Bundles of Kittens Tied Up With String (a few of my favourite pop kulcha things)

Like a psychotic sugar plum fairy shaking her rainbow-hued wings around in a frenetic whirl on the dance floor (she is such a scene queen!), pop culture kept on throwing one bright gaudy bauble after another in my direction, and apart from the few unwieldy clunkers that hit me full in the face (Britney Spears new CD anyone? I didn't think so with the exception of "Womanizer" which is poptastic perfection!), I managed to catch some charming, fun movies, CDs, books and TV shows in my hands and enjoy myself mightily! Yes mightily!

TV

My TV viewing was all over the shop this year, and frankly while I persevered with "LOST" (No, I still have no idea what's happening but in it's incomprehensibility is a challenge I will not back down from! LOL) and "Dr Who" (ah David Tennant....yum!!), I gave up on "Heroes", "Supernatural" and a few others.... I did keep watching "Ugly Betty" and enjoyed the new kids on the block like "Eli Stone" .... I also watched new episodes of "Stargate Atlantis", "Brothers and Sisters" and "Battlestar Galactica" via downloads, courtesy of my house mate Aiden's boyfriend, and caught some shows via DVD boxsets like "Mad Men", "Big Love", "Entourage" and "60 Sunset Strip", shows that were either terribly neglected by the free to air channels (while they screen execrable crap like "20 to 1" in prime time!) or never made it air in the first place.... I have inadvertently, in my quest to see new and exciting shows, joined the new media revolution which means less TV shows on the TV itself, and more via downloads and DVDs... yes I am so cutting edge I am bleeding all over my remotes....

BOOKS / MAGAZINES / BACKS OF CEREAL PACKETS

It was the year of the sci-fi sagas..... when I wasn't reading 1000 pages novels by masterful stroyteller, Peter F Hamilton, I was polishing off a 7 book space opera called "Saga of the Seven Suns" by Kevin J Anderson which had wars, infighting, death, destruction and oodles of galactic mayhem.... each novel was 700 pages long but with all that commuting time to work in North Ryde, I have plenty of reading time and I am making good use of it... I also read a fascinating book called "The World Without Us" which looks at what would happen if humanity suddenly just vanished from the earth..... a sobering call to action to protect our planet and realise we are likely going to be the architects of our own demise.... cheery bright sunshiney stuff! LOL No wonder I escape into high-concept sci-fi space operas.....

When a very heavy paperback wasn't weighing down my manbag and potentially giving me curvature of the spine (must switch to very light books next year or junk mail), I was delving into "Empire", "DNA" and "The Advocate", and enjoying the amazing revelations on the back of my Triple Berry Breakfast Cereal... apparently eating this particular cereal concoction will make me immortal, stem climate change, and sew the seeds of peace in Iraq.... yes it really is that good.....

MUSIC (Makes Me Lose Control)

It was the year that Coldplay, may the music gods bless 'em, brought out not one but two CDs.... well technically one of them was an EP but it meant lots of wonderful new music including my Song of The Year.... drum roll please... "Strawberry Swing"... it is bright sunshiney (great when reading about the ecological destruction of our planet!! LOL) fun song, and while there are more stirring 'worthier' songs on "Viva La Vida Or Death and All His Friends" (yes such titular brevity!), this is the one that emotionally gets to me.... like a musical stalker but without the stabbing and obsessive compulsive behaviour.... I also listened to a fantastic new dance CD by Cyndi Lauper, and loved the pounding beat of Lady Gaga, who's debut CD has been buring a hole in my Ipod.... well a virtual cyber-like hole anyway..... Kanye West, Bloc Party, Pink, and Keane also dropped new CDs - witness my very hip grasp of industry lingo! - and I started downloading with a frenzy as my old PC finally shuffled off it's electronic coil and was replaced by an iMac..... yes I have rejoined the Computing Light and I love it.... still trying to figure it out (and using a PC all day at work thoroughly confuses me!!) but the iMac, and the new iPod that came shortly thereafter when my old faithful white iPod died too (as did my camera.... apparently all my gadgets developed a death wish and no, it's not because I refuse to read the manuals and expect them to work anyway! LOL) have allowed me to download all across the shop, and I suspect my days of buying lots of real world CDs are over.... yes I am now so cutting edge, I expect to bleed dry by lunchtime, all the while listening to the funky new sounds of September, and Glasvegas.....

MOVIES

Hi, my name is Andrew and I am no longer a movie addict... yes sadly I fell off the movie-junkie wagon this year, and sobered up far more than I would have liked. I didn't intend to, and love movies every bit as much as I once did, but somewhere during the year movies became a casualty of life regulated to a manic degree at work by Outlook etc, and I found going to movies at a set time for a set period just too rigid a concept for my off-work hours.... I hope to remedy that next year but in the meantime, the highlights of this year were "The Savages", a mostly sad journey (but ultimately hopeful) through the lives of two estranged adult siblings struggling to reengage with life when their elderly father loses his grip on reality, and of all movies, "Kung Fu Panda", which I saw with my friends John & Susie and their 10 year old daughter, Madison, and loved.... lots of very silly, but cleverly written fun.... I also continued my evergreen love affair with romantic comedies by seeing the delightful "P.S. I Love You", "Definitely Maybe", "The Jane Austen Book Club" and "27 Dresses", the quirky amazingly well put together and acted, "Juno" and "Happy Go Lucky", and the wonderful emotionally evocative, "Paris"...

I also made it to the Mardi Gras Film Festival, and unlike last year when Warren and I practically lived at the cinema (not all that glamorous trust me!), we kept to just two movies. "The Bubble" and "Outing Riley", the latter being an uplifting of four brothers dealing with an unexpected revelation about one of their number, and being all the richer for it....