Yes, it's that time of decade again, when another cyclic division of linear time passes "Go" - and probably forgets to ask for that $200. And time to look back, as fondly as possible, on the twelve months gone. Or not. I'd planned to post this on New Year's Eve, but 2007 was one of those why-be-bothered years in general.

Plus, I'm in New York for the next week or so and have 1) more free time than usual, 2) decent internet access compared to central Pennsylvania, thanks to ubiquitous wi-fi connections, and 3) little else to do while spending time at Sean's parents' house in Brooklyn. I'm at the keyboard. Let's go.

Politically, it looks as though 2007 was primarily looking forward to 2008 - and the national election which is still 300 odd days away. But who can blame anyone for wanting the Bush administration out of the way as soon as humanly possible? And if that means that we have an earlier primary season than ever before in human history, so be it. Just don't expect me to be very interested. The Bush admin is still doing enough damage that it needs to be monitored as closely as possible - the potential replacements can wait.

So, yeah - the past year saw far too many potentially important people devoting more time to campaigning than actually doing their jobs. And those that weren't preoccupied with their career paths - like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid - were such useless excuses for politicians that they might as well not exist. Indeed, the country would be far better off if neither did exist - their places might be filled by people who could do slightly more than occupy space and waste limited natural resources by sustaining their miserable excuses for human life.

Then again, if they were replaced, it'd probably be by more Democrats - and "Democrat" should soon be appearing in thesauruses around the globe as a synonym for abortive, bootless, counterproductive, expendable, feckless, futile, incompetent, ineffectual, inept, pointless, unproductive, valueless, weak, and/or worthless - and translations thereof in every language that has produced a thesaurus.

The GOP, meanwhile, has spent the year attempting to give new meaning to the words "reckless", "regressive", and "venal" - they can't really further refine the definitions of "avaricious" or "short-sighed", can they? With the likes of Huckabee on the national stage, it remains to be seen whether the definition of "witless" needs to be re-examined.

Enough commentary, on with the lists!

Over-hyped news stories of the year:

1. The "success" of the "surge". Actually, this shouldn't really be considered "over-hyped" so much as wholly invented.
2. The inevitability of Hillary Clinton. Not only do I think she's far from inevitable, this has been going on ever since the Clinton's left the White House. Give it a rest and see what happens.
3. The visit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A non-event surrounding a nonentity, surrounded by a lot of nonsense.
4. The unveiling of Windows Vista. *yawn*
5. The arrest of dissidents in Burma. This was more a transparent diversion for Bush's address to the UN than a news item. And, Mr. President, Burma doesn't exist - it's Myanmar. What next? Conflict in Constantinople? Riots in Rhodesia? Panic in Persia?

Over-hyped entertainment stories of the year:

1. The death of Anna Nicole Smith. Under-reported sidelight: Paternity rivals, Howard K. Stern and Larry Birkhead, had threesomes with Ms. Smith and may have been sometime lovers themselves. TMI: Abscesses of the buttocks were one of the contributing factors to Ms. Smith's timely demise.
2. The sentencing of Paris Hilton. Under-reported sidelight: Dr. Charles Sophy, the shrink who got Hilton sprung from prison due to an undisclosed "medical condition" also testified that she was "not capable of any meaningful participation" in the civil suit brought against her by diamond heiress Zeta Graff. TMI: Hilton's only known "medical condition" is the occasional flare-up from her herpes simplex infection.
3. The Trump-O'Donnell feud. Under-reported sidelight: No one cares about bitch-slapping between a woman whose mouth is larger than her brain and a man whose wallet is larger than his penis - the story was only covered to broadcast the insults they traded. TMI: Everything each said about the other was true.
4. The exploits of Lindsay Lohan. Under-reported sidelight: Nothing about Lindsay Lohan was under-reported. TMI: Lohan kicked off the year by snagging an hors d'oeuvres from a tray at a Hollywood bash, popping it in her mouth, shrieking "This tastes like shit", and spitting it back onto the tray. Classy.
5. The plight of Ellen Degeneres' pets. Under-reported sidelight: Degeneres paid $3000 to have Iggy, a Brussels Griffon, trained to peacefully coexist with cats - to no apparent avail. TMI: Brussels Griffons, notoriously difficult to train, often have chronic eye and respiratory problems. Great: a wheezy dog with runny eyes.

Yes, I omitted Britney Spears - not in the spirit of "leave Britney alone!" though. It's more that watching her descent has been almost as entertaining as an animated short based on a Flannery O'Connor story.

Elsewhere in pop culture...

