In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a list-oriented person. By that I mean, my mind works in such a way that it’s way easier for me to comprehend information and data if it is presented in list form, and its easier for me to explain things if I can connect things to each other in a set. I’m kind of OCD, so I need lists prepared with bullets or numbers so that I can more easily digest what I’m reading or hearing. That’s the main reason why I make so many Top 10 lists. It has nothing to do with that dumb High Fidelity movie and those record nerds who are always making lists about stuff. Literally, my mind can’t function if something is not presented in super-organized fashion. I’m trying to think of an example of how I might thrash around like a epileptic if unable to deliver information without doing so in the form of a list, but I can’t even do that without starting to formulate a list in my head. Do you see what I’m trying to say? Top 10s aren’t a gimmick on this website, they are a means for me to disseminate information without freaking out and wantonly slitting my wrists for no reason. My compulsion to do things in a specific way is that intense.
2009 was not a banner year for the Top Ten list. I only prepared 31 out of a potential 48 (the last 4 weeks of the year are devoted to Year-End lists) lists this year. Reading back through the annals of Swan Fungus, I’m a bit disappointed by this year’s effort. Maybe I am getting older and less funny. Maybe I’m not spending as much time as I should on Thursday night’s preparing good list ideas. Should I give up on softball and focus on ideas for blog entire? Somehow I don’t think that’s the answer. Maybe it’s just that after penning 170 original Top Ten lists, I was bound to hit a wall. Whatever the case may be, I’m looking at 2010 as a potential revival for my Top Tens. In order to reclaim my (self-appointed) position as the Internet’s preeminent top ten author, I’m going to have to start dressing like it’s 2006 all over again, not worry about being uncouth, and basically relocate the blogging magic I seem to have lost this year.
Now that December is upon us, we turn to the Year-End list. Across all forms of media, the next few weeks will be filled with cloying fits of nostalgia, hindsight-enriched wistfulness, and even some good old fashioned navel-gazing. Each Friday this month, Swan Fungus will conclude the week with a new year-End list. This week I will be exploring ten noteworthy additions to the great tome that is my collection of Top 10 lists.
The Top Ten Top Ten Lists of 2009
Honorable Mention:
– The Top Ten New Years Resolutions You’ve Already Broken – I love the way this list devolves into me abusing my readers. It starts off kind of normal, with a fairly good point about people who swear they’re going to change their diet and exercise at the beginning of the year. It eventually turns into me saying, literally, “Fuck you,” and “you suck,” as excuses for why you have broken your resolutions. It’s one of the most scathing lists I’ve ever written.
– The Top Ten Thoughts To Get You Through Your Birthday – It had some funny moments, but not enough to crack the top ten. It’s kind of depressing. I like how “You aren’t dead” and “You could get raped” are supposed to be uplifting thoughts. I also love the fact that somebody would need these “happy thoughts” to get them through their own birthday. Clearly I have no faith in humanity.
10. The Top Ten Ways To Spend Valentine’s Day Alone – Only slightly funnier than the birthday list, this one exemplifies how weak this year’s crop of top ten lists were. It’s not that funny, although I really like the idea of stalking a friend just to see what normal single people do for the day. There’s something wonderfully dark about going to a shooting range alone on Valentine’s Day that makes me giggle.
09. The Top Ten Weird Movie-Related Dreams/Nightmares I’ve Had – After watching the Zoo documentary I began thinking about dreams I’ve had that followed on the heels of movies that affected me on a psychological level. You might laugh at the fact that I had a dream where a field of corn ate my parents, but it’s true and i was horrifying at the time. Fuck you, Field Of Dreams.
08. The Top Ten Reasons Why Swan Fungus Is A Better Blog Than The Hype Machine’s Choices For The Top 10 Music Blogs You Haven’t Read (Or Heard) – I like how I make a point of promoting the websites of all the other blogs on the list with obviously untrue statements about how much they all suck, and the comments section quickly fills up with a fey hipster dufus defending his music blog and some anonymous troll calling me a “mega-douche.” I’ll take it all as a compliment, as I really like to rattle the cages of my peers. Guys, you can have your precious Animal Collective. Trust me, I never wanted any of that shit anyway. Can we move on now?
