Year: 2024

If you could say anything about this year it’s that it’s been a year, that’s for sure. Of all the years preceding this one (1898 or 1310 for example), this year is certainly the one that has been experienced most recently.

So, as this year draws to a close let’s look back and reminisce on all the best year-end lists from this year.

Number 8: The Bucklinville Enquirer’s Annual Best Films List

Only a few hundred people have ever visited Bucklinville, Nebraska and even fewer have heard of it. But this town’s local newspaper lists the best films of the year and it is the ONLY film list that correctly ranks the year’s films. When it comes to taste, Bucklinville can’t be beat.

Number 7: Barak Obama’s Favorite Books, Music and Movies List

I for one think it’s utterly repulsive that this man has all this free time to read and enjoy himself when he should be running the country. I don’t care if you tell me he’s not the president, I know he’s secretly still pulling the strings and he should really take that job more seriously.

Number 6: Top 6 Best Colonoscopies of the Year

This one comes from a medical journal and I know it might seem invasive at first, but it’s a probing read that dug deep to identify exactly what makes a good colonoscopy so revealing. Well worth a peek.

Number 5: Spotify Wrapped

Who doesn’t love music? You, apparently. You only listened to 107,000 hours of music, 6,456 artists, and 2 million individual genres this year. You’re a goddamn failure and an embarrassment, you know that right?

Number 4: My Annual ‘Ex-Girlfriends Ranked’ List

You probably haven’t seen this one because it goes out in my electronic mail newsletter each year, but every year I rank all three of my ex-girlfriends. I know that might not seem like it’s related to this year, but trust me my opinion of who gets the top spot varies WILDLY, year in year out. Plus there are always some more honorable mentions for the ‘one’s that got away’ portion of the newsletter.

Number 3: Schindler’s List

Just a solid film and a solid list so it always gets a spot on my best lists list. One of the best lists to ever do it.

Number 2: Just Any Solid To-Do List

Look let’s not downplay the small achievements, if you went out one day this year with a solid, actionable list of tasks and you got them done well hell I’d say that’s worth a spot on this ranking. You should be proud son.

Number 1: This List

I don’t want to blow my own trumpet (I’ve tried and I just don’t bend that way) but I think this is a pretty solid list, don’t you? I can’t list a list that I’ve missed otherwise it would be here. Why do you think it’s top eight and not top ten? Because these are the top, the only ones worth mentioning. If there were ten top ones, I would have put ten, ok? It’s a perfect list. Honestly, I think I nailed this one.

The results are in and it’s jingle all the way! In a nationwide survey, Christmas has been officially declared America’s most popular day beating out other popular days such as the Fourth of July, the Fifth of July, and the Eight of July.

The survey, conducted by fourth-grader Luke Bissal for his school math project, asked seven classmates to rank their favourite vacation of the year and this year Christmas came out on top.

Prior winners of the coveted ‘most popular vacation’ award were: Christmas and that was it as Luke’s only done it once before. This confirms last year’s data when Luke conducted the same research and reached the same result. 

Although the country waits with bated breath for next year’s result, Luke said that he probably won’t conduct the same survey again as Miss Munroe said he should have thought up a new one this year and they might not even do this project again anyways.

Until then, Christmas lovers across the world are hailing the news as “exuberant” and “the best thing since Christmas”.

One festive fiend couldn’t help but comment, “Wowee! It’s a Christmas-time miracle. I’ve always known that Christmas is the best time of year, but it’s nice to have it confirmed by real hard scientific data that you can’t dispute or argue with. I’ll toast my eggnog to that!”

Another annual Christmas-goer, who asked to remain anonymous added, “It’s Christmas all around the world! Even here in sunny Portugal where the sun always shines and the rain is never near, we think Christmas is the best time of year every year and are so glad to hear that there’s a little lad out there who agrees with me and my best friends, Tiana, Michael, and Chlorine.”

Critics of the results however were quick to pour Grinch-flavoured Scrooge juice all over everyone’s fun. According to so-called scientists, Luke’s survey was far from conclusive as he wasn’t wearing a white coat at the time. Had he been conducting the survey in the official uniform however (and maybe even been holding a clipboard and pen for extra effect) then the scientific community might have looked at these results with a bit more respect. Until then Christmas will have to remain just ‘one of the most popular days for the second year running’.

TikTok’s ticked off as the clock’s tick-tocking for the top scrolling dot com to get shot of spy bots and go back to hip-hop and dance-offs.

Stop the clock! A lot of pots have got dropped off top cop slop mop brain rot…

Ok, that’s enough of that. THE NEWS is that TikTok is facing a ban if they can’t sell off their parent company. The government’s worried about Chinese interference but TikTok says there’s no interference which of course they would say… TikTok users are against the potential ban as they like to use the app but if they get their information through TikTok then of course they would say that…

The head of TikTok met with Donald Trump recently to protest the move but Trump’s not the president. Does the CEO even know? How embarrassing. 

