GET LOST IN a long, long list of all the year-end “top” and “bottom” lists you could ever want.

A COLLEGE PROFESSOR’S LIST of “Banished Words for 2004” rightly includes “Homeland Security” and “Must-See TV.” But, alas, it doesn’t include “Bling Bling.”

MARK SIMONSON really hates, hates, the typeface you’re looking at now.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE bad sex scenes in literature? Almost nobody, that’s who.

…inspire entertaining reviews…

…conduct a Google search for “male names,” the following is the first resulting link:

“1. Save money when purchasing ‘male’ on eBay!.
Find male and related items on eBay!. Discover for yourself why millions of people purchase items on eBay..”

…and good reviews thereof, I’ve managed to see only 11 of altreel.com’s “50 Worst Films of the 1990s.” And I actually liked seven of those.

…about the late Stu Goldman, the local film “critic” who never hated a movie that could possibly get him onto a press junket. Goldman, I’m afraid, was a rank amateur compared to the infamous Earl Dittman.

So the right-wing sleaze machine succeeded in its Calif. gov’t takeover putsch. Now’s the time to exclaim, as loudly as ever, what I’ve always professed: No, the rest of the country does not have to always copy everything that starts in the Fool’s Golden State.

Or, as I’ve oft found myself shouting to Frisco-elitists, “I hate California. It’s cold and it’s damp.” Californians, even show-tune-humming gay-guy Californians, never get the reference.

Read, and be haunted by, The Onion’s spoof of Bush’s inaguration speech: “Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.”

CARRIE MUSKAT WRITES for MLB.com: “For the first time in 95 years, the Cubs won a postseason series. It just seems longer.”

Now, let’s all hope-N-pray for a Cubs-Red Sox World Series….

• “Silver is the New Black.”
• “Orange is the New Black.”
• “Grey is the New Black.”
• “Why green is the new black.”
• “Is Brown the New Black?”
• “A World Where Aubergine is the New Black.”
• “Black is the New Black.”
• “Blacker is the new black.”
• “Black is not the New Black.”
• “Business Casual is the New Black.”
• “Iridescence: It’s the New Black.”
• “Brilliant Colour is the New Black.”
• “Multi-Colored Tyres are the New Black.”
• “Bobby Pins are the New Black.”
• “Dachshunds are the New Black.”
• “Blood is the New Black.”
• “Scar tissue is the new black.”
• “Undesign–The New Black?”
• “Bland is the New Black.”
• “Mono is the New Black.”
• “Gay is the New Black.”
• “Pirates are the New Black.”
• “Anti-Semitism: The New Black.”
• “Xenophobia, the New Black?”
• “Buddhism is the New Black.”
• “Death is the New Black.”

from Absolute Write: “Please contact the authors if you’d like to reprint articles on this site.  All copyrights are retained by original authors.  And plagiarizers will be rounded up, handcuffed, and stuck into a very small and humid room wherein they must watch Mariah Carey’s GLITTER over and over again.”

IT’S BEEN WEEKS since we uploaded some of our random images found around town. So here are a few.

…some strange (and borderline naughty) user-manual illustrations.