2 Weeks To Go To Christmas – Are You Ready?

December 9th, 2009

It’s the list-making season
Tis the season for everything, from buying gifts for your loved ones, to giving gifts to those that you need to ‘look after’, to preparing for the Christmas bonus, if there’s going to be one this year, to the annual holiday and to making your lists.

End of a decade
As 2009 ends the first decade of the 21st century, organizations are cranking out lists for the ultimate items or experiences of the decade that’s called the noughties, aughts or even the naughties, with websites hungry for bite-size reads. “Lists are quick and easy to digest compared to an in-depth article, and often people are looking for quick information,” said Nicole Feenstra, a Canadian travel editor.

Top words of the decade
Media tracking company Global Language Monitor crowned “global warming” as the top word of the decade, followed by “9/11,” referring to the 2001 attacks on the United States, and the last name of US President Barack Obama. The rise of China was deemed the decade’s most-read news story by the firm, but its choice of “Twitter” as top word of 2009 was in dispute, with the New Oxford American Dictionary opting for “unfriend,” referring to the action taken by users of the social networking site Facebook who have tired of a contact.

More top words
Language reference publisher Merriam-Webster Inc. said the word of the year was “admonish” after it topped its list of most searched words for three days when the White House announced plans to admonish Republican Joe Wilson for an outburst during a speech by Obama.

Top music
Lists of the best albums and best songs were produced by multiple organizations, but rapper Jay-Z sorted that out by declaring his album “The Blueprint” the best of the decade. Eminem was crowned best-selling artist of the decade by sales numbers from Nielsen SoundScan, while Billboard named Canadian Daniel Powter as the top one-hit wonder of the decade after his song “Bad Day” topped the US charts for five weeks in 2006.

Top Films
Film lists were quick to divide readers. New Yorker critic Richard Brody ranked Jean-Luc Godard’s “In Praise of Love” as the top film of the decade, but not many agreed with him. The Hollywood Reporter named “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” starring Eddie Murphy in 2002 as the top movie flop of the decade and listed “Friends” as the most-watched TV show.

Top celebrity
Hollywood star Angelina Jolie was named the top celebrity of the decade by “Hello! Canada” after transforming dramatically over that period from a wild child to UN ambassador heavily involved in charity work.

Top Gadgets
Top 10 gadgets of the decade? ABC News made a list that included Apple’s iPhone, the iPod, the BlackBerry, Nintendo’s Wii, GPS devices and e-book readers – and also made a list of the top new health scares, led by swine flu.

Top book
Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Everything Is Illuminated” as the decade’s best debut novel.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website