Weird Lists

As a pampered academic, I don’t have nearly enough to do on any given day. When I’m not lounging in my spacious, teak-floored office, snorting haughtily at the strange religious beliefs of my students, or dishing out gruel and hardtack to the research assistants who are ghost-writing my latest revisionist screed against America, I spend much of my time searching for useless information on Wikipedia.

Lately, I’ve taken an interest in the bizarre lists maintained on the site — including, for example,

the List of Controversial Games (e.g., Ghettopoly)

the List of Notable Brain Tumor Patients (e.g., Eugene “Porky” Lee from Little Rascals)

the List of Famous People from Ft. Wayne, Indiana (e.g., Jenna Fischer).

and the List of Cyclones in Western Australia (the good news is that no one’s died from one in twelve years Scratch that)

Who the hell compiles these lists? I mean, really. Could there possibly be someone out there with more idle time than an assistant professor at the most prestigious public university in Southeast Alaska?

OK, back to wasting the taxpayers’ money.

. . . via comments and elsewhere, more great Wikipedia lists:

Fictional Pyromaniacs (via Cryptic Ned in comments)

Aliments of Unknown Etology (not to be confused with this);

List of Unusual Deaths (the latest entry is here).

Oh, my. This one just isn’t right . . . (via Tom Hilton in comments)

Lamest Edit Wars (e.g., “Profootballreference.com lists Farve as having 8224 career passing attempts, while the official Packers website and NFL.com list him as having 8223. An edit war ensues over the 1 attempt leading to an editor getting indefinitely banned. Sockpuppeting followed, including “aging” accounts to circumvent semi-protection. All over 1 passing attempt… In a 16 year hall of fame career. His name is still spelled weird.” Via Vance Maverick in comments.)

List of Fictional Bears (including Mr. Burns’ childhood companion Bobo)

More to come, I suppose.