent though. As is Assassins Creed, but I haven’t played it enough to put it in a top list.

Top 5 TV shows:

1. Heroes!
2. Flight of the Conchords
3. Planet Earth
4. Yo Gabba Gabba
5. The Office

Top 4 under-reported news stories:

1. Somalia … for some reason, few people knew about the + 1 million Somalians fleeing from their homes – while the UN sits back and watches.
2. Mansions in Luanda … Post-Civil war Angola had an economic growth rate 12.5% higher than China’s 11.5% rate. Thank you oil reserves!
3. 100 000 troops … Lined up along the Ethiopian and Eritrea border, just waiting to have at it, much like the crisis that happened there in 2002.
4. More reasons why teachers need to have background checks, character tests and need to be watched closely. Seriously.

Top 5 books:

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
2. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
3. The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
4. Dirt – The Erosion of Civilizations by David Montgomery
5. Busting the Limits of Time by Martin Rudwick

Top 5 environmental stories:

1. Walmarts green appeal. …They’re still not perfect. They still encourage suburban sprawl. They still suck money out of people. They still pay employees shitty wages. But they are doing great initiatives for the environment. That is all.
2. Moving from “environmentalists kill the economy” to creating green jobs to increase economic growth. Creating new economic sectors that cater directly to the hippies. Solar panel companies, organic farms… the new green economy should create over 6 million jobs by 2015.
3. The world’s 15 greenest cities
4. The Great Biofuel Hoax
5. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its 4th Assessment Report in which it declared that global warming is “unequivocal” and that it was “very likely” that most of the observed warming was caused by man. More than 2500 scientists worked on the report. The panel’s work was recognized with a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which it shared with Al Gore.

Top 5 natural disasters:

1. Bangladesh Cyclones

2. Mexico Floods

3. Hurrican Felix

4. Greece Forest Fires

5. Peru Earthquake

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By Katie Kish, January 26, 2007 5:03 am

I had a nap at 8 pm and rolled out of bed at around 11:30, that was probably a bad call because now it’s 4:30 am and I’m still not a bit tired. I have written a 3000 word essay on women and Islam for a class that I had last semester. :S oh dear.  Long story. And I called my friend from camp who I used to be completely and utterly attached too. Her and I lived together for 2 or 3 summers in a row and did everything together. Then we drifted apart a bit – but it turns out she works midnights at some random hotel in London so I called her and we chatted. I miss her. Other than that, I’ve decided pm napping is a pretty bad idea! So here’s the random 10 for this week… followed by a lot of links.

1. Eisley – Beautiful
2. Tanacious D – Keilbasa
3. Bouncing Souls – Kids and Heroes
4. Spearhead – Stay Human
5. The Roots – Rolling With Heat
6. Dirty Pretty Things – Deadwood
7. Pink Floyd – Speak to Me
8. Oscar Peterson – Blues for JR
9. Gin Blossoms – Till I Hear It From You
10. Yeah yeah yeahs – While My Guitar Genty Weeps (yeeea!)

I love ellen. I watched her all last summer, every single day. I would wake up JUST to watch Ellen. I never worked until usully 2 pm… but I would wake up at 10 to watch Ellen. And this clip at Pandagon had me roaring, I was worried I was going to wake up Dan, but man… it is SO funny. I LOVE ellen. Lesbians are the best. And on a more serious note I like the post that preceeded that video – I realize that most people probably read pandagon, so my linking without any personal analysis is pretty pointless… but this is my not caring face — … Here is my personal analysis – listen to the album "Impeach My Bush" by Peaches.

So last week there was the big "blog for choice day" that I didnt blog for until the following day and it wasn’t really a big post on it. Anyway, Jessica points out that they’ve been "outted".. by this site. Honestly, I wish I would have posted on pro-choice day just so that I’d have had a better shot of being listed on the baby killers list. …

Honestly, this whole … using graphic pictures, and telling us that we’re killing babies is seriously getting old. We’re not killing babies. It’s not a baby, its a bunch of cells. Abortions save lives. How about instead you attack the government that actually is killing hundereds of innocent people every day because of the wars they’re starting. Or how about concentrating some energy on aids, or combating epidemics in the world instead of wasting your time preaching your slanderous nonsense to people who have scientific evidence that they’re doing nothing but preventing the growth of cells to better accomodate for a life already in progress.

Gordo’s Thursday links are my absolute favorite post that shows up on his blog every week. Seriously. My favorite. Followed by his video post… because it wastes my time and I like my time being wasted. Anyway… this week he linked to the most adorable videos I have seen in a long time. It makes me miss my invisible friend so much. Lily was the best friend a girl could have had. I wish I had been a little more creative and given her more of a personality and look, but we still had a lot of fun together.

Anthony sent me a post of his on religion  that is WELL worth the time to read. He had me hooked on the first sentence.

For someone who doesn’t believe in God, I think about God a lot.

I just love atheists who are willing to talk about god, and religion without being arrogant and jerkish and intolerante. And in the comments Brent reminds me of why I loved reading his posts so much (so I need to start doing that again, I will blog roll him. he was on there, but when the new one got put up i forgot to make him a button.)

That is NOT a bad thing. Our material universe is unfathomably huge and
indescribably fascinating all on it’s own – without adding magical
fantasy-land fairy tales to it.

