Top 10 Top 10 Lists That Don't Really Deserve To Be Top 10 Lists

We're coming up to the end of the calendar, which means only one thing: the mediasphere wants more lists. Yes, MORE lists. Endless, endless lists: Best Songs, Most Culturally Poisonous Films, Top 10 Everything, et cetera. MORE LISTS! And this year even more so than usual, because it isn't only the end of 2009: it's the end of the '00s.

(Speaking of which: how did we manage to live through an entire decade without being able to name it?* The Aughts, the Zeroes, the Noughties, the Nothings? – no. This was The Decade That Nobody Could Agree On The Name Of. When Generation Z grow up, how are they going to label their childhood nostalgia? We're not making it easy for them . . . And even worse, what the heck are we going to call the next decade? Are we really going to call it the "Twenty-Teens"? Seriously? I'm freaking out, man)

So, people like lists. You know this. It appeals to the human instinct for pattern recognition, I guess: people like seeing things ordered and labelled, we like to know what's important. That's why "Best Of" lists are always among the most popular blog posts, right?

But on the other hand, I'm kind of sick of Top Tens. The lists are almost always hopelessly subjective – which is fine – but they're also usually pretending to be objective and authoritative, which pisses me off no end. That list you just wrote up, that list you just read, over on that other blog? Please, internet, stop taking that list seriously. A list is not a table of statistics. It's a mixtape. For goodness' sake.

With this in mind: here's my Top 10 List of Top 10 Lists That Don't Really Deserve To Be Top 10 Lists.

10. Top 10 Albums Of 2009 That I Kind Of Thought About Buying But Then Didn't

9. Top 10 High Concepts Improvised In Less Than One Minute

8. Top 10 Song Titles That Are No Longer Hits When Rephrased As A Question Instead Of As An Assertion

7. Top 10 Ambiguous Sporting Team Nicknames

6. Top 10 Pop Culture References That Will Make Me Feel Nostalgic For My Childhood, I Hope

5. Top 10 Pseudonyms Used By Undercover Ticket Inspectors On Melbourne Public Transport

4. Top 10 Least Respectable Titles Of Philip K. Dick Novels

3. Top 10 Sports That I Expect I Will Never Play

2. Top 10 Actors That I Can't Remember The Name Of, But Then When I See Their Faces I Go "Oh Yeah, I Know Them"

1. Top 10 Best Numbers Between 1 and 10

I'll actually be posting all these lists between now and the end of the year. No, wait – there's barely 10 days left in the year, that won't work. How about I post these Top 10 Top 10s between now and the end of, say, January? Or, at least no slower than once per week? Sure, at least!

Yeah, that's right. Watch me.

See you soon :)

*& cheers to M("F")V for reminding me about this, just the other day

Mondays Can Be Disturbing

Cheap of me to do two linkblogs in a row, rather than blogging something that I've actually created myself, but this tickled me too much to resist.

CONTEXT:

See, lately I've been looking for someone* to fill a vacant room in my house, and the process of interviewing prospective housemates has reminded me just how difficult it is to get to know people from only brief conversations. You can absorb a lot of intuitive impressions, but it seems impossible to really find out what they'll be like; I think people usually don't relax enough to show their "true" colours until you've been living with them for weeks, at least.

Thus, there's been a running joke between me & my other (non-new) housemate about the absolute best way to interview a stranger: the Voight-Kampff test.

The Voight-Kampff test is the interview from Blade Runner (via Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?) that's supposed to test your empathy – empathy, of course, being the unique quality that sets humans apart from "non-humans" (e.g. animals, psychopaths, killer robots). I've always thought it would be great fun to spring the Voight-Kampff interview questions on somebody when they're not expecting it, but I've never had the guts to do it "for real" . . .

. . . unlike the journalists at San Francisco's The Wave magazine, who decided to give the Voight-Kampff test to all the upcoming SF mayoral candidates. If you don't know Blade Runner, you probably won't get it, but I thought it was freaking hilarious.

As one would expect, at least half the mayoral candidates are definitely not human.

