Wondrous Apparitions, Provided by Magicians.

That's right. It's content-free Friday, and today I'm celebrating the TOTAL FUCKING DEATH OF JOURNALISM AND RATIONAL NEWS REPORTING, the COMPLETE AND UTTER SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE OF THE INFORMATION AGE that is Yahoo!Buzz. If you haven't heard of this, and in my heart of hearts, I hope you haven't, Yahoo!Buzz "features the most popular stories right now, determined by people around the Web. A story's Buzz Score is based on your votes, searches, emails, and more. Stories with the highest Buzz Score may be displayed on the Yahoo! homepage." So basically, they aggregate the most "buzzworthy" stories from the news, and those are what you see when you hit the portal homepage. Brilliant. Why didn't we think of this before? What are you going to see there? Well, I can tell you one thing, it's probably not going to be in-depth analysis of the complicated morass of American foreign policy or the latest developments in high-energy physics. Oh no. There's celebrities out there to report on!

Anyway. Rant over. So, here's the list. Hourly, Yahoo!Buzz publishes a list of top news-related searches, and that data feeds into their process. The list I'm looking for is the top ten news-related searches for today, 2 p.m. CDT. Could you go to the site and just get the list? Sure. But what fun would that be? Here we go:

TOP TEN YAHOO!BUZZ SEARCHES, 4/4/08, 2PM CDT.
1. Jamie Lynn Spears (turned 17)(triadruid, 1 point)
2. Pregnant Man (is pregnant) (lexpendragon, 1 point)
3. New Kids on the Block (touring again) (auraseer, 1 point)
4. Naomi Campbell (spit on somebody) (next_bold_move, 2 points)
5. American Idol (I don't know why it's in the news, it just is.) (lulumai, 2 points)
6.
7.
8. Barack Obama (must be some guy on some tv show, doesn't his name sound familiar somehow?) (lulumai, 2 points)
9.
10.

EDIT: Rules are in this post.

But not the good movies. Or at least, not the successful movies. This week's Top Ten list is the Top Ten All-Time Box Office Bombs. We're looking for the movies with the biggest gap between production costs and box office income, the biggest losers in cinematic history. Some are good, some are bad, but all were way, way more expensive than strictly necessary.

Ready? Go.
1. Town & Country (2001) (gamera_spinning, 2 points)
2. The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002) (gamera_spinning, 2 points)
3. Ishtar (1987) (lilia_blackbear, 1 point)
4. Heaven's Gate (1980) (becky_gardens, 3 points)
5. Cleopatra (1963) (druidevo, 3 points)
6. Cutthroat Island (1995)(raginsouthasian, 2 points)
7. The Postman (1996) (diermuid, 5 points)
8. Waterworld (1995) (otterkin, 1 point)
9. Gigli (2003) (diermuid, 3 points)
10. Battlefield Earth (2000)(bountifulpots, 1 point)

(In case you were wondering, the one you didn't get last week, that "folk" album from 2006, was the Greatest Hits album from a J-pop band called Kobukuro. The Japanese equivalent of 'greatest hits' seems to wander its way into English as "All Singles Best". I told you it really wasn't folk.) :)

Also, points below the cut. ( Read more... )

In 1998, some clever people got together and decided it would be really cool if there was a way for the music player on your computer to just pop out onto the Internets and get information about the album it was playing, so that you didn't have to type in the titles and artists on everything every time. So they put together a database, and lo, it was indeed really cool. And then, somebody over there thought, wouldn't it be cool if we tracked what album information was being called most, so we could put out a list of most popular music ever? That brings us to today's Top Ten.

This list is the Top Ten Albums Played By Internet-Enabled Music Players, in the history of ever. The count only includes full albums being played from CD, so if you downloaded an mp3 of Stairway To Heaven and played it 50 quadrillion times (you know who you are), it doesn't count. Please answer with title and artist, just in case ("that one by Blur" gets you nothing).

