Every year (starting with this one) an elite panel of culturally savvy members (myself) gathers in a remote location (my computer) far away from the rest of the world (girls) to compile a list of persons, places, things, or ideas (nouns) worthy of the Hot Wheels Award (because the trophies were on sale). Winners of this award are not necessarily the best and the brightest in their field. They are the best or the worst in whatever categories I feel like choosing this year. You might notice some of these and say, “But that didn’t happen in 2007?” It did not have to occur in 2007. The only criterion is I think of it. To the winners, congratulations. To the losers, congratulations on not being as crappy as the winners.
Coolest Guinea Pig Ever:Sooty
Guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, ferrets, rabbits, and other furry rodents rarely find themselves in a position to be qualified as cool to anyone other than thirteen year old girls. Sooty is the exception. He is a guinea pig at the Little Friend’s Farm in South Wales. One night he managed to squeeze out of his cage. The next morning staff searched everywhere for him. Someone decided to check the pen where they house 24 of their female guinea pigs. They counted 25. Upon closer inspection, they discovered an exhausted Sooty in the corner of the pin. After his wild night of passion, Sooty was placed back in his cage where he reportedly slept for two days. Later, Sooty became the father of 43 little offspring and the coolest guinea pig ever. Never before has a story simultaneously made girls coo and guys stand and cheer. You make all the men of the world very proud. Keep up the good work Sooty.
Most Conceited Hardware:Seagate FreeAgent Desktop External Hard Drive
I never would have thought someone would make an arrogant piece of hardware. How could one exist? Well, I found one. After rebuilding my laptop for the fifth time, I decided to buy an external hard drive. I found a pretty good deal on a Seagate FreeAgent hard drive from Office Max. I brought it home and started opening the box. The box itself was pretty plain. A simple white box with a picture of the hard drive on the front and important information about it on the back. I opened the top flap. On the side of the box read, “If only this box contained as much information as your FreeAgent Hard Drive from Seagate.” What the hell? I flipped open the top. The instruction manual was right on top. In big black letters it read, “This won’t take long.” I opened the booklet to revel a series of panels on how to setup the hard drive. Each panel contained simple text and a large picture, such as “Remove hard drive from bag” and a picture of the hard drive not in a bag. In the bottom corner was a timer showing how much time should have elapsed by the time you finish that panel. The total estimated setup time was slightly under two minutes. They were being a bit generous. It’s the main unit and two cables. There wasn’t even an on switch. Plug it in and go. It is nice to have such a simple piece of technology, but did they really have to rub my face in it? Just to add punctuation, the bags containing the hard drive and necessary cables were sealed with small, round, yellow stickers that read “Hello.”
Worst Television Series:Ghost Hunters
“I like electronics and I just watched the Blair Witch Project. I have a great idea for a new television show!” says a janitor at the offices for the SciFi Channel. “I hope this is as good as Ice Spiders,” replies the boss. In that moment, Ghost Hunters was born. Ghost Hunters is the perfect show for UFO enthusiasts and Ron Paul fanatics. It follows the Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS; way to fail at acronyms), a group of plumbers by day and paranormal investigators by night. With video cameras, audio recorders, and infrared cameras, these guys and the occasional kidnapped girl venture into mysterious churches, haunted lighthouses, and spooky homes. Then someone will feel a breeze on their legs or see an unexplained shadow and everyone panics. Later they take the video and audio back to their headquarters. After filtering, amplifying, and distorting the audio, you can somewhat hear a little girl saying hello if you listen closely enough and they tell you that’s what you are trying to hear.
Best Party:Corey Delaney's House
The unofficial hero of College Humor is a sixteen-year-old Australian kid named Corey Delaney (sometimes referred to as Corey Worthington. I haven’t figured out the whole Delaney/Worthington thing). The kid is currently enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame after a wild party he threw a few weeks ago when his parents went on vacation. An estimated 500 teenagers showed up to his parent’s suburban home, got wicked freakin’ smashed, and destroyed neighbors’ property. Like any good party, the cops showed up. The police were quickly assaulted. They were eventually forced to bring in a helicopter to disperse the crowd. Now that’s my kind of party. The best part is the interviews Corey gave with bitchy television reporters. In one, when asked by the anchor to remove his freakishly large, yellow sunglasses and apologize to his neighbors, he replies he will apologize but he will not take off the glasses because “they’re famous.” I cannot do this kid proper justice. YouTube him now. Actually, wait. Read the rest of this article, then YouTube Corey Delaney.
Worst Trend:New Year Welfare Baby
My mother works at the local hospital. Her job title is “collector.” Unfortunately, she is not some renegade bounty hunter from the future who hunts down escaped, time-travelling robots. She deals with insurance. Her job is to investigate bills insurance companies refuse to pay for whatever reason they can come up with to weasel out of it. This boils down to filling in codes and middle initials on forms. However, she does find the occasional odd trend. She has discovered that every year the first baby born in the New Year at our hospital is born out of wedlock and/or is born to parents on welfare. This has been the trend for at least the last ten years. This kind of insurance information is never printed in the newspaper, but she and the other girls in the office know. It’s an oddity, but it could make you money if you can convince some drunk at the bar to take you up on a bet. That’s financial advice courtesy of Bryan Fantana. No need to thank me.
