Top 10 stupidest "Top 10" lists of 2008

1. Children's Books - most kids I know are far more interested in comics, DVDs of Mary-Kate and Ashley and their PSP than whatever some overpaid literati thinks is a suitably meaningful, artistic and slightly offbeat children's book. I mean, the absolute top story is called "The Pencil" and is a desperately overcomplicated meta-story-within-a-(crap)-story. The chracters in the story decide what happens! Gasp! How empowering and philosophically interesting! And if you are five, how boring, confusing and stupid. I'd rather have an actual pencil.
2. Reasons Women Can't Drive - Hey, why don't you get four lame cliched jokes about women, realize you can't think of six more, so restate the first four in a few slightly different ways. Then throw in casual references to "your girlfriend", illustrate the list with pictures of incredibly hot girls, and jack off to fantasies of them being impressed by your driving skills and, er, "wit".
3. Holiday Web Threats - Uh, you do get the concept of "Top 10" lists, right? Man you must have been bored to come up with this one.
4. Most Violent Video Games - actually quite a cool list, but either gaming PR is even more insidiously twisted, cunning and brilliant than the worst end-of-level boss OR this woman is a moron who has just given kids a great way to pick which games to buy with their Christmas cash. Best descrption: "Blitz the League II" -- Steroid and drug use is encouraged and wins are celebrated with hookers. That sounds awesome.
5. Top 10 lists - LifeHacker takes self-referential to whole new heights. I wish this was a parody, but it's not. They have listed their top 10 of their own top 10 lists.
6. Startups worth watching - now, by the law of jinx, at least 7 of these are guaranteed to appear in all of the the 2009 "Whatever happened to..?" lists. Fon, LinkedIn and AdMob might do OK, but hey - can LinkedIn really still be called a startup?
7. Websites - Gah! Stop trying to boost traffic to your friends' boring websites in the hope that they'll do the same for yours. Example: if part of the description of a website is "provides unparalleled coverage of transportation and planning issues in New York City" it is not one of the top 10 websites of 2008.
8. Least Stolen Vehicles - apparently people don't steal large shiny SUVs (usually in shades of red) sold by companies with big ad budgets. Who knew...
9. Best bartenders in Chicago - if they were that good, they'd be in New York.
10. People who died in 2008 - gets cool points for utter weirdness, but seriously folks... a Top 10 list? For dead people?