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January is the arse end of the year before. If you’re living, any hemisphere, it generally resonates with a.) penny pinching antics from £$€ (in multiples) Xmas purchasing excess. In the northerner parts of the northern hemisphere it has the ‘added bonus’ of b.) gloomy weather resulting in c.) social boredom and d.) crap TV!  It is also that time of year for pesky new year resolution implementation - some of which cause a 4 week wait for the gym to clear of queues for the treadmill!

January is a necessary jump board for an anticipated February… It’s an ambiguous in-between month consisting mainly of vacuous time. It’s a time to endure marathon DVD watching; generally a self imposed challenge to avoid/appreciate a, b, c and d of the previous paragraph. And, a time to truly review 2008.

According to the blogosphere, by all accounts, I’m listless. It was intentional; I don’t see the value in hours wasted to assess my 2008 best & worst advertisements, books, films, business decisions and news stories. Or consider the top ideas, games, quotes, media blunders, business failures, paranormal un-normality. Nor present a top ten of albums, songs, celebs, sports people, TV shows, words, travel places, bogus rumours, tech embarrassments or science discoveries. I’ll cease for fear of becoming a list of lists!

Basically I love everything I remember and that what I forgot – well it probably wasn’t worth the space in brain matter anyway.

That said, to be in the blogosphere you can only but come across these said lists at year end. What is most intriguing about them, for me, is in these lists are the cool, funny, clever, intelligent or damn right surreal stuff I’ve missed.

My review, my ‘list’ is what I missed in 2008:

Starting with this little criminal gem! The Snohomish Smokescreen… [I don't condone criminal activity you’ll understand – but many, many points for ingenuity]

The story goes that a robber, disguised as a gardener, pepper sprayed an armoured truck driver with pesticide and scarpered with a sack jammed with $400,000 in cash. The police arrived within minutes only to discover the side walked crowed with dozens of men all donning the same attire. The perp made off with the loot whilst police were laboriously checking through all the unsuspecting decoys.

It turns out that the decoys had been led to the scene unwittingly by responding to a labour listing in Craigslist for construction workers. It had stated they should attend in, “yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask…  and, if possible, a blue shirt.”

The criminal, 28 year old Anthony Curcio, was eventually arrested a month later following a tip-off from a homeless man. He was just arriving back from a jaunt in Las Vegas!

Inventing a crime mob to cover your tracks – classic!

From the science arena I discovered there was the building of a new Ark.  In the biblical sense Noah built the Ark to save animal species from the great flood. In the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen the Svalbard company has created a similar purpose Ark for the flora and fauna of the planet. The vault can hold up to 4.5million samples and is viable containment, even without power, for thousands of years on account of the arctic climate. This does beg the question; will the climate stay arctic? Anyway far be it from me to question what by all accounts is a cool planet saving device which has my sci-fi tendencies on over drive for plots centred on the capture of this Ark…

Staying with biblical matters I also missed an announcement from the Vatican for the ‘Seven New Deadly Sins’. Back in March the Vatican, adamant on appearing in line with a modern world – splutter splutter! – announced the new ‘deadly sins’ one must avoid to seek enlightenment or such things.

In the list were “bioethical sins, morally dubious experiments that harm human embryos, drug abuse, polluting, social injustice, accumulating excessive wealth and creating poverty”. Of course in somewhat institutionalised religious fashion they are loose enough in meaning to be interpreted in a number of ways. They’ll no doubt give justification for a whole medley of new God Hates America protests! I’m waiting for the next Louis Theroux documentary on that one!

Continuing with Part 2… before the end of January