*Subsequently found: hello, Sarah D—! She's moving in tomorrow, good luck to all involved . . .

Appropriate Use of the Theme from "MacGyver"

That's right.

(Via Pajiba.)

THE XMAS IS COMING

No more than a fortnight to go, at the most. The Santa clearly has the upper hand.

I'm quite looking forward to the Xmas, this year. I'm not religious* (you could probably tell from the awesome Todd Schorr image I've posted above), but I much appreciate the nostalgia of midsummer turkey & family & feasting & gift-giving. And the X-holiday relaxation, especially: it's several days during which I don't have to do anything that isn't X-related. Freedom to loll (& lol) on a couch almost all day, freedom to feast, freedom to ignore work. Fantastic.

Even better – the gifts I've bought are already wrapped, a funky little stack in the corner of my room. How the hecks did I get my presents all sorted out so early, this year? I have no idea. It's very unlike me. I like it.

So! Two weeks until Xmas. Three weeks until 2010. More on events as they develop.

Good luck.

*So I figure the 'X' in my personal 'X-mas' simply stands for something other than 'Xrist'? (Or technically that would be 'XPIΣTΌΣ', for all you scholars of Ancient Greek and/or Theology in the audience . . . I know you're out there . . .)

Like A Tiger

I do not care about this recent Tiger Woods affair car-crash whatever thing. I also did not care about the Premier of South Australia having an affair last week, or whatever that was. I mean, I don't think I ever used to care about "celeb adultery shock!" stories, much – but lately I've been more than uninterested, I've been damn well anti-interested, to the point that celebrity sex scandals are actually repelling my interest.

Is it just me? I know that famous people's extramarital affairs used to be much more of a big deal, years ago, because extramarital affairs used to be much more of a big deal in general, years ago . . . Until the 1970s, divorce was always scandalous and/or nigh-impossible; sex scandals could literally bring down a government. Fair enough these stories were well newsworthy, then.

Today, though . . . how is adultery still worth a broadsheet's front page? Is it really news? I mean – what's the divorce rate, these days? I'm 28 now, and I'm almost the only person I know whose parents aren't divorced. Only a minuscule fraction of marriages last from the vows 'til death without being interrupted by adultery and/or divorce. Shouldn't it be a hell of a lot more newsworthy when famous people don't have an affair and/or break up?

This is the gist of my rant: adultery is BORING. Adultery is ROUTINE. Adultery is EVERYWHERE, even if some people still refuse to admit it. So can't we just assume that most famous married people are having affairs, and then forget about it? With rare exceptions, adultery has no bearing on anything that the famous person is actually doing in the public sphere. And it's none of our business, right? Look, I enjoy reading about (some) famous people, I totally understand the impulse to learn the "private" details of their lives; it's a neat thrill, sometimes. But adultery just isn't doing it for me, anymore. Adultery is dull, predictable and petty; it's not exciting, it's not even sexy. It leaves me feeling vaguely glum. I'd rather know what Tiger Woods eats for breakfast than know the state of his marriage, and I don't really care what he eats for breakfast. I don't even play golf.

I DO NOT CARE about Tiger Woods's marriage.

However. I did find this Chinese news report rather intriguing:

(via Pajiba)

The Onion's version of events is compelling, too.

Am I in a minority of one, in not caring about celebrity adultery? Am I being too old-fashioned, or too new-fashioned, or just daft?

/end rant

Friday Is Out Of Context

You know, somebody says "Slug Monster!" and you think you know what they're talking about. You turn around for a look, but you already feel like you know what you'll see. Heck, you've seen some horror movies, you've got a pretty vivid imagination; you've seen plenty of slug monsters before. How bad could this one be?

Obviously, you have underestimated certain German illustrators of the early 1920s.

(Note, also: the body in the lower left is not being crushed by the slug. It is being absorbed, or possibly growing out of the slug's body like a deformed limb.)