Albums worth listening to last year:

1. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
2. Kanye West - Graduation
3. Oppenheimer - Oppenheimer
4. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
5. M.I.A. - Kala
6. The Good, the Bad & the Queen - The Good, the Bad & the Queen
7. The National - Boxer
8. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
9. Kaiser Chiefs - Yours Truly, Angry Mob
10. Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

Films worth catching last year:

1. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
2. Michael Clayton
3. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
4. The Kingdom
5. Eastern Promises
6. Rendition
7. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
8. Across the Universe
9. Redacted
10. Gone Baby Gone

Juno would probably be something of a runner-up. I have not yet seen In the Valley of Elah, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Into the Wild, or Away from Her - or Ratatouille.

Meh - that's probably enough for now. Happy New Month.

Tags: duly noted, liszt, media, movie madness, muzik, politburo, pop kulture
humour: reflective

I'm not a huge Death Cab fan - though "Brothers on a Hotel Bed" and "Marching Bands of Manhattan" aren't bad when you're in the mood for that sorta thing - but I can't say I'd approve of border officials preventing anyone's music from entering the states, especially the music of an American artist - even Clint Black. Chris Walla, Death Cab's producer and guitarist, recently completed a solo album, Field Manual, and was doing the final mixing in Vancouver. When the tapes and hard drives of the final mix were being brought back into the US, they were confiscated by Homeland Security.

According to Josh Rosenfeld, president of Walla's label, Barsuk, "On the album he takes more than a few shots at US policy and there is one song directed toward a particular US senator who will remain nameless. He's a relatively political guy, but it's not like he's out there chaining himself to the Federal Building or anything." According to Rosenfeld, the border official originally said that they'd hold the drives for twenty-four hours for analysis, "but then we haven't gotten the hard drive back. ... The latest word is that it's going to be 30 days, but I'm not sure. I've never had an experience like this before."

As Walla himself put it in his blog:

My solo record is coming along nicely, despite the fact that the master drive was confiscated by US Homeland Security at the border (much of the record was recorded between Vancouver and Victoria, BC). I'm told it's at "computer forensics in Quantico" but I wouldn't be able to tell you what that means in any real way; you see, there's exactly no customer service element to our federal government. Like, if you subscribe to Qwest or Comcast or something for your Internet service, and that service goes out, you can call them and complain and something happens (discounted bill; resumed service; credit; sincere apology; insincere apology; et cetera). But I'm here to tell you that if the drive containing your solo record is confiscated at the border, the feds don't have to do shit for you. And, in fact, they don't.

It's not a Kafka novel, and I'm not a prisoner at Guantanamo. My life isn't so bad. But still, this situation is a concrete and real reminder of what fuels the world we live in: It's fear and mistrust and suspicion. And oil.

Geez, Chris, those're the sorta sentiments that'll get your album confiscated. It's not clear, however, why the tapes and hard drives were commandeered. Maybe the DHS guys just found something like a hard drive alarming enough to panic. Let's not forget Boston's Lite-Brite Horror or the terrifying Chick with Christmas Lights on Her Chest.

Walla's recording studio in Seattle, by the way, is called The Hall of Justice. Good luck with that one, heh.

Tags: muzik, politburo
humour: annoyed

Via king_duncan, this was too... indescribable not to pass on:


Bea Arthur and Rock Hudson Turning On

And while we're at it, this somewhat prophetic sketch from Mad TV:

The Anna Nicole Show

Tags: muzik, tee-vee
humour: indescribable

So it looked like the "resignation" of Donald Rumsfeld was going to effectively upstage the Democratic "sweep" of Congress - as planned. Turns out, they needn't have bothered - indeed, Rummy could probably have kept his job. Britney Spears and Kevin Federline have managed to shove both the Democrats and the White House below the fold.

While I think I prefer Fed-Ex as K-Fed's new nick, this monicker might be more to the point, yo:

Tags: muzik, photo/graphic, political diversion
humour: amused

From roina_arwen, who gave me a J (so to speak):

Comment and I'll give you a letter: name five songs that start with that letter. I went to my playlist, which I thought might've been a bit of a cheat - then I thought maybe restricting reponses to one's playlist might be more interesting/embarrassing. Well, relatively...

1. "Jealous Guy" - John Lennon
2. "Jacqueline" - Franz Ferdinand
3. "Junkieee... Julieee..." - Blood on the Wall
4. "John and Jimmy" - Modern Life Is War
5. "Just Lose It" - Eminem

Tags: muzik, teh internets
humour: um, yeah...

Well, I doubt that 2005 will be a year that's too fondly remembered by much of anyone. I, for one, am very glad to see the back of it - though I must admit that any year with a Bush in the White House has to be among the lowest years in human history.

