2006 Year End Charts

Top Songs of 2006
Rank	Song	Artist	Plays
1	Cassandra Gemini	The Mars Volta	133
2	Hopipolla	Sigur Ros	116
3	The Dream	The Birthday Massacre	114
4	Dani California	Red Hot Chili Peppers	102
5	Run	Snow Patrol	100
6	White Shadows	Coldplay	98
7	The River	Live	93
8	Young Folks	Peter Bjorn and John	85
9	Atlantic	Keane	85
10	Crazy Bitch	Buckcherry	84
11	Through Glass	Stone Sour	78
12	Navras	Juno Reactor	78
13	Happy Birthday	The Birthday Massacre	77
14	Paperthin Hymn	Anberlin	76
15	10,000 Days (Wings pt. 2)	Tool	76
16	Be Without You	Mary J. Blige	72
17	Frog Machine	Infected Mushroom	72
18	Promiscuous	Nelly Furtado, Timbaland	71
19	When You Were Young	The Killers	69
20	Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus	The Mars Volta	69
21	Remind Me (Someone Else's Mix)	Royksopp	68
22	Get Ready	Live	67
23	Conventional Wisdom	Built to Spill	66
24	Blue	The Birthday Massacre	66
25	Muse Breaks RMX	Infected Mushroom	65
26	Vicarious	Tool	65
27	The Sweet Escape	Gwen Stefani, Akon	63
28	Morris Brown	Outkast	63
29	Goodbye My Lover	James Blunt	61
30	Ghost in the Circuit	Velvet Acid Christ	60
31	Good Day	Jewel	60
32	The Ghost of You	My Chemical Romance	59
33	Sexyback	Justin Timberlake, Timbaland	57
34	Crushed	Velvet Acid Christ	57
35	Grinning Mouths	Isis	56
36	The Hardest Part	Coldplay	54
37	John Wayne Gacy Jr.	Sufjan Stevens	53
38	Right in Two	Tool	53
39	Urban Angel	Natalie Walker	51
40	Dictaphone's Lament	Tycho	50
41	Unfaithful	Rihanna	49
42	The Riddle	Five for Fighting	47
43	Lips Like Morphine	Kill Hannah	47
44	Within Me	Lacuna Coil	47
45	My Love	Justin Timberlake, T.I.	45
46	Invisible & Silent	Covenant	42
47	Low	Coldplay	42
48	Psychoaktive Landscapes	Velvet Acid Christ	41
49	Lovers End	The Birthday Massacre	41
50	Dondante	My Morning Jacket	40
2006
Top Albums
Rank	Album	Artist	Units (M)
1	Frances the Mute	The Mars Volta	9.7
2	Violet	The Birthday Massacre	6.9
3	X & Y	Coldplay	6.4
4	10,000 Days	Tool	5.3
5	Labyrinth	Juno Reactor	4.9
6	Lust for Blood	Velvet Acid Christ	4.7
7	FutureSex/LoveSounds	Justin Timberlake	4.2
8	I'm the Supervisor	Infected Mushroom	3.8
9	Strain	Flesh Field	3.8
10	Light Grenades	Incubus	3.7
Top Books
Rank	Book	Author	Units (M)
1	A New Earth	Eckhart Tolle	2.5
2	The World is Flat	Thomas Friedman	2.2
3	The Bad Girl	Mario Vargas Llosa	1.6
4	The Looming Tower	Lawrence Wright	1.6
5	Freakonomics	Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner	1.5
6	The Lightning Thief	Rick Riordan	1.5
7	The Shock Doctrine	Naomi Klein	1.4
8	Spin	Robert Charles Wilson	1.2
9	The Road	Cormac McCarthy	1.2
10	The Historian	Elizabeth Kostova	1.1
Top Movies
Rank	Movie		Units (M)
1	V For Vendetta		12.6
2	The Departed		12.0
3	Little Miss Sunshine		11.7
4	Brokeback Mountain		11.4
5	Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest		10.3
6	The Prestige		10.1
7	The Last King of Scotland		9.9
8	Walk the Line		9.2
9	Apocalypto		8.7
10	Casino Royale		8.4

Seattle Weather Log

Seattle weather log:

October 2003:  Rains 5 inches in one day, setting the all-time single day record at Seatac.

