Will and Beyond - Posts tagged lists

Books I Read in 2009

01/03/10 @ 6:24AM EST
posted by will

I started tracking my reading with Goodreads, which allowed me to easily figure out which books I've read this year. You can look there for all of my ratings, and reviews on the later books, but in short I have bolded all of my strong recommendations. With no further ado:

February

The Trial [Franz Kafka]
The Tales of Beetle the Bard [J.K. Rowling]
Iron Orchid [Stuart Woods]
The Camel Club [David Baldacci]
The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon [Brian Clegg]

March

Watchmen [Alan Moore]

[Comments: 0][Tags: lists, books]

A List of Lists of Lists

12/09/07 @ 1:45AM EST
posted by will

First off, I enjoy lists. On the internet, I stumble upon quite a few of them. Did you ever notice that there a lot of lists out there? Well you and I would not be the first ones to notice. Lots of people have, and some of them have taken it a step farther to make lists of these lists. This makes the reading of these lists a lot easier for us. However, it's getting to the point where there are a lot of these as well. Enough to, let's say, be put into a list. That's right; this article is a list of lists of lists. Let's get right into it then.

5. Fimoculous
First off, that's a strange word, no? Well here's what the site has to say:
"What is this? A fimoculous is a micro-organism that consumes its own waste for sustenance. Fimoculli are therefore a self-perpetuating ecology. A mono-parasite, a homo-symbiosis, Fimoculous.com devours the filth expunged on the mediascape. (Oh, and it aggregates my life.)"

Strange, but anyway, this is a list of all of the lists they have from 2007. They have links to other sites, which have interesting lists like "Top 20 Movie Nude Scenes" and "Top 25 Censored News Stories". They also have normal lists like "Top 100 Albums" and "America's Top Colleges". To see their list of lists from other year you can just change the '2007' in the URL to 2006, etc.

4. Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Lists
I was scrolling through the page, waiting for something to really catch my eye, and then I saw it. "Phrases Commonly Used by 1950s Housewives That Were Often Misinterpreted by the Housewives' Husbands as Blatant Requests for Sex". Looking through this article, you may notice a trend that a lot of the lists I've selected as examples have to do with sex and nudity. Well, they're funny. I'll choose another one from here to show that other things are funny too; "Grimm Fairy Tales Made Decidedly More Grim". Sites that actually host their own lists rather than just having a bunch of links to outside sites.

3. AListofLists.com
A site with this sort of title was destined to be in this article. It seems to be an up and coming site, which started in October of this year. At the time of me writing this article, the top of their main page is "32 Places with Funny Names." I'm sold. This would be higher on the list if it was a bit more established with a bigger archive (the archive button is actually broken...).

2. David Letterman
Anyone who's ever watched an episode of The Late Show with David Letterman knows that he gives a humorous top ten list during every show. He's been doing this since September 1985, probably in anticipation of my birth. This was probably one of my first experiences with lists. Books full of his lists have been published, and you can also go on the Late Show website and see archives of them.

1. The Book of Lists
This was my first experience with a list of lists. My friend Alex's family has a cabin up on Mount Hood, and in that cabin is a copy of this book. Late nights we would gather around and take turns passing the book around and reading entertaining lists out loud. When you're a fourteen-year-old guy, reading a list about "Famous people who died during sex" is fantastic. Hell, even today reading that kind of list is great. This book was full of little treasures like that, and although it had some boring stuff, the fun list more than made up for the boring ones.

Honorable Mention:
Cracked.com There are some really great ones here. Unfortunately the site is not 100% lists, nor do they have a section devoted to their lists. I wish I could add it to the main list since so many of their articles are lists, but they'll have to settle for honorable mention. Lists such as "9 Most Badass Bible Verses" and "7 Movies Deaths That Would Be Awesome to Have on Your Tombstone" will have you laughing uncontrollably.

Disappointment #2. Lists.com
This URL has so much potential! But instead it goes to waste, displaying ads for mailing lists. I suppose this technically is a list of lists, but c'mon.

Disappointment #1. Wikipedia
Wikipedia, I'm disappointed in you. 41? With all of the bored people in the English-speaking world, 41 was the best we came up with?

I look forward to the day that lists such as mine become common place, and maybe I will be put in a list of lists of list of lists. Wonder how many times I said the word list in this article? 50.

[Comments: 1][Tags: lists]

A to Z Playlist

08/25/07 @ 12:00PM EST
posted by will

When listening to my music, I've never really been that big on playlists. Normally I just pick an artist or album, and listen. Either that or I just turn on shuffle. But then I stumbled upon this playlist that Andy Schultz made. I was really impressed with the idea, so I decided to go ahead and make my own. It was actually a lot of fun. I'll definitely have to make another one of these sometimes. A few of the letters it will be hard to find too many good songs that start with them though...

The way it works is you have to have a song title starting with each letter of the alphabet, and no repeat artists.

American Jesus - Bad Religion
Busy Child - Crystal Method
Cochise - Audioslave
Drunken Lullabies - Flogging Molly
Everything to Everyone - Everclear
Freaky Flo - Fidelity Castro
Gimme Some More - Busta Rhymes
Halloween - AFI
Intergalatic - Beastie Boys
Johnny Quest Thinks We're Sellouts - Less Than Jake
Keep It Simple - Cobra Starship
Little Thoughts - Bloc Party
Monkey Wrench - Foo Fighters
Nice to Know You - Incubus
Open Your Eyes - Goldfinger
Parallel Universe - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Queen of Light - Missing Heart
Rock the Casbah - The Clash
Smooth Criminal - Alien Ant Farm
Too Much - Dave Matthews Band
Unsingable Name - Mike Doughty
Vulcan Ears - Millencollin
Wo Zui Fong (I Am Most Insane) - B.A.D.
X - System of a Down
Yesterday - The Beatles
Zak and Sara - Ben Folds

Playlist

Well, hope you had fun with that. I did.

[Comments: 0][Tags: music, lists]