TikTok’s going to protest this case and take it to the Supreme Court but what are they going to do? You think the SUPREME Court has any power? Yes. Yes, they do. So maybe they’ll stop it.

The argument from TikTok’s end is that the ban violates freedom of speech but idk that feels like they’re reaching. For example, I’m free to wet myself but that doesn’t mean I want to do it. You know what I mean? Ok, let me put it simply. I wet myself every day of my life.  I can’t help it. I can’t do anything about it. I’ve seen doctors and they all say that there’s nothing wrong with me I should just get up to go pee more. But I don’t want to get up and go pee. The toilet’s, like, all the way over on the other side of the room. So now I’m just sitting here in my own piss. And I’m cold and I’m wet and I smell.

That’s what’s happening with TikTok.

Maybe they’ll successfully fight their case, but maybe not. It feels weird that one of the biggest social media platforms in the world right now could potentially be just shut down. That’s not a way to go. No, social media websites deserve the noble death of becoming more and more irrelevant until they fade into obscurity and are only used by trolls and goblins. Like an abandoned dungeon. Look a Facebook, now that’s dying with dignity, unlike me who, again, is sitting in a puddle of my own urine.

26-year-old Luigi Mangione has been arrested in relation to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. But lawyers say he is unlikely to be convicted since “He was really cool about it.”

Thompson was shot and killed outside of a New York hotel last week. The shooter left no clues other than the words “deny”, “defend”, and “depose” written on the shell casings and a backpack filled with Monopoly money which is god damn Joker-shit, I’m telling you.

Once Luigi Mangione was revealed to be a suspect, the internet went into meltdown because, plot twist, he’s really hot.

“Yeah, we’re pretty sure he’s not going to jail,” said Angus Eurgh, a prominent New York lawyer you might have seen on television. “He’s hot and hot people don’t go to prison, it’s the law. He was also really cool about this whole murder thing and, call me a bad lawyer all you want, but I just don’t think cool people should be punished.”

As part of the manhunt, the police sent divers to search the Central Park lake and I don’t know why no one told them he probably wasn’t down there. No, Mangione ended up in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s which is just constantly in the news at the moment for some reason. He was then dobbed in by a goddamn snitch, a goddamn piece of work and good citizen if ever I saw one, he’s the one that should be arrested, not the hot one, Jesus.

On Mangione’s person was a note explaining his motives (very cool) and a 3D-printed “ghost gun” (super cool). So it’s going to be a tough call in the trial going forward. Will the judge and jury behave as they should, weigh up all the evidence, and lay out a suitable punishment? Or will they be like, “Ya but he dreamy, tho,” and let him free, setting a dangerous president for future models to off anyone deemed publically bad?

We get shooters all the time and you’d think every one of them would be demonized evenly but the general public doesn’t believe that murder is necessarily the worst thing. Sometimes the public will justify a murder if the cause appears noble and if they’re not a little goblin freak. Self-defence, a just war, capital punishment, just really poetic, passionate revenge, all can make killing ok to people.

But who gets to decide when killing is ok? The history of civilization has been the struggle to answer that question and we have long since concluded that leaving the answer to public consensus leads to dangerous mob rule, emboldens vigilantes, and leaves no recourse to punish killers who do not have righteous motivation or kill by mistake. We’ve built a legal system, that though imperfect does a better job at parsing out right and wrong than ‘just vibes’. And crucially this system has mechanisms to self-correct and improve. Righteous killing does not.

The system is broken but part of its self-preservation mechanisms is in its complexity and ability to disperse responsibility so no one person can be held accountable. The system can’t be dismantled because no one needs to take responsibility. The converse of this is that killing one person, shocking and newsworthy though it may be, does nothing to fix the larger system. Perhaps it was revenge but revenge brings only short-term satisfaction, not real solutions. Perhaps it was purely to send a message and maybe this death will motivate changes. To deem its justification this would have to bring about some change but even if it does we can only damn these actions as that of a pariah lest we inadvertently sanctify future killings, even those with which we don’t agree.

“Brian Thompson was a father to two, he was a husband, and he was a friend to many,” said Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro at a news conference yesterday. “And yes he was the CEO of a health insurance company,” he added as if this balanced out the other good things he just said.

“In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” Shapiro continued. “I have no tolerance nor should anyone for one man using an illegal ghost gun to murder someone because he thinks his opinion matters most in a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice. In some dark corners, [Twitter] this killer is being hailed as a hero. Hear me on this: he is no hero the real hero in this story is the person who allied 911 at McDonald’s this morning.”

Luigi’s Mansion is now trending on Twitter.