November 2003:  Very cold for the first week, low 30s for highs.  It was sunny every day at Cascadia, but the cold was biting. 

Jan. 6, 2004:  Snow day, very cold.  Low 20.  Didn't go to work. 

Winter 04-05:  Relatively warm and sunny.  First got into meteorology, bought my own weather station.

May 2005:  Unusual amount of thunderstorms.  During one of them, I could hear hail approaching from a mile away- probably the biggest and most terrifying hail I have seen.

November 2005:  First week presented my first "storm train" as a weather tracker. 

January 2006:  27 straight days of measured rainfall breaks the old record.

July 22, 2006:  Felt like the most humid day in Seattle history.  95 degrees, no sun.  I was laying in my bed not moving, and still ended up sweating.

July 23, 2006:  10 straight days of 90+ degree heat, a Seattle record.

November 2006:  Rainfall record of 22 inches in one month set at Seatac.

Late November 2006:  Arctic blast cripples an evening commute.  I was stuck in traffic for 3 hours.  Asked Albertson's in Woodinville if I could spend the night.  They said no.  Took a detour south, where an ambulance was stalled with someone on life support.  Made it home safe. 

December 14-15, 2006:  Major windstorm knocks out power for 8 days.  The entire eastside is a blackout.  One intersection was blown to smithereens.  I work for 80 hours at McDonald's in one week, where we easily set sales records.

    These were some dense years in the history of Seattle weather.  It's great how they coincided with my peak interest in the weather.  

*After this there wasn't a major weather event until the snowfall of December 2008.  In summer 2009, Seattle broke the single day record for temperature at 103.  By then I'd abandoned the study of meteorology.  It's possible that if 2007 had been more "exciting", I'd have stayed in the field.  Alas, that was a truly uneventful year.*  (2019)

The Resurrection of the Goddess: Religious Symbolism in Pan’s Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth is one of the most symbolic films of all time.  It so accurately portrays the archetypal shift in consciousness from Neolithic-Goddess matriarchy to post-Roman patriarchy that it begs further viewing to uncover what one has missed.  Pagan symbolism abounds in the film, and it should not be mistaken for a Christian fairy tale because the symbols in Christianity were borrowed from ancient pagan myths all over the globe. 

The mythological premise behind the story is that Bronze Age patriarchs destroyed all the goddess temples and suppressed women into submission after the princess of the underworld, Ofelia, decided to become mortal and wander the Earth.  The film is set in an old forest teeming with regenerative growth, vaginal-shaped trees, and obscure structures, like pre-Christian Madonna-totems and “the last labyrinthine portal to the underworld”.  Ofelia is suffocated by the male dominated world of Spain during the Civil War in 1944, which could arguably be described as the darkest year in history (World War 2 was reaching its climax and industrialization had its stranglehold on the natural world).  There are several other female characters in the film who are exposed to masculine violence, all trying to overcome the oppression of fascist nationalists.  Female liberation is the essence of this film, but unfortunately for Ofelia it can’t be done without a sacrifice. 

Key symbols in the film are the moon, which represented a goddess in many ancient cultures; Ofelia’s green attire in a forest of the same color; Pan, a.k.a. Satan (the tester of material transcendence); the Devil’s temptation of the fruit (one of the creepiest monsters I’ve ever seen); the labyrinth to the soul, also referred to as the goddess womb; the toad killing the tree, representing the greed of industrial tycoons who suck energy out of the Earth for their personal gain; and finally, the Underworld, which is where Ofelia enters a cathedral with the gods sitting high above Pan, who mystically wanders around the art-noveau patterns of growth below their seats (representing his role on Earth, beneath heaven). 

All this symbology, the emotional disturbances, and that haunting lullaby, gel into a melancholic climax.  But good things can be taken from it.  Ofelia becomes a Christ figure by sacrificing her blood for her brother's.   We know this because God tells her she passed all His tests after she died (the tasting of the forbidden fruit was an exception- another allusion to the Eden myth).  In this respect the goddess of the Earth is resurrected, represented at the end of the film by a flower blooming at the spot where Ofelia had left her green dress.  The slow regeneration of the forest over man’s cloud of tyranny is faintly seen to materialize out of the sorrow.