This image is actually part of a cover for a 1920 issue of Der Orchideengarten, a fantasy magazine that ran for an impressive fifty-one issues in Munich from 1919 to 1921. After the horrors of the Great War, THIS is what people were reading to relax.

Image via the ever-awesome A Journey Round My Skull blog. There's plenty more mind-melting Orchideengarten imagery and info to be found out there, if you dare . . .

This Friday Is Out Of Context Thoapsl Says: A salt is not a defence.

What I Did On My Anti-Holidays

Where "anti-holidays" = "lots and lots and lots of work".

And I'm not going to make excuses for my blogging hiatus, because – *mysterious hand-waving* – there was no hiatus! Okay, this blog may have been looking all tumbleweeds and dust for a while, but I can assure you that I was in fact blogging the whole time over on this other blog. It was part of this postgrad course that I've been doing, you see. (Also, because I'm too lazy busy to do more than one blog at once while also working part-time and studying full-time. As long as I'm doing all my blogging for free, at least . . .)

But: my anti-holidays are now over, so here I am again. Welcome Back Me. I've also grabbed some of the blog posts that I liked from my other blog and re-posted versions of them here (complete with original comments!), to fill in the two-month gap between now and the beginning of this (non)-hiatus. Hooray for blogspot import/export!

That's enough meta-blogging for now. Real content to follow, soon, I promise :)

---the Summertime Thoapsl

Movember!

Yes, it's that time of year again – Movember! Upper lips across the land are already sprouting the first brave whiskers of the season, well on their way to achieving the glorious full 'stache of a proud Mo Bro. It's all to help raise awareness of men's health issues, especially prostate cancer and depression. Men have traditionally been reluctant to look after their health, and that's a big contributor to their lower life expectancy, so it's an important issue.

I know what you're thinking: "I want to be part of Movember, but I've never had a moustache before! What do I do?!"

Fear not! Luckily, popular culture provides us with many valuable moustache role models. The gentlemen below (and lady – let's not forget that Mo Sistas are a big part of Movember, too) have all brought great honour and glory to the 'stache. From the world of cinema:

GREATEST MOVEMBER MO-VIE STARS!

Daniel Day-Lewis

Image © 2007 Paramount Vantage

Greatest Mo: There Will Be Blood

Day-Lewis had previously grown a grand handlebar for Gangs of New York, but his brutal oil-man 'stache for There Will Be Blood is one of the greatest of all time. Yes, he drinks our milkshake; he drinks it up. This is the perfect 'stache for your next 1890s party.

Carl Weathers

Image © 1976 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Greatest Mo: Rocky III

Honourable Mentions: Rocky, Rocky IV, Predator, Rocky II

1980s action movie moustaches don't come tougher than Carl Weathers's lip-hugger. Whether he was boxing Stallone to a standstill or helping Schwarzenegger kill an invisible alien monster, Carl Weathers's moustache remained effortlessly respectable. Proof that a moustache can look classy even when you're not wearing a shirt.

Burt Reynolds

Image © 1977 Universal Pictures

Greatest Mo: Smokey & The Bandit

Reynolds's acting is probably at its best in Boogie Nights, but his moustache was at its best during his 1970s–80s heyday – when Reynolds built an entire career out of driving fast cars, dropping cool one-liners and grinning seductively. He also lent his voice to a dog named Charlie B. Barkin in All Dogs Go To Heaven, arguably one of the better animated kids' movies of 1989. Unfortunately for all of us, however, that film did not include an animated version of Reynolds's moustache.

Salma Hayek

Image © 2002 Miramax

Greatest Mo: Frida

Hayek's face-fuzz may be even more subtle than the great Frida Kahlo's real-life moustache, but it's still a proud effort. (I'm not making fun – Kahlo's visible moustache was a serious artistic statement, famously represented in her many self-portraits, okay?) If nothing else, I think it's good to know that the potential for a great moustache lies within (almost) all of us – women included.

Are you inspired yet? Check out the official Movember website. And those of you who lack moustacheability can still support Movember – if you like, you may even enjoy a variety of crafty facial hair replicas. Everyone else – stop shaving!