2011 Year End Lists Flood In, Sometimes Bizarrely

Now that 2011 is drawing to a close, all kinds of year end best of, worst of, weirdest of lists have come fast and furiously.

Just for chuckles, I've been going through some of them, and there are some bizarre tidbits mixed in. We humans, especially in American, are a strange bunch of birds.

To the operator of one Tumblr blog
there's nothing more fascinating
than spilled Cheetos.

One of my favorite year end list was the 90 best Tumblr blogs of 2011, at least according to Buzzfeed.  I don't know if all of them are the best, but, let's just say some people have too much time on their hands.
One of them, Lonely Cheetos, is just pictures of random Cheetos, usually crumbled, dropped on the ground.

Because there's nothing more fascinating in the world than Cheetos crumbs littering the sidewalk and floor.

Another of the Tumblr sites is Onion-Like Headlines in Real Life, which looks like a collection of strange headlines from the satirical site The Onion, but are real news stories. Samples include a Captain Obvious headline: "Some Childrens Cereal Packed With Sugar, Study Finds," or just head-scratching: "Man, High on Bath Salts, Arrested in Bra, Panties, Accused of Stabbing Goat."

I'm not sure why any guy would want to kill a goat while wearing a bra and panties, but then again, I've led a sheltered life. And for the record, I don't even own a bra and panties, so I guess that prevents me from going out and killing a goat.

Buzzfeed recently had its list of the year's favorite headlines, including this alarming one: "Zombie Caterpillars Rain Death from Treetops." Luckily, it's not as bad as you'd think. You can stand under trees and survive, it turns out. It's just that gypsy moth caterpillars got a fungus, died, and fell onto other caterpillars below, spreading the disease and killing them, too. Oh.

Another list tells us the most visited articles on news web sites.  Picking through that one, I see that CNN and MSNBC had their busiest days with the Japan earthquake and tsunami in March, which makes perfect sense. But then FOX New's most viewed online article was something about Kim Kardashian having a tangle with Australian immigration authorities or some damn thing.

Apparently, to many Fox News viewers, Kim Kardashian
was the most important thing to happen in 2011

You'd think if Kardashian's tangle was one of the biggest events of the year, I'd have heard of it, but this is the first time I've become aware of it. I guess I really don't know what's important in the world. Which is a shame. Because everybody else knows that anybody named Kardashian is more important that the Arab Spring, the faltering economy, the bad reality show that is the Republican primary, unprecedented disasters, Occupy Wall Street and Lindsay Lohan.

Crime is always in the news every year, and 2011 was no exception. The best crime roundup, found on Buzzfeed, is the Top 45 Best Mugshots of 2011. My favorites are probably a fat, sweaty Batman, arrested in Michigan and a driving while intoxicated suspect with "Got Beer" tattooed in giant letters across his forehead.