In Continuum.

In the big picture, we have the list of the biggest planets to the smallest planets. Then we have the biggest continents to the smallest continents, the biggest country to the smallest country, the biggest cities to the smallest cities, the biggest towns to the smallest towns, the longest roads to the shortest roads, the longest road names to the shortest road names, the tallest man to the shortest man, the tallest woman to the shortest woman, the oldest man to the youngest man, so one and so forth, you get the idea. Everything can be turned into a list, and everything can be narrowed down by that list. You usually begin with two extremes of measurements, and then from there you start to fill in the gaps in between. Everybody loves to read lists, because lists give you a big picture of things, and they make you feel as if your life is in an imaginary order - when it really isn't. It must be some kind of government conspiracy to put all these lists into our lives, publishing them in newspapers and magazines and whatnot. They are here to tell us that everything is OK when everything is not. It is OK if our country is experiencing a recession with record breaking gas prices, or if our living standards are dropping to an all time low with an all time high in infant mortality rates. Just make a list, compare ourselves to all those countries below us in that list. Yes, we feel better about ourselves now, life goes on. 

Lists are also the secret weapon to any magazine or newspaper editor out there. They are constantly reporting about the world events. This earthquake, that cyclone. This treaty, that agreement. This battle, that war. This country, that country. This entertainer, that human. Something needs to reach the front page every day of every week of every year, and they have to guarantee that all of those newspapers and magazines sells. Every loss made in a day is a biblical number normal human beings won't want to imagine, which is why they have devised a great strategy just to get the customers to come back on a regular basis. It is OK if there is a boring day in the year, or maybe two days, perhaps three. When you are an editor for a magazine and you have ran out of ideas for a headline, just make sure you have a handy list at hand. Dump that into the front page and you've got yourself a headline. Everybody is going to buy that magazine with the list, because everybody loves lists. It doesn't matter what the list is about, people just want to see things ranked and in order.

I bet there is a folder in some building along some road with all our names, all our identification number, all our birth dates and stuff recorded. Everybody who was ever born and ever died in this country probably has a record somewhere, and even that folder is made up of lists. You go into the army and they use a different name for lists: they call them nominal rolls. But they are still lists with our names lined up in alphabetical order anyway, and even our phone numbers and birth dates can be put into ranks and orders if we wanted to. Our results in schools are placed in orders, from the best students to the worst students, from the brightest to the dumbest. Our academic lives are being put into perspective through lists after lists after lists, and it is all about getting yourself into the top ten list of all lists, no matter what the top ten list really is all about. You are listed  according to your grades, put together according to your I.Q., and they even assign fancy names to those different lists with lists of smart people. Cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude, and all those fancy latin names you can think of off the top of your head. Lists don't stop there though, they continue from there.

A list of numbers in your bank account, a list of debts, a list of to-dos on your calendar, a list of people who still owe you money, a list of things you have yet to do after you have completed your previous to-dos. You are frustrated, you are pissed off. You want to rip something into shreds, but you know that you are going to be dumped into a mental institution with your name on a nominal roll, or a list. So you go out of your house, you mentally go through a list of things to do after you get home from your short drive out to the mall, and on the radio in your car you heard the Billboard's Top 100 songs of the week - another list. You drive to the nearest mall and you hop off your car. From your wallet you fish out a list of things you'd like to buy from the mall that you wrote on a post-it, and you walk down the rolls and rolls of aisles carefully labeled with even more lists of things to buy. You are at the counter now, you are paying for your purchase. The receipt is being spat out of the cash register with a list of numbers on it, and your eyes peer to the side of the counter to check out the latest magazine releases. Top 100 Hottest Hollywood Celebrities under 30! You grab that magazine, added it to that list, a new list created.

Here are more lists to screw with your already screwed up head. Top 100 Movies of All-Time. Top 500 Albums of All-Time. Top 100 Sexiest Women Alive. Top 100 Strangest Hairdos in Hollywood. Top 100 One-Hit Wonders. Top 100 80s Hits. Top 100 90s Hit. Top 100 Worst Wardrobe. The list of lists goes on, it never ends there. People are always going to come up with more lists, and more lists, and even more lists. All you need to do is to change the positioning, and you get a brand new list. The AFI, IMDB.com, Rottentomatoes, they all have lists of their all-time greatest movies. Which list is the correct one, and which list is the incorrect one? Which is more accurate, which is less biased? Which is more interesting, which is closer to my taste? It is all very confusing, and you wouldn't want to be caught up in the middle of it. We all love lists because we have been conditioned to love lists, because we have been told that lists are just fun to read, and even more fun to be seen lying around the house. You wander around your house like a zombie and - behold, a list! Our governments are not the people running the country. Our government is the invisible force behind everything - the lists of lists.

What is it with whole numbers anyway? You have the top 5, the top 10, the top 100, the top 500. You hear less about lists like "The Top 47 Things You Can Do With Your Underwear", or some strange prime numbers like that. It is always going to be divisible by five or ten, simply because ten just looks more formal and important. Sure, ten governs the decimal system, it even governs the time by grouping it into decades. Moses had a list of ten commandants, the American has a list called the Constitution. The Americans have a Bill of Rights, and even the British has a Bill of Rights. The French has a list of rights as well, so do every other country out there. When you list things down, they just seem a little more important than before. Important is based upon how one can group things into a comprehensive list, and the list is really the basis of everything nowadays. I say, forget about a grandiose speech that begins with "I have a dream". Let's just begin every speech with a list, a list of lists you intend to implement. Let's have a list within a list, within a list of lists that is within a list of even more list, which is a part of a list that is within a list which is also a part of a list that is at the end of the list of the list which is on top of the other list and a part of this list that I am talking about right now. I know, you are confused. That is how many lists we have, that is how many lists we are going to have. 

We need to have less lists, we need to live in a world without lists. We don't need lists to tell us how to have better sex, eat better food, wear better clothes or live better lives. We can do it in our own accord, we don't need rankings or numbers to tell us what to do. It is the same as those little alphabets and numbers in our schools, why let them dictate who you are and who you want to be? What is wrong with being the second on a list anyway, or the third, or the fourth? Someone is going to be better than you, someone is going to be on top of you in another list somewhere anyway. It doesn't matter where you are on the list, someone is always going to be better than you. The only list we need to have is the list of things that we need to do in order to make others happier one way or another. That is really the list that we need, because a list of all-giving love is the list of all lists. We don't need anymore lists if we have that list, because you begin to love yourself by loving other people. I say screw lists, let's just have one single list in our lives. Let's begin by shortening lists, let's begin by shortening the oldest list of lists. How? George Carlin has the answer - check it out.