Two of the 17 shitty lists Nick found on IMDb.
Turns out, that website has oodles of crazy lurking just below the surface. (Though the guy who made that second list makes a great point: Patrick Swayze would’ve made a great Knuckles the Echidna.)
This was super-time-consuming! But at least I found a list of actors with smelly feet! Go see all these great lists!
What Your First Name Says About You: Guys Edition
Nick took the 50 most popular guys’ names and made very specific assumptions about them. That is a shitload of names, you guys.
Some samples:
- Anthony: You’re friends with your Walgreens cashier.
- Dan: You’ve tried a lot of facial hair configurations.
- Steven: You were the guy who uploaded Stephen Lynch songs to Limewire labeled “Weird Al”.
- Tyler: You’re a cat guy.
If you don’t see your name in here, leave a comment and Nick’ll update the list.
I love doing these long lists of barely-pegged jokes.
Bad Ways to Discover You're Dead
Listen, if you’re a dead person but don’t know it, you’re going to find out eventually. This is a short list of all the worst ways you could find out.
I love straight-up joke lists.
Orwell’s “dos” vs. Orwell’s “don’ts”
Shaun at Lists of Note recently posted George Orwell’s “Rules for Writers” from his incredible “Politics and the English Language”:
- Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Great list, but I think I like this list of questions that comes earlier in the essay better:
- What am I trying to say?
- What words will express it?
- What image or idiom will make it clearer?
- Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
- Could I put it more shortly?
- Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
And of course, the best thing is to not read these lists out of context, but to read the whole essay.
A blogger should re-read these every few weeks. Though I’d appreciate an updated version dealing with postmodern/blogger tendencies, maybe by Paul Ford.
