Listy

By Jeff Lewis

Several months ago when I started this I was feeling listy:

The Few Interesting Things I Learned While Trying to Compile a List of Interesting Lists

Signs That the Contestants in Erik’s March Madness Pool (Many of Them Babblog Contributors) Were Too Conservative

  1. Only one person picked the winner and he didn't win the tournament.
  2. Over two-thirds of the contestants picked either Connecticut or Duke to Win
  3. Nearly half picked Duke or Connecticut to finish second
  4. In a tournament filled with upsets, nobody picked more than five
  5. Going into Final Four, one out of 32 contestants had a chance to pick the runner up
  6. Going into the Final Four, one person had a chance to pick the winner
  7. Less than half of the contestants had picked a Final Four participant correctly
  8. Only two people picked two Final Four teams correctly

Best Zoo Animals

A guy named Don Roberson came up with a list of the Top 30 Mammals in the World.  I am very happy with this type of exercise; I feel that it is an excellent use of anyone’s time to come up with a list of the top thirty mammals in the world.  More people should do this sort of thing.  In fact, American school children should spend most of fifth and sixth grades making lists, which admittedly isn’t very productive, but is a better use of their time than learning how to take standardized tests or drink soda.  Anyway, I am largely satisfied with Mr. Roberson’s list, except I have a bone to pick with him on his rating of the tapir.  Mr. Roberson only rates the tapir as the 27th greatest mammal, when in fact, it is number five.  When placed in a confined zoo environment, it rates even higher:

Most Entertaining Zoo Animals

  1. Tapir: Exceptional urinary feats; they bite one another
  2. Giraffe: Still improbable after all these years
  3. Panda: Cute factor = bazillion; best zoo animal to watch eat
  4. Sifaka (or any other Lemur): The only drawback is that the sifakas don’t usually bound along the ground in their cages
  5. Andean Condor: Star of the bird show; peregrine falcon also impresses at the bird show, but is much harder to see
  6. Ostrich: Pound for pound, one of the dumbest creatures on earth; it is fascinating to watch them attempt to eat
  7. Emus: If you ever decided to trace the steps of the characters in Sideways, feed the emus at the ostrich ranch.  This is the closest you’ll ever get to meeting aliens face to face
  8. Elephants: No longer novel, but still neat; it is not fun, however to ride them only three times around a small pen in New Dehli when it is 118 degrees and a sandstorm is on the horizon, especially if the elephant handler is a mean man who repeatedly whacks the beleaguered and bored elephant, who wishes he could forget, on the head with a bent percussive instrument
  9. Fossa: At the zoo, you don’t get to see them stalk a lemur, but their agility still is impressive
  10. Grizzly: Only worthwhile if you see an exhibit where they get to practice light mauling
  11. Malayan fruit bat: Preternatural; you can say "I'm Batman!" to yourself over and over again
  12. Meerkats: Great posture

Least Entertaining Zoo Animals

  1. Golden monkey: They look heart-wrenchingly sad, which is enhanced by the fact that they soon will be extinct
  2. Polar bear: One of the best arguments against zoos is watching the polar bear lay in his little concrete enclosure at the Sacremento Zoo in the middle of summer; I hope the zoo has closed the exhibit by now
  3. Rhinos, both black and white: Very little movement
  4. Kimono dragon: Every since Sharon Stone’s ex-husband got bitten in the foot by a kimono dragon at the LA zoo (the handlers had instructed him to take his shoes off) I am uneasy around them, because I worry that they may breach their enclosure; I often wear flip flops to the zoo
  5. Chimpanzees and Bonobos :  They are capable of murder and if there is an earthquake, they may rampage; they also occasionally throw things that you don’t want to be hit with; baboons and oragutans should be similarly feared; baboons, having the silliest bottoms of the lot could be considered among the most entertaining animals, provided that you are not near an active fault because they, too, are liable to rampage
  6. Koalas: In theory, they are great, but the only way to see them move around is to go into the “nighttime” room, where it is difficult to see
  7. Flamingos: Too close to the zoo entrance
  8. Salamanders and Newts: Like rhinos, movement lacking

Topics That Should Not Be Discussed Outside of the Dork Clubhouse

  1. Wormholes
  2. Video game heroines whose busts more than double their waist size
  3. Why you would never break up with someone on a Post-It
  4. Explanations for why you lost your job as a pastry chef that revolve around spending 18 hours a day playing Everquest
  5. The merits of tapirs
  6. Purple light sabers
  7. The science behind CSI: Miami
  8. Dissing, props, the old skool, gangstas, street-cred and any other words that elicit rabid, fluttery blinks when spoken by Bob Costas
  9. Sabremetrics of utility infielders; the stats of any minor leaguer
  10. Who would win a fight between Sydney Bristow and Jinx (or, in a battle of shiny bottoms, The Matrix’s Trinity and Selene of Underworld

Copyright Jeff Lewis 2006.

Jeff can be reached at jeff@babblog.com.

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