And speaking of Brent he has up a video much like Rick Mercer‘s Talking to Americans (heart!) it’s not QUITE as funny, but it’s still pretty darn funny. My favorite part is "how many sides does a triangle have…?" "There’s no sides,… one?" Its like that quote from I <3 Huckabees "Have you ever transcended space and time?" "Yes. No. Uh, time, not space… No, I don’t know what you’re talking about."

Also from Gordo, but at Liberal Avanger (just to toss up the links a little bit, he posted it at Appletree too) he did what looks like a good post on Cheney, I didn’t actually read it, I just looked at the pictures. And ps – the bedrocktruth fellar in the comments is a douche and a half.

SO MANY LINKS!

At republic numero uno Adorable Girlfriend has a post up about parenting that is absolutely silly. I’m going to have to go ahead and agree wtih AG that people who make kissing seem like a horrible thing to do … are idiots. And telling boys that girls have cooties? Come on now. Why not teach them about sex? And about gender differences? About what they should and shouldn’t ignore? …But just meanly telling them "no!" … That doesn’t explain anything.

And at the next republic there is a fantastically written post about Africa and homophobia. The best is the "the devil made him do it" part. You know, I always figured my gay friends had been taken over by the devil.

And finally, because I can, I am going to steal this mini meme from Kathy.

This Moment: roaring
Your Shoes: Cons!!
Craving: oranges
The State of Your Home: shit-hole (is that one or two?) … dirty
Annoyed By: chewing
Noise In the Background: soundtrack (for requiem for a dream)
Really Want To: travel
Thinking About: *blushes*
Smelling: moisturizer
Favorite Product In Office Supply Aisle: staplers
Don’t Ever Want To: drown
Your Eye Color: blue
The Weather: …overcast
Have Never Tried: decluttering
Think Everyone Should Try: singing
Last Vacation Destination: Ontario!
The Last Thing You Had to Drink: Water
Your Bad Habit: stumbling
What You’re Going To Do Now: blog

That was suprisingly hard for me to do. I’m one of those people that writes like… a paragraph for questions like that because I think one word answers are so boring.

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By Katie Kish, January 23, 2007 11:45 am

This post by Marc at Punkass is wicked. I never thought I’d actually find a reason to tell people that I had seen Rosemary’s Baby for the first time 2 years ago – but yeah, I saw it, and I’m fuckin’ stoked that I’ve actually found someone else who saw so much in it in terms of patriarchy.

In Rosemary’s Baby, this cult of satanism is nothing more than
a cult of patriarchy. Rosemary’s discovery of its machinations is
really a discovery of the way she’s been used and controlled by the men
around her. Had she wised up sooner to the total disregard men of
authority have for women, she might’ve been able to save the world. But
she didn’t, and her misguided trust in those men and the institutions
they built for themselves allowed the anti-christ to be born.

Stellar.

Oh and PS I realize that I didn’t post for "blog for choice day" I feel pretty bad about it. But I couldn’t… get myself in the right frame of mind to do it I guess. I have a lot of really great stories I could tell about abortions in my life with friends, family and myself – some are completely heartbreaking. I really should have blogged about it, but every time I started a post I didn’t feel like I was doing my thoughts justice. Maybe I’m just self deprecating a little too much – but please know, I am pro-choice, and I did try to make a post, but… it just wouldn’t come out. I have posted about it before. I just can’t find the post.

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By Katie Kish, January 23, 2007 11:09 am

I hadn’t realized how many movies I haven’t seen until I saw this year’s Oscar nominations. …I plan on spending the next 3 or 4 days watching all the movies that are listed. I do think that everything Little Miss Sunshine was nominated for should win. Like Alan Arkin as best supporting actor and DEFINITELY Abigail for best supporting actress – that little girl was so freaking good in that movie.

I’m really excited to watch Pan’s Labyrinth. The girl who was cutting my hair yesterday (yea yea, i’ll put pictures up when I get home this afternoon. I have to stay at work until 2 because of a stupid meeting I have with my boss. Maybe I’m getting fired.) said that it was really good. And my supervisor said it was the only movie that had actually made her emotionally uncomfortable… So I’m excited to watch it. I love movies that mess with the audience’s head.

I am really disappointed that The Devil Wears Prada was nominated for so many awards. The movie was f’n horrible. My exact words to my mom when we left the theater were "The only good thing about that movie was when the girl got hit by the car." And 2 guys 3 cars over agreed. Horrible movie. Although – Ann Hathaway should be the new Queen of the world, once Julie Andrews dies.

I also hope that Gore doesn’t win the documentary shit just because of all the hype around it. Jesus Camp is much more deserving. It’s not that I value revealing the truths of religion and its effects on kids more than I value exposing global warming and showing the truth behind it – its just that Gore’s documentary was so basic. And it didn’t have anything new, shocking or horribly interesting. People just had to wait for someone famous to come along to tell them what to think about climate change and to give them the facts in the most common way possible. Jesus Camp is at least original, and moving.

Also, I don’t want Pirates 2 to win for visual effects. Although I *loved* the movie because of my infatuation with Johnny Depp and his… dirty pirate ways… I kept thinking through the entire thing "wow, the visual effects are horrible"… Because it’s just so animated. At times they were sort of cool, but most of the time it just reminded me that I was watching a Disney movie.

Anyway, within the next week I’ll be watching The Queen, Babel (even though I hate I hate Brad Pitt…), Pan’s Labyrinth,  Flags of our Fathers, The Departed, Dream Girls and Cars. I guess my L Word trip will have to be put on pause for a little while… so will studying. err.