The Dumb That Was 2007

To sum up the worst of 2007, here I go,in no particular order, a mix of dumb and bad things that happened in 2007 (to me personally or to the world at large):

• My dad died. Not really unexpected (he was 72) but still sucked.
• Not so much me leaving Book Gallery, but the massive debacle that the last week turned into.
• After Dems take over in the elections, drive their party ratings into the mud with non-binding resolutions, hasty back downs, and bills that increase spending and taxes.
• Multiple mass shootings by angry young men. Most of them happening in the past month. Only now are some news agencies realizing that making spectacles of such things might create copy cats.
• Hills Have Eyes 2. Shrek 3. Spiderman 3. PotC 3. One Missed Call. I Am Legend. The Eye. Shutter. Hostel 2. 28 Weeks Later. The Golden Compass. Evan Almighty. Die Hard 4. No Country for Old Men. Stardust. Sweeney Todd. Transformers. I seriously can't think of a movie that doesn't have Judd Appatow somewhere involved that wasn't a sequel, remake, or adaptation from a book.
• The additional fact that I am supposed to care about the writer's strike. The additional additional fact that this strike hasn't been going on for 4-5 years, apparently.
• D&D4.0. Bite. My. Ass. The first two editions and revisions lasted for 20 years.
• An ongoing election campaign that is idiotic, wasteful and pointless and is probably going to become standard procedure. Watch as the elected officials ignore their jobs to get elected some more.
• An ongoing war that is costly, increasingly under fire, and increasingly forgot about by the average American.
• Apparently students tell Ray Bradbury what his books mean and how he is wrong. Similar situations crop around other books and movies.
• Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
• War on Drugs reached something like its half trillion dollar mark this year. Cocaine still alive and kicking.
• Lost my two rats.
• Entire summer of questionable budget due to promised positions failing for both Sarah and myself.
• I'm the idiot that still hasn't taken my GRE.
• Global Warming, still hotly denied by critics, continues to be this great big ugly smoke screen covering up a lot more empirically obvious problems with the environment (heat pollution, plastic dumping, rapid deforestation, etc).
• Message boards, YouTube.com and other online opinion spigots seem to reach an all time low with brain numbing discussion being the norm.
• RIAA and MPAA step up the assault on reason by claiming that even standard copying procedure (such as copying your new CD to an mp3 format) is illegal. Sue a housewife for more money than she could have possibly have cost them.
• People who say that the music simply isn't worth listening to anymore (and therefore they do not buy it) still downloading enough music to create a false sense of importance that the RIAA is feeding off of.
• Harry Potter 7 comes out, making a suitable ending to a children series. Release plagued with people screaming out spoilers, people shoving and acting a fool, and men lusting after Hermione. People actually make a big deal about the fact that Rowling thinks that Dumbledore is gay.
• Golden Compass released to theaters with parents crying out that it is a secret, atheistic indoctrination tool, despite the open claims by the author that it is his counter view to Narnia. Some Christians flock to message boards posting spoilers and trying to shut down promotion of the movie.
• Hannah Montana is, apparently, bigger than John the Baptist.
• Utter fascination on the part of the press for a series of talent-lite to talentless hacks with blond-hair, booze problems, and daddy issues.
• 4words: 2girls1cup
• Convicted of crimes, Mr. Scooter finds himself quickly pardoned. A brave, brave man who did less time than Paris Hilton.
• Mr. "I fight dogs for fun and profit" Vick is chastised more for gambling than for being directly related to the deaths of several dogs.
• Astoundingly, the God awful, foolish, and democratically destructive defenses of "Executive Privilege" and "I don't recall" are whipped out and accepted NUMEROUS times in NUMEROUS fucking cases.
• Tasers apparently are the toy of the month. If you kill someone...that's bonus.
• Microsoft Vista released with almost no innovations not already a long standing part of KDE, GNOME and OSX. Touted as revolutionary and still manages to hold a significant majority of market share. Reasons cited usually being "Linux is too hard, man" and "Macs are for pussies" (and yes, those ARE direct quotes)
• Illegal (read: Mexican) immigrants, who have been around for...well, let's just say longer than any one who reads my journal AND their parents, suddenly treated as a hot-button issue.
• Homosexuals are kept out of hate crime legislation.
• E-book technology, probably the simplest of all computer files to implement, with a massive benefits as far as long term preservation of text, accessibility to the disabled, and environmental preservation...again find their fate mixed up in over priced gadgets aimed at the sort of people that read 5 books a year.

Ok...I can probably go for another hour or so...but I think I will stop there.