So I'm going to turn my back on a lot of the most dire transgressions of this pitiful excuse we've got for a government and focus more on year-end meme-type things. Yes, this is blatant escapism. Yes, this is me burying my head in the sand. Yes, this is me doing my damnedest to deny the grim reality of life in the twety-first century. And what better way, for a start, than through pop culture - and lists?

Here, then, for what it's worth are a few of my top picks for 2005:

Pop/Rock Albums:

1. Kaiser Chiefs - Employment
2. M.I.A. - Arular
3. Bloc Party - Silent Alarm
4. Franz Ferdinand - You Could Have It So Much Better
5. Gorillaz - Demon Days
6. Death Cab for Cutie - Plans
7. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
8. Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth
9. Coldplay - X&Y
10. Madonna - Confessions on a Dance Floor

Compilations/Greatest Hits:

1. Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon
2. Eurythmics - The Ultimate Collection
3. Talking Heads Brick
4. The Essential Michael Jackson
5. Eminem - Curtain Call

Soundtracks:

1. Six Feet Under, Vol. 2: Everything Ends
2. Batman Begins
3. The Squid and the Whale
4. Elizabethtown
5. Brokeback Mountain

Defying Description:

Patti Smith - Horses: Legacy Edition

Films:

1. Crash
2. Mysterious Skin
3. Syriana
4. The Squid and the Whale
5. Good Night, and Good Luck
6. A History of Violence
7. Der Untergang (Downfall)
8. Capote
9. Kung Fu Hustle
10. Brokeback Mountain

Honorable Mention: The Devil's Reject's

On DVD:

1. Hotel Rwanda (Widescreen Edition)
2. Bad Education (Original Uncut NC-17 Edition)
3. Frank Miller's Sin City (Recut, Extended, Unrated)
4. The Incredibles (Widescreen 2-Disc Collector's Edition)
5. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (Unrated Extended Edition)

Books - Fiction:

1. Saturday - Ian McEwan
2. The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood
3. The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes - Caleb Carr
4. The Shroud of the Thwacker - Chris Elliott
5. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman

Honorable Mention: Haunted - Chuck Palahniuk

Books - Nonfiction:

1. Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK - Lamar Waldron, Thom Hartmann
2. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 - Steve Coll [this should actually be in the next list - see honkytonkblues comment below]
3. Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World - Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian
4. The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
5. Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis - Jimmy Carter
6. The Truth (with jokes) - Al Franken
7. Don't Get Too Comfortable - David Rakoff
8. A Man Without a Country - Kurt Vonnegut
9. 1491 : New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles C. Mann
10. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin

Best Nonfiction Read This Year, But Published Last Year:

Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil - Michael C. Ruppert
Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA, the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network and the Compromising of American Intelligence - Joseph J. Trento

Best Fiction Likely To Have Been Read This Century:

The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson


Finally, the Find-your-first-post-from-each-month-and-paste-the-first-sentence-of-each meme:

JAN - Interestingly, we haven't heard much from the Religious Right in relation to disaster relief, have we?
FEB - After more than a year, I have reached the end of Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle.
MAR - I posted a broken link here last night, which was just brought to my attention.
APR - In a website announcement today, bloggers at the conservative website Powerline claim that they have convincing evidence that House Representative Tom DeLay is in fact a Democratic forgery.
MAY - Last week, anti-abortion extremist Otis O'Neal "Neal" Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show on FOX News radio.
JUN - So I had my (first) interview with Virgin yesterday.
JUL - At last, the epic and pointless series examining The Wertz Generation's Top Fifty Films comes to a close.
AUG - This post is too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war and a vital debate about UN reform.
SEP - There's an excellent article in Newsweek at the moment by Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey
OCT - Well, the new computer is up and running, the printer, scanner, and most of the old software is installed (Adobe Premiere is fine, but Photoshop requires the original installation disk, which is in New York), and about half of my documents have been transfered.
NOV - Last week, Reporters sans frontiers published their annual World Press Freedom Index.
DEC - I'll publish the al Jazeera memo.

That was pointless.


Okay, 2005 - you can fuck off now. You won't be missed.

Tags: bibliophilia, duly noted, movie madness, muzik, teh internets
humour: contemplative

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to...

1. Fix You - Coldplay
2. All These Things That I've Done - The Killers
3. Pride (In the Name of Love) - U2
4. What Did I Ever Give You? - Kaiser Chiefs
5. This Modern Love - Bloc Party
6. Michael - Franz Ferdinand
7. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon

The tag stops here.

Tags: muzik, teh internets