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

she looks like an anorexic ghost… a little…

Apparently a new drug to battle obesity would have effects on children’s brains…

Other researchers have found that cannabinoid receptor blockers interfere with neural connectivity in rat brains — a phenomenon that in humans is associated with depression. The Food and Drug Administration has refused to approve Acomplia because it appears to cause anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.

…

This is especially troubling because the mice were young. “The juvenile stage of mice is parallel to what we know as the infant stage in humans, when the brain is plastic and prone to modification,” said Liu.

Beyond interfering with neurological development during the critical stage of infancy, could cannabinoid receptor blockers also keep adult brains from developing?

Alright now. Seriously. Diet drugs that could cause you to commit suicide? Cause anxiety? Stunt the growth of the brain? Is it really THAT HARD to stop eating fast food and eat a salad instead? To the point where we have to keep throwing money into this sort of ridiculous research?

I’m sure I could think of at least 100 other things that the money that goes toward this sort of ridiculous research would be better off put into. It’s like all the energy being put into being angry at at that Miley Cyrus girl.

I’ll admit - I didn’t even know who she was until about a week ago when my mom told me about her and her vanity fair “scandal”. The girl, who is am American teen icon, takes a hardly even sexualized photograph and the entire world turns upside down on her.

The two almost go hand in hand - we keep shoving money into diet research while showing off our under aged daughters perfect little bodies to create more media attention and to push more people to the need to use diet pills. …Okay, im stretching it a bit - but you see what I’m getting at right.

This world is f#$@ed! We put these girls up on pedestals idealizing their bodies. Then for some reason get angry when we sexualize these bodies… This is the world we live in - people get sexualized. Then we have girls trying to be like her going batshit insane because they’re using a million and a half different diet pills causing anxiety and depression. WTF.

So in the name of my generation. I vow never to diet or idolize Miley Cyrus. It’s a long road ahead, but I feel like I can make it.

Pineview Elementary school in Reedsburg, Wisconsin has a traditional “Wacky Week” and on the Friday of this week they encourage the kids to dress up as members of the opposite sex or senior citizens.

Well, wind of this outrageous display of disgustingnes this prompted rage from a Christian radio group, Crossroads in Milawaukee (which is syndicated across the state). They were pissed off because this elementary school was apparently promoting alternative lifestyles with this wacky day.

“We believe it’s the wrong message to send to elementary students,” said Jim Schneider, the network’s program director. “Our station is one that promotes traditional family values. It concerns us when a school district strikes at the heart and core of the Biblical values. To promote this to elementary-school students is a great error.”

Following the program the school started getting angry calls. Not surprisingly the school claimed that promoting the transgendered lifestyle was not their intent, but rather something FUN for the kids to do.

The kids picked the idea themselves, and now the theme will no longer be tolerated or done again at the school. What I absolutely hate about this is that the kids who may have caught wind of the situation will now think that the way you dress defines you as a person. Or that transgenderism is wrong. I think they need to make me the president or boss or whatever of this school district for a week so we can have a pride week and the kids can learn all about different sexualities, dressing how they want and taking pride in everything they do.

Then I’ll take on the christians. *growls* bring it!

Katie = Livid. A U.S funded health search engine blocked the word “abortion” because they’re crazy christians who think that 4 cells has a soul. It is the largest database on reproductive health and by blocking abortion they have hidden over 250 000 results. They do, however, suggest dancing around the issue and trying to find information on abortion by using terms such as “coat hanger” and “evil baby eating atheists”.

“The main function of their site is keyword search, and if you use a phrase that contains the word ‘abortion,’ it ignores it,” notes Melissa Just, the library director at the cancer research institute and hospital named City of Hope in Duarte, California. Just followed the conversation on a listserv and said she was outraged when she found out about the censorship incident.

“Even if you were trying to make an argument to someone that abortion is a bad idea for them — whether it’s a health risk, or you’re concerned about their mental well being, you wouldn’t be able to find articles about your claim,” she notes. “It’s shutting off both the pro and the con access.”

Here is the e-mail exchange with the librarian who discovered the loss of the term.

Thanks to Will - my main man in 9/11 conspiracies, for all the links and information. It would have taken me forever without him to find decent material.

Instead of simply regurgitating everything I’ve read (and I will admit - I didn’t know *why* I thought 9/11 wasn’t an inside job when I so proudly declared so at Easter dinner, so I have been reading quite a bit) I will link to the best of the best:

This one is probably the best from eSkeptic: 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

If you’re too lazy to read, and just want to listen - go here.

This one was the one that I read first - it’s really good if you just want a quick q and a. It covers all the common claims like the towers not falling over how they were supposed to (the one my mom and brother brought up at dinner.)

And another from popular mechanics. …Once you read these, or listen to these sites… it’s incredibly hard to believe that 9/11 was an inside job. I’m cynical, but I’m not paranoid.