dissociatedpress.com » Best Of 2009 http://dissociatedpress.com Mon, 03 Dec 2018 01:40:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Help Pick The Dissociated Press Best Of 2009 http://dissociatedpress.com/2009/12/help-pick-the-dissociated-press-best-of-2009/ http://dissociatedpress.com/2009/12/help-pick-the-dissociated-press-best-of-2009/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:48:39 +0000 admin http://dissociatedpress.com/?p=1713 We shared some thoughts on the whole idea of “Best of 2009″ lists recently, but you know what I think the best thing about 2009 was? You. You may not realize it, but you’re pretty special. You’re one of about 20,000 people that visit this site each month. With some rough math, assuming a global population of 6 billion people, that means you’re about 1 in 300,000. Okay, so you’re not a one-in-a-million kind of person, but you’re pretty special to me. Because without visitors, a web site is pretty useless. So thanks for visiting. If you happen to be one of those who visits regularly, you may have noticed I’ve offered up something interesting for you to look at or read every day since June 11, 2008. And only one of those somethings was a lame, self-referential “blog post”, and even then I feel like we kept things amusing. So. Since you’re so special, I’m going to ask a little favor, one that may benefit both of us. I generate all the content for this site alone, and although I get a fair amount of feedback via e-mail, thankfully there’s  little in the way of user comments. I say “thankfully”, because if there were, then I’d have to spend time moderating them. However, I now NEED your comments; I’m about to make a decision to either invest considerable energy in developing the site further, or let it languish tragically in the linkrot wastelands of the web as I pursue other projects I’m working on. So here’s the favor: browse back through the year’s posts (an easy way to do that would be to view the 2009 posts) and help us pick a best of 2009. Then post a comment referencing your pick, or use the contact page if you don’t feel like commenting. We (I often use the “royal we”, but in this case I mean “I and a few friends”) have picked a few highlights ourselves to get you going. You’ll find them below. Thanks in advance for your help, because your input (or lack thereof) will have an immediate and direct impact on what happens with the site in 2010.

Generation Triple Xmas Kills Santa

In December, we did our best to put a different spin on the holidays with lots of offbeat holiday shopping tips and insightful pieces like tips on how to be an elf or A Yidiot’s Guide to Hanukkah. We also took a different look at holiday pop media with pieces like Rudolph: The Nightmare Before The Nightmare Before Christmas, in which we took a look under the hood of a holiday classic, and Generation Triple Xmas – Holiday Songs For Millennials, in which we explored how the Millenials have killed Santa Claus.

I Need a Bailout and a Bonus, How ’bout You?

A recurring theme for us in 2009 was a little ire at the Dickensian spectre of bankers who managed to pull down bonuses for running the global economy into the ground while the nation endures record unemployment and people like me live on Ramen. Well, it takes a pillage, as they say. But we were still driven to ask the question: Are We All Just Marks In The Hugest Hustle In History?  And ponder how Hank Paulson could have the gall to market a book about his heroic deeds while the dust from a crumbling industry was still thick in the air. And speaking of “Best Of” lists, it was interesting that the only nomination we got for Best Politician of 2009 was from a Russian visitor. So we fretted about this a lot in 2009, but do YOU want to know what happened to all the bailout money? Too bad .

We Trembled With Anticipointment

I’m personally sort of a slang fetishist, so throughout the year we took an occasional look at how Americans talk. In January, we suggested you stop being such a Leafpeeping Masshole, and as the year moved on we explained why I was late for my man date, offered tips on how to talk like a hillbilly, and why it’s okay to swear, dangit.

Cutting Remarks & Carnie Knowledge

In the lifestyle department, we introduced you to people you’ll probably never meet (or want to) like Gore Lolitas and Juggalo Furries, offered up some tips on running away to join the circus, and explained why it’s okay to take cuts at the body-mod shop.

Stop Hugging That Tree & DO SOMETHING About It, Will Ya?

We care about the earth as much as the next person, but have a firm belief that standing around weeping and hugging trees won’t fix much, so we try to put a thought-provoking spin on Clean & Green when we can. So we ask the important questions, like If Beef Is So Bad For Us, Why Are Aliens Always Stealing Our Cows? and is the green car of the future a boat? We also point out that a million-dollar gas hog may be the fastest road to a greener energy.