Dumbest Quote:Joe Roach
This one is also a story out of the hospital. This occurred awhile back, but I did not find out about it until recently. Several years ago, one of the hospital boilers exploded. When a boiler explodes, it’s kind of a big deal. First, boilers have a good number of safety measures that have to fail before something like an explosion occurs. Second, there is a tremendous amount of energy stored in the high temperature, high pressure steam. When the boiler exploded, it destroyed a wall of the building containing it. The explosion itself could have been much worse. Luckily, this occurred sometime around 2 AM, so no one was around to get hurt. When asked about it, CEO of the hospital Joe Roach was reported as saying the incident was not a big deal since the destroyed wall was a “blow away wall.” No. Just no. There is not such thing as a blow away wall. He’s been watching too much NASCAR. Even if there was a blow away wall, why would you ever put one of those on a building? Civil engineers everywhere are crying right now.
Least Accurate Website:the2007Rapture.com
G. W. Keasler created a website titled the2007rapture.com. As you might have guessed, he predicts the world will end in 2007. And as you might have guessed, it’s 2008. He predicts the world will end in June 2007 and yet his website is still up. It’s one those websites that is filled with random fonts, colors, and dozens of Bible verses that could relate to anything from the rapture to rainfall in Minnesota. He arrives at the world ending in June 2007 because it was 40 years between the death of John and the beginning of “our Church Age,” and if you add 40 to … the year … I don’t know. I was captain of my high school math team and I consider myself pretty decent in mathematics, but I have no idea how this guy got June 2007. He just keeps going on and on about the Church Age, Jerusalem, and the Gentiles. Luckily there are links to great books he wrote and videos he produced which I can buy and study to help me make more sense of all this. Oh, they have planets and lightning bolts on the cover! Those are science-y things, which means he must have science behind his conclusions.
Worthy of an honorable mention, Shelby Corbitt, a devout, God-fearing woman, created a website called 2007rapture.com. Apparently a good number of people thought the world was going to end in 2007. I guess the world did end if you consider Chocolate Rain the end of all mankind. God told her in a dream the world would end sometime in the year 2007. Unlike Keasler, she was nice enough to take down her website sometime just after January 1st. Luckily, Google has a cached version of it still stored. There are some great quotes from her webpage. For example, "[On December 30, 2007] I'll start by saying, 2007 is not over yet!! No, I am not ready to admit to anyone that I am a false prophet", "I am a very emotionally and mentally sound person", and "God specifically told me 2007 was the year, because I was only going to have from 3 to 3 1/2 years to spread the message after my book was published." Hooray! More books for me to buy.
Worst Attempt to Hide Inherent Bias:Conservapedia
Conservapedia is the right wing answer to the overtly liberal Wikipedia. The people behind Conservapedia think the editors of Wikipedia are a bunch of liberal hippies despite the fact anyone can edit Wikipedia. Apparently, you are too liberal. Conservapedia serves as a good source of laughs. Examples include:
“Research into the issue of the origins of homosexuality suggests that adoptive brothers are more likely to both be homosexuals than the biological brothers, who share half their genes which suggests that homosexuality is not genetically caused.”
“In 2007, he [George W. Bush] reached the lowest popularity levels of any president in history, with an approval rating of only 24% as shown by a Reuters poll (although respondents also expressed dissatisfaction with the Democrat-controlled Congress, which received poll ratings of only 11%).” [Nice change of subject there.]
“Dinosaurs were large, reptilian creatures which are now generally believed to be extinct.”
“Despite a lack of military, executive or foreign policy experience, he [Senator Barack Obama] is currently a liberal favorite for the Democratic Nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election. He has no clear personal achievement that cannot be explained as the likely result of affirmative action.”
“While pro-abortion would be an accurate term for those who profit from abortion and support taxpayer funding of abortion, pro-choice is the term preferred by liberals.”
“In respect to the history of atheism, proponents of atheism have argued for the necessity of atheism, however, the arguments against atheism and the arguments for theism strongly attest to the validity of theism.”
The following is the statistics page for the site (not edited!). How exactly does the main page come in second?
Best Internet Remix:Wilford Brimley Diabeetus Remix
People love a good remix. Anyone with some image or video editing software can create their own crappy version of other crappy videos. Isn’t the Internet great? In more recent times, remakes of Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” have flooded YouTube. Most are as annoying as the original. Then there are the “This is SPARTAAAA!!!111!!!one” techno remixes. They exist on a higher, more hilarious plane then the Soulja Boy remixes. However, they tend to lose the typical user who is not immersed in Internet culture. Luckily I have discovered one video that is both hilarious and might make sense to the average user. It’s the Wilford Brimley Diabeetus Remix. I know the proper spelling is diabetes, but diabeetus is closer to the way Wilford Brimley pronounces it on his commercials for Liberty Mutual. Enjoy the embedded video.
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