07. The Top Ten Animal/Animal Hybrids – A list idea generated by my hilarious sister. The first comment left simply stated, “This website sucks,” but I’m sure this list is a hidden gem. You have to re-read it. I had a one-of-a-kind prize awaiting the person who picked an animal from the list, drew it, and e-mailed it to me. No one submitted anything. You fools. Don’t you want the world to see what you think a jaguwalrus or a giraffeapotamis looks like? I’m still waiting…
06. The Top Ten Reasons Why Woodstock Sucked – If this list were ranked by the number of comments left by readers, my Woodstock list would have been the clear winner. 25 people felt the urge to speak their minds about what I had to write. Most of ’em were baby boomers with sand in their vaginas. You’d think I ran over their puppies or told them JFK was a shitty president. Also, I chuckle when I read the comment left by “layne” which says, “your [sic] a fucking retard”. Maybe so…maybe so.
05. The Top Ten Worst Classical Composers Of All Time – People like to think I get off on hating everything in the world that is popular. I imagine none of these fools realize that classical music is about as far from the mainstream (at least for a guy who is in his mid-twenties) as can be. And yet, here I am taking to task some of the so-called greatest minds in the history of music, and winning. Several decades from now, the fact that people will look back on this era to debate the merits of Vampire Weekend and Bright Eyes. I’ll be dead by then, but it would be hilarious to see how people wipe the floor with these stupid plebeians. I need to get to work on my list of the ten best classical composers soon.
04. The Top Ten People From My Past I Would Like To Bump Into – I can’t believe I missed an opportunity to bump into the retard from grade school the last time I was home visiting family. I later heard that my mother was standing in line to vote for the new governor of New Jersey in front of the retard’s mom. I decided at that moment I was going to start a rumor that the retard’s mom fucked a bunch of dudes while we were in high school. I haven’t officially started it yet, because I don’t remember the names of any guys I went to high school with. So insignificant was everybody else in my high school class, I can’t be bothered to remember a single one of their names. It would really help lend some believability to my rumor. Maybe I’ll have to call my sister to select some random names out of my old yearbook…
03. The Top Ten Fathers Who Should Have Fucked Their Daughters – I don’t often think about what I’m going to blog before the time comes to sit down at my computer. Once in a while I’ll pre-select a song or news item for future use, but as for the top ten lists and daily posts, I really decide at the last minute. This top ten list was the one entry I wrote this year that I had to think and re-think for a few minutes before publication. I almost didn’t share it, just because I thought my name might end up on some government watch list. In the end I decided that it was too funny not to share. I still like the idea of Sylvia Plath’s father fucking her so hard she gives up on using so many damned metaphors.
02. The Top Ten Signs Your Life Has Become Pathetic – There was a common thread running through a lot of posts during the spring/summer months of this year. I kept thinking of all these different ways you could tell if your life had “jumped the shark.” I polled my friends to see what they thought about it. Then I concluded my little period of self-discovery with this list. Old Man Neil thinks I need to change my anti-Olive Garden stance. The rest of the list is pretty hard to argue with, I think. I can’t believe a commentator argued that liking the Arcade Fire is somehow not utterly pathetic.
01. The Top Ten Hilarious Questions Posed On The Church Of Scientology Free Personality Test – My trip to the Scientology Test Center in Hollywood was a lot of fun. I blogged about it for WFMU (and no one thought it was a hoax!). Honestly, I recommend anyone who lives near on of their centers to go and have fun with the test. The process of chatting with one of their goons about your test results is pure comedic gold. Hell, just taking the test is funny enough. You can fuck with it as much as you want. I took it seriously and fell in love with the old dork who was giving Nicci and I our test results. The poor fucker was trying so hard to convince us we had serious problems that needed to be fixed. It was so hard to keep from laughing. I loved it. I hope that list in some how captures how entertaining my experience was.
What do you think? What was your favorite top ten list of 2009? Do you even care? Eh, I didn’t think so.
