Do you have any year-end lists?

Ahhh, the year-end list.

For news writers, it's a subtle signal to readers that their publication has early holiday deadlines and they had to hurry up and turn something in.

For critics, it's often an exercise in hipper-than-thou opacity.

"Wouldn't it be sweet if an album took the prickly psych damage of Black Dice but made it work in the context of epic rock, so that it had the cathartic build of early Mogwai?"

That's an actual sentence from Pitchfork's "The 50 Best Albums of 2008" list. And for the record, no it wouldn't be sweet.

I've written two year-end lists.

Top Five Best-Named World Leaders of 2008

 I'm a 34-year-old straight woman living with a 32-year-old straight man. His daughter is 2, and I am the only mother she has ever known. (Her real mother is a crack whore somewhere.) My boyfriend tells me he loves me, but it doesn't feel like he wants to spend any time with me. I pay the rent and am the only person in our household with a full-time job. When I get home, I want to relax. He wants to go out because he has been sitting at home all day. If he hasn't been at home, he has been running around with his friends. This pisses me off, and I am not afraid to tell him so. His response? "You're just jealous because you have to work!" Damn right I'm jealous! Also, I do all the cooking and don't get any help with cleanup or housework.

Other factors include my 13-year-old son, who has had trouble adjusting to a baby in the house; my boyfriend's outstanding warrants; and the fact that I have desperately wanted another baby for 10 years. What on earth should I do?

Back Against The Wall

Stop Speculators From Ruining Strong Companies

The Crash of '08 offers the incoming Obama Administration a rare chance to rein in the excesses of our economic system. I can think of few better places to start than banning leveraged  buyouts.
     Leveraged buyouts (LBOs) are Wall Street's solution to American capitalism's dirtiest secret and biggest problem: no one has any money. Really. Working as an investment banker during the 1980s, I was repeatedly astonished when deals would fall apart because would-be buyers of major corporations didn't have enough cash on hand to buy a house in the Hamptons. Many of the wealthiest people in the world, it turned out, have zero or negative net worth. According to The New York Times, for example, one of Donald Trump's biggest sources of income was his job hosting the TV show "The Apprentice." Those buildings with his name on them? He leased his name to developers who liked his brand.