1. American Idiot - Green Day (2004, Alternative & Punk) - chronarchy, 1 point
2. Stadium Arcadium - Red Hot Chili Peppers (2006, Alternative & Punk) - leiandra, 1 point
3. Come Away With Me - Norah Jones (2002, Pop) - kenllama, 2 points
4. 1 - The Beatles (2000, Pop) - celtic_elk, 3 points
5. (2006, Folk)
6. Meteora - Linkin Park (2003, Alternative & Punk) - matchgirl42, 3 points
7. Hybrid Theory - Linkin Park (2000, Alternative & Punk) - matchgirl42, 3 points
8. X & Y - Coldplay (2005, Alternative & Punk) - leiandra, 2 points
9. The Wall - Pink Floyd (1979, Rock) - duriyah, 1 point
10. The Eminem Show - Eminem (2002, Hip-Hop & Rap) - rfunk, 2 points

Surprisingly, none of the albums that I personally play most often are on the list, though I do own three of the ten, and I recognized nine of the ten. (That makes it a better list than the last one, IMHO.)

EDIT: I've added the release years and approximate genres (as reported by the compilers), maybe that will help? The one marked "Folk" is, as one might guess, not really folk. FURTHER EDIT: #5 is really, really, really not folk. Amazingly not folk. Profoundly not folk. I had to look it up and play it, because I had not heard of it. I'd go probably "pop".

Sorry, forgot to clean this up the other day, and left you hanging. So here they are, from Global Language Monitor's list. Words in italics are the ones nobody guessed, and there's a good reason why nobody guessed most of them.

1. Hybrid – Actually Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV). Chosen to represent all things green from biodiesel to wearing clothes made of soy, to global warming to living with a zero-carbon footprint. (From the Latin hybrida, a variation of ibrida for "mongrel," specifically "offspring of a sow and a wild boar,")
2. Surge - The controversial political and military strategy of winning the war in Iraq.
3. Bubble – As in housing bubble, bursting. Also, Credit crunch.
4. Smirting – The new-found art of flirting while being banished outside a building for smoking.
5. Pb – The symbol lead, Atomic No. 82. The culprit in innumerable toy recalls this year.
6. Ideating – Latest in a long line of verbalisms: the descendent of concepting and efforting.
7. Ω-3 (Greek letter omega-3) -- Also written as Omega 3; the healthy fatty acid.
8. Cleavage – As in ‘woman of cleavage,’ a touchy campaign subject.
9. Amigoization -- Increasing Hispanic influence in California, the Southwest and into the Heartland.
10. Bluetooth – A technology to connect electronic devices by radio waves.

Don't you feel educated? I do. :)

Points so far:
leiandra - 10
fionnabhar - 9
matchgirl42 - 9
dramaticaddict - 7
theslice - 6
bubbledragon - 1
celtic_elk - 1
daneya - 1
loraca - 1

New top ten tomorrow, more'n likely. Haven't picked the list yet, but I'll try for something a little easier than this one.
EDIT: I've picked the list now. It's easier.

Well done, y'all -- you named 8 of the 10 most challenged books in school libraries in 2006.

The list you got is here. The two that didn't get mentioned were #2, the “Gossip Girls” series by Cecily Von Ziegesar (for homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group, and offensive language), and #8, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky (for homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, and unsuited to age group).

Points:
fionnabhar - 7
matchgirl42 - 4
dramaticaddict - 3
loraca - 1

If that was amusing enough to bother with again, I'll have a new Top Ten on Friday.

Well, it's not exactly content-free, because it might be educational. This is my new journal game. It's called Top Ten.
( Rules )
For the first round, I'm celebrating Banned Books Week way out of season. To complete this list, give me one of the top ten most challenged books in school libraries in 2006 (the 2007 list isn't out yet, so this is the latest and greatest). HINT: Harry Potter doesn't make the list this year. People are much more worried about... what?

TOP TEN CHALLENGED BOOKS 2006:
1. “And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, for homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group (published 2005)
2. (published 2002-2007)
3. “Alice” series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor for sexual content and offensive language(published 1995-2007)
4. “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things” by Carolyn Mackler for sexual content, anti-family, offensive language, and unsuited to age group(published 2004)
5. “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group (published 1970)
6. “Scary Stories” series by Alvin Schwartz for occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence, and insensitivity(published 1981-2006)
7. “Athletic Shorts” by Chris Crutcher for homosexuality and offensive language (published 2002)
8. (published 1999)
9. “Beloved” by Toni Morrison for offensive language, sexual content, and unsuited to age group(published 1987)
10. “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier for sexual content, offensive language, and violence. (published 1974)

CLUE: I'm adding publication dates to the blanks. Dates listed as a range represent a series.