The thing I hate about the time after New Year’s is the return to normalcy. That wonderful period between just before Christmas, and after New Years, is kind of an unreal state. Only essential things get done, otherwise people are just marking time at work. Because of the amount of folks on leave, coupled with the desire to give time off for the holiday weekend, its a great time. Then, after all the new years festivities are over, reality comes crashing down and its back to the usual insanity…..
For me that was brought home most pointedly because in Japan, the New Years time is like Christmas in the states. Commerce virtually shuts down for the first four days of the new year (This, BTW is heisei?????, the 18th year of Akihito’s rule as emperor……….)
One of the fun things about the end of one year, and the beginning of the next is the usual recitation of “The top ten things of ….(fill in the blank). This year was no different. I did some research on the top 10 lists of various subjects and came up with some amazing discoveries……..
For example, did you know that among the top 10 list of CD’s in 2005 is an anti-Iraq war song by Merle Haggard? Who would have thunk it? (Kudo’s to Battlepanda for pointing this out.) Look at the this:
Country music isn’t exactly known as a Blue state genre. Yet country legend Merle Haggard, a god-fearing, lifelong Republican who sang one of the most infamous pro-war anthems (“The Fightin’ Side of Me”) of all time, now asks just what the hell our troops are doing in Iraq. Hag transverses the Lower 48 twenty-odd times a year while on tour, and he reports back that our infrastructure is crumbling. He still wants his Ten Commandments in plain site; but in the wake of faulty war intelligence and reneged post-Katrina Gulf Coast promises, honky tonk tunes like “Rebuild America
First” are undeniably poignant, no matter what state you call home.
That’s good enoughto piss the c**t and the rest of the right wing wackos off!
Then there are some other lists. For example from Merriam-Webster Online comes this list of the most-looked-up words of 2005. As the web site I got this from points out:
Does this list prove that scores of people in the land know not the meaning of “integrity”? I don’t think so. I think these people were perfectly confident they knew the meaning of integrity until certain others started throwing the word around like last Sunday’s bagels, and so, head
in hand, people went back to double-check, only to find that integrity was still integrity and in shorter supply than ever.
I like that!
Then of course under the category of , ” We needed to invade to spread democracy…..” are the 10 countries we could not be bothered with even as the US invaded a sovereign nation that had not attacked it……….
There is the list of best movies of 2005…….. why “Brokeback Mountain ” (which I always think of as ‘Bareback Mounting’ ) is there… that is beyond me. Larry David sums the whole thing up best. Movies about gay cowboys just don’t do it for me…..(H/T to CDR Salamander).
Sadly, I was ignored in the top 10 people in Bloggerville lists, but LBFM wasn’t. There is no justice in the world…….I’m the most important person I know, just ask me!
Under the category of “People who owe me money…” are the top 10 richest people in the world. Useless bastards. Shut up and pay me!
Moving to the pruient interest category are the top 10 desirable women of 2005:
I’m number 1 , but I’d still rather sleep with Skippy!
Moving on to the war and politics, Juan Cole gives us the top 10 myths about Iraq…..confirming all of my suspicions why these endeavor is useless…..
There are the top 10 books of 2005, of which I have only read 2………( does porn count as reading….?).
Under nightlife, there are the top 10 places I should have been on New Years eve…(hint: they are all in Singapore…)
There are the stories you missed in 2005……….
And the ones you did not……
Finally , in the category of “Time for a cigarette” are the top 10 sex jokes…….
Man its going to be some kind of year!