You Never Talk To Our Evil Superbrain

One little disappointment this year was that virtually no-one took the time to talk to our artificial intelligence. Not even Russian flirtbots. But all in all, we’ve had fun this year. As I said at the top, your feedback on the year will have an immediate impact on how we move ahead. I hope we get enough positive feedback to bring it back in 2010. This has been a blast! It just isn’t paying its own bills yet, let alone making money.

]]> http://dissociatedpress.com/2009/12/help-pick-the-dissociated-press-best-of-2009/feed/ 4 Best & Worst Of The Best & Worst Of 2009 http://dissociatedpress.com/2009/12/best-worst-of-the-best-worst-of-2009/ http://dissociatedpress.com/2009/12/best-worst-of-the-best-worst-of-2009/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:46:18 +0000 admin http://dissociatedpress.com/?p=1681 Santa isn’t the only one who’s makin’ a list and checkin’ it twice this time of year. With the end of the year and the end of the decade with no name upon us, every media operation in the western world is making some kind of “Best Of” or “Worst Of” list. One of the only ones I personally care about is Pitchfork Media’s 50 Best Albums of 2009; it helps me sort through the otherwise overwhelming barrage of amazing indy music that floods the market the past few years. Which highlights the problem with these lists: Ideally a list takes a lot of information and simplifies it to make it useful. But in a desperate attempt to capture web traffic, the lists you’re likely to find do just the opposite. Either you’ll find the same list “re-purposed” hundreds of times across the blogscape with titles like “10 Best Celebrity [Insert One: Meltdown, Rehab Story, Nipple Slip, Oops] of 2009″ or major media companies make lists so long that you need a list to sort out the best items on their list – as in the case of Time Magazine’s Top 10 Everything – or lists so contrived that you wonder who it is that really cares about – out of the hundreds and hundreds – which 10 Red Carpet Looks That Tim Gunn loves most. One list that usually manages to avoid these pitfalls is the incredibly comprehensive and well-categorized Fimoculous end-of-year list. I also personally find lists like the NYT end-of-the-year buzzword list fun, though I’m not so sure that the words “aporkalypse” and “Chimerica” hit the streets hard enough to be called “buzzwords”. So if you have any suggestions for best of and worst of lists, please share them with us. Until then I’ll be digging through the wasteland of lists like 10 Coolest Book Titles That Have ‘F***’ In Them (NSFW) or Nine of the Weirdest Restaurant Names in Existence or a good friend of mine’s personal favorite, The 22 Most Sensational Midgets Ever. Thank God someone finally came up with the short list on that one.

]]> http://dissociatedpress.com/2009/12/best-worst-of-the-best-worst-of-2009/feed/ 1 Lieberman & Obama Tied For Best Politician Of 2009 http://dissociatedpress.com/2009/12/lieberman-obama-tied-for-best-politician-of-2009/ http://dissociatedpress.com/2009/12/lieberman-obama-tied-for-best-politician-of-2009/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:30:24 +0000 admin http://dissociatedpress.com/?p=1662 With the end of the year and the decade upon us, it’s time for all those “best of” lists to start assaulting us. But have you ever noticed that there’s not much in the way of “Best Politician” lists? Well, we’re going to do our bit to remedy this. For a “Best Politician of 2009″ award, we have two nominations right off the bat. Joe Lieberman and Barack Obama. First, lets talk about Joe Lieberman. He’s been getting a lot of flak recently, but frankly, I don’t understand the fuss. Joe is what any logical-minded person would consider a consummate politician. If, by “consummate politician”, you mean a smug, lying, self-serving, turncoat bastard who will do anything including raping babies to maintain a position of influence. Joe’s interpretation of “bipartisan” is that you have to be in whichever party it takes to keep you in office, regardless of where that party’s values lie. The only thing I don’t understand about Senator Lieberman is why his parents didn’t name him Richard. Not to worry about this too much though, being named Joe didn’t stop him from earning his place in Dickipedia. And Barack Obama? As I’ve said before (in the interest of disclosure): I voted for the guy. For a while I maintained a fantasy that he’s genuinely a good man, but that as soon as he was sworn in, a gang of shadow government thugs dragged him into a dark room and waterboarded him while they told him about all the ways they would torture his loving family if he didn’t dance to the whims of the secret power elite of the military industrial complex. This delusion gasped its last breath recently, when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize while increasing troop levels to escalate two massive military conflicts abroad. Any decent normal human being would graciously decline a peace prize under such circumstances; only a politician would accept it. We understand he’s planning to invade Iran in the hopes of winning another. We’ll be pondering the “Best Politician of the Decade” list for a bit, but who would you nominate?

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