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

Listen! “It’s too late… to apologize.”

I realize they are just a …”cool” boy band that will be mocked very soon… but I can’t stop listening to their CD. It makes me tingle. I think I listen to Apologize at least 6 times a day, and I’m not even exaggerating. I made them put the One Republic CD in at work, so it plays a couple times a day while I’m there, and I listen to it to and from work… and usually when I’m blow drying my hair in the morning, and before I go to bed. It’s such a good song. Apparently it’s over played on the radio, but honestly… I wouldn’t know. I don’t listen to the radio, except for CFUV.

In other pop-news, I also got Britney Spears’ new album, it’s a piece of junk except for the song Toy Soldier. I put it on at work one day and I had a lot of people come up asking who it was saying they really liked it. After I told them it was Britney they were a little embarrassed, but seriously - it’s a fantastic song.

I also got Craig David and James Blunt’s new albums. Neither of them is anything special. I really like James Blunt’s voice… and Craig David’s lyrics. So they were disappointing or anything. Just nothing to go ape-shit over, like the One Republic CD. So. Good.

I worked 11 hours today… and then went out with work people. Gah. I need a life. I made a lot of commission today though - and hit 22% PSP… which gives me an average of 25.5% for the weekend. Fuckers can’t fire me now. (Actually, I got talking to a couple guys who have been with the company for a really long time and they think I should go to human resources with the issue because apparently they can’t make that threat.)

Other pop-ish things in my life - Surf’s Up and Happy Feet = awesome. I’m addicted to Guitar Hero. I sit on facebook on my blackberry for hours. My blackberry is sexy as hell. (The blackberry Curve…mmm) And I’m on season 2 of Heroes, which I think is pretty much the best show in the entire world … next to Sex and the City, of course. Hey - at least I’m not reading cosmo and watching the OC… I could be worse.

At my new job, I’m a boy. I work with the boys, I drink with the boys, I talk like the boys and I have to try and fit in with the boys. I can easily walk up to the front and be with the girls, but that’s not my area. I don’t mind it at all, but I don’t get treated like a boy. I can’t go out with them when they’re picking up women, I can’t just do “drinks with the guys” with them, and I can’t talk about sex or porn with them. …Because I’m a girl.

This song is nothing really like that scenario, but it’s weird … I really don’t think guys can handle us being “like the boys”.

So hot. Such good dancing too. Ciara is my queen.

Fiddy might be taller, but Kanye is a better dresser, sexier, better singer, smarter, politically active… and the list goes on.

You may or may not know this about me… but I love Kanye West. Like, looove. His new CD, Graduation, came out yesterday and I got it today. I’ve been listening to it for like 4 hours straight. It is SO GOOD. So far, my favorite song is Flashing Light .

Kanye and 50 cent released their CD on the same day with a bit of a competition. Kanye is going to sell more, hardcore. Kanye reaches a wider spectrum of people, he doesn’t dress like a thug, he’s super sexy, his music is good, he’s got Mos Def and T-Pain on the album… So good. Fiddy just has one sort of sound, and he doesn’t even get very good beats going on, really. But, I’m a little biased here, I’m completely in love with Kanye, and haven’t liked Fiddy since this one song that drove me CRAZY. I don’t remember the name of the song though, I’ve blocked it from my memory. Although, Fiddy did give us the like “i love you like a fat kid love cake”. Nice. That was probably his greatest contribution to society, that one line.

I like this little paragraph talking about the two styles and men:

As on his previous releases, West measures his overflowing arrogance with self-conscious dollops of doubt, humor and vulnerability. Meanwhile, Fiddy’s outsized cockiness sounds like a comfortable artist repeating himself, afraid to tinker with his winning formulas.

BWA so true. Anyway, have a listen to that track, it’s really great. The whole album is. My little brown lover at work, Dhanung, has basically made me listen to Kanye, Craig David, Usher, Akon… etc. He’s trying to take some of the white-ness out of me.

Dhanung is the short one, Harry is the tall one. I love them both.

Speaking of Mos Def, you must check out this movie trailer, it looks absolutely hilarious. That could just be because I love Jack.

I promised my mother some new music that she could listen to. She is extremely worried that she is losing her “hip factor” because she hasn’t been able to keep up with all the cool new beats hitting the streets since I haven’t been updating. For now, my dearest mom, I must direct you to Squashed’s list over at appletree, he’s got some good tunes up over there this week. That will just have to do for now until I am able to get more time to upload my very own playlist. I have some fantastic playlists brewing in my head, but no time to formulate them.

However, at work the music is just… horrible. For example… picture this one minute… bananarama, the next… 1994 rap. It’s horrible. Seriously. It’s like all the 26 year olds are having a “flash back to high school” week at work. And it’s totally not flying with me.

Anyway, I will be getting some music up, and a few posts about atheist groups, and possibly one about the environment. My friend Bang is convinced that a Smart Car is actually worse for the environment than a hummer, so we’re going to take a look into the logistics behind that.

OH! bang makes music, so i’ll post some of his stuff too (after I ask him if that’s okay…) so that will be new fun music to listen to too for all y’all.