Monday 30 December 2013

Behind The Scenes Of The 2013 List Post

Almost the end of the year and everywhere you look people are making lists of the best and worst things of 2013. I do find myself bored after reading one or two of these lists because they are basically all the same but as it is almost compulsory to make one of these lists i wondered if there is another way of doing it.  Is there another way to mention all things that happened between January 2013 and today and not having people falling asleep before they get to the end of January? Something i did consider was to take a leaf out of Billy Joel's book and do a 'We Didn't Start The Fire' style list of events and people from the year so it would be something like:

Ronnie Biggs, Royal Baby
Iranian President Hassan Rowhani
Edward Snowden, Lewis Collins, Pussy Riot jailed,
David Frost, Tommy Morrison
US Court free’s George Zimmerman
North Korea terrorising South Korea failed

That seemed to go okay, the rhyming of George Zimmerman and the late Tommy Morrison relied on the readers pronunciation of Zimmerman to make it work but the rest seemed to flow okay in Joel's style. The second verse might go something like:

Brothers plant the Boston bomb,
Queens of the Stone Age, Elton John,
Lou Reed, CSI, Mandela dies South Africans cry
Chinese die from vaccine,
Holland’s got a new queen,
Alan Wicker, Mel Smith, Hugo Chavez goodbye!

Going well, got most of the big names and events in and using some of Joel's original endings to the lines keeps the reader in tune with the original song. In the second part of the song, Billy changed the flow of the verse from the first two which may throw out some of the readers except those that know the Joel song and can compensate.

Bradley Manning, Lee Rigby, Mikhail Kalashnikov
Maggie Thatcher, Dave Coleman, Cory Monteith shock,
O’Toole, Tommy Morrison, Paul Shane, Noel Harrison
Morsi Government falls, Pistorious in the dock
Mel Smith, Charlie Sheen, Munich's got a winning team,
Trayvon Martin, Iain Banks, Reg Presley, Queensland,
Gillard, war in Syria, Oklahoma, Meteor,
Xi Jingping, DC, sackings at Tottenham Hotspur

Meteor to Hotspur...hmmm. Nevertheless, trying to stay with him the final verse would go something like: 

Bitcoin, Andy Murray wins, Miley Cirus twerks again,
Croatia, Obamacare, austerity, welfare,
Ukraine, Shabab, Palestine, British banks huge fine,
Free elections in Iran, NATO in Afghanistan,
Cyprus bailout, Bangladesh, Brazil nightclub, hundreds dead,
Foreign debts, American threats,
Mali, crack, Household debts,
Government shutdown, huge typhoon, China's landed on the moon,
Payday lenders profits boon, 2013 is ending soon.

That seems to be most of the events in 2013 and just leaves the final chorus which is to include something about 2014 not going to be any different to 2013:

This year didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
This year didn't start the fire,
But when it has gone
Our troubles will go on and on, and on, and on...

Nice idea but the change of flow from the final two verses to the first two is problematic if you don't know the Billy Joel song and it isn't easy to rhyme events that closely to Joel's original words to keep the whole thing on track. Some of it worked, some was a stretch and some relied on readers mangling the pronunciation but the hardest bit would be the time it would take to look up 2013 events and arrange them into pairs so they rhymed.

Stuff it, i will do the same as everyone else and copy and paste a list from another website and boo and cheer the main bits.

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