Monday, November 19, 2007

List nazis

The Guardian has started a list of 1,000 essential albums. Each entry has a hundred words or so on why they are great.

But it’s all muso journo twaddle. Nobody is interested in how the album caught the mood of the nation at that point, an album is important because you listened to it for the first time while fumbling with somebody’s undergarments.

Two cases in point: (What’s the story) morning glory by Oasis. Played ‘wonderwall’ every morning – and I mean EVERY morning – for about two months while getting dressed for work. Did it annoy my flatmates? Possibly, but if it did it was neck and neck whether it was the repetition or my off-key warbling along that did it. Other case…’parklife’, which I listened to about ten times in a row one day when I decided to play Super Mario World on my SNES all day. Every time I hear the title track I can see the little plumber leaping to his death as I scream at him to jump you little f**ker, jump!

Lists of THINGS YOU MUST DO are annoying. They assume you have infinite time and infinite resource and limitless enthusiasm. My store of enthusiasm for anything that isn’t at least 5% proof is sorely limited these days and frankly, most activities I’m told are ‘musts’ are less attractive to me than slumping on the sofa, spooning Pot Noodle into my mouth and pondering a nap.

Worst of all are the things you are told you should do…but you can’t because the facility is not there to do them anymore. Like a drink in the bar at the top of the World Trade Centre, or visiting East Berlin, or contracting smallpox. Dire predictions mean that you can add stuff to the list of soon-to-be-impossible activities, such as skiing in the Alps, having a panda steak or shagging a bird who doesn’t have a tattoo.

What we need are achievable lists – 1,000 things you can do that are quite fun and don’t require much effort. Number one – eating Pot Noodle.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Ann said...

Here's a list for you---one of my favorite Onion.com articles by far:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31051

10:54 PM  

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