I'm planning to make the item bar a bit better by providing a filter icon (e.g. see only bookmarks) as the first item but I'm not 100% yet on the details. You can at the moment pin items to the beginning. If you look closely you might see that the first 6 or so items have a little yellow dot in the top left (or is it right?) corner. If you right-click an item it will be pinned to the first unpinned position (so if 6 items are pinned then any other item you pin by right-clicking it will become the 7th item. The next you pin will become the 8th etc. You probably noticed that new items are always added after the last pinned item. This enables you to make a choice as to what you want to remain "most aware" of and anything new will always be visible on the first page (after the last pinned item) as long as you don't pin a whole page full of items.
Items that have negative effects always flash or blink. Although there may be some exceptions at the moment (it's still on the list to make this more consistent).