This is splorp.

ISSN 1496-3221

December 30, 2008

Top not.

Many of us feel additional pressure at the end of December. Don’t deny it, you know you’re one of those people. I can certainly feel something weighing on me, but it’s not necessarily due to the traditional year-end nonsense. Is it the implied deadlines associated with finishing up last minute projects or the well-intentioned resolutions to be tackled over the next few months? No, those are things I can manage … or simply ignore. The pressure I’m feeling is specifically related to compiling some manner of the annual “Top Ten List”.

How cool were the items I hunted? Were my playlists hip enough? How attuned were my references to culturally and politically significant events? Did I read everything I should have read this year? Does it really matter? Does anyone care?

Top ten reasons why I’m not making a top ten list.

  1. It’s pretty evident that the interwebs are clogged with top ten lists this time of year. Why add to the supersaturated muddle?
  2. Honestly, I don’t go to the movies. I don’t stream movies. I don’t download movies to my iPod. I barely, if ever, find the time to rent movies that I would have liked to have watched in the theatres when they were released. My cinematic excursions this year consisted of a single trip to see Wall-E … at the cheap seats. You can’t quite compile a list of your favourite films based on a data set of one.
  3. My favourite “new” music is more often discovered by scrounging old sources and digging through what I already own. I can’t keep up with the constant fire hose of current music, so why attempt to come up with a list of my latest faves? Even if I limited my sample to a single sub-sub-genre — high BPM chiptune electropop performed exclusively on un-circuitbent Game Boy devices, for example — there’d still be too much to information to review and parse.
  4. Last.fm
  5. I prefer listening to music, rather than telling people about it.
  6. I prefer listening to music, rather than going to movies.
  7. Top ten lists are basically year-end blog filler. Oops.
  8. They’re a bit pretentious.
  9. The humbling insignificance I experience every time I view the work of Mr Felton should be reason enough never to attempt a year in review.
  10. I don’t care. Nobody does.

This item was posted by Grant Hutchinson.

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2 comments on “Top not.”

  1. Posted by Andrew Andrew on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008.

    Hi Grant,

    That elevator picture of yours was perfect for my post on elevator pitches, thanks for that. I read your ma.gnolia post, though, and just want to clarify that I did include some link love, albeit to your Flickr page. Now that I know splorp.com exists, I’ll redirect the link to here. You have some awesome photos and I’d love to promote you more in the future; you down?

    All the best,

    Andrew S. Lennon | Editor

    Reply

  2. Posted by Grant Hutchinson Grant Hutchinson on Thursday, January 1st, 2009.

    Hey Andrew.

    The link back to my Flickr page was fine as part of the attribution. I document the use of my photos in a specific way using Ma.gnolia and only mentioned “unlinked” because the image itself did not link directly to the original photo on Flickr.

    If there are any other images you’re interested in using, by all means.

    Cheers.

    Reply

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