August 20, 2004
The Top Ten Ways to
The Top Ten Ways to Make Our “Weblog” Popular Again
In the past few months, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have been dilating on our humble “weblog”’s on-again-off-again popularity. As soon as we mention the fashionable character of our “website,” our hits drop faster than Sandy Berger’s pants. Yet once we bemoan our drop in hits, we miraculously become esteemed again.Simply put, we’ve been up and down more than a fastidious crack whore. Accordingly, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have been pondering ways to make our “weblog” a staple of the “web”-goer’s daily browsing. In fact, we have appointed a new committee to determine the best ways to become, as they say, bigger than Nell Carter.
This brand new committee—the official name of which is actually the Official Make Us Bigger than Elvis (or at Least Tiny Tim) Committee—has stumbled upon a few clever ideas. After watching manifold hours of the E! Entertainment network (which, by the way, has the most fraudulent moniker in all of television), our Official Committee realized that the mindless listing of insignificant items is a key way to ensure popularity.
Let us, dear reader, offer you an example. If someone volunteered, say, 34 desultory and trivial facts about soft-rock bands, he would find himself very unpopular indeed. Especially, we think, with the ladies. The minute this fellow ranked these 34 facts and put this ranking on television, people would come a-flockin’ to the tube.
We know, we know: It doesn’t make much sense. But it appears to be true. As a result, the meat and potatoe (as Dan Quayle might spell) of various B-List television networks are lazy programs such as “The Top Fifty Hair Bands of the Eighties,” “Jimmy Carter Presents the Top Seventy Foreign Policy Disasters of All Time,” and “Santa Claus and the French Army Present the Top Forty Non-Existent Items.” That sort of thing.
Our Official Committee figured that, if such dross can keep VH-1 afloat, it could certainly make our “weblog” a paragon of popularity. Accordingly, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are content to present:
“The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official Random Rankings of Things in a Feckless Attempt to Maintain Its Rapidly Declining Popularity:
List the First: Top Ten Words and Phrases to Use in an Interview for a Job as an English Professor:
1. Subaltern
2. All Republicans are evil
3. Socially constructed
4. The phallocentricity of the dyadic mirror phase
5. As Marx has demonstrated
6. Paradigm shift
7. Hegemony
8. Hybridity
9. The Other
10. I’m an African American
List the Second: Top Nine Swedish Tennis Stars:
1. Bjorn Borg
2. Bjorn Borg
3. Bjorn Borg
4. Bjorn Borg
5. Bjorn Borg
6. Bjorn Borg
7. Stefan Edberg
8. Bjorn Borg
9. Bjorn Borg
List the Third: Top Six Prospective Employment Opportunities for Failed Presidential Candidate Al Sharpton:
1. Stunt double for Don King
2. Professional doughnut eater
3. Poster-boy for “Poor Dressers Anonymous”
4. Start up law firm with Tawana Brawley
5. Official Mascot for the University of South Carolina Game Cocks
6. Racial Huckster
Well, dear reader, if that doesn’t make us extraordinarily popular, nothing will. Just like Tina Turner, we’ll let the hits roll in.