"How can you not include Elizabeth Gilbert's follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love? This is some bullsh*t."

It’s hard to remember all of the great things that came out of this year when you’re at your parents’ house, hopped up on eggnog and listening to the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album on repeat. Rex Sorgatz does the dirty work for all of us, indexing every best-of list out there, from architecture to fashion to technology, at Fimoculous. The music category contains the most ‘08 year-enders so far, which Paste’s Andy Whitman assures us will be a lot less overwhelming come December 31st:

“Here’s how it works:

1. Magazine publishes list.
2. Stereogum reposts list on website.
3. 893 hipsters leave comments, stating that the 1,493 albums mentioned in the comments are the albums that really should have appeared on that Top 10 (20, 50, 100) list.
4. 1,922 hipsters leave more comments, ridiculing the tastes of previous 893 hipsters. Popular rejoinders include:
a. I can’t believe you put <Album_Name> at #33. You suck.
b. No, you suck. You’re probably some 14-year-old who has to repeat fourth grade for the fifth time.
c. Yeah? Well you’re probably some 55-year-old boring old fart in slippers who has to carry around a colostomy bag.
d. No, I’m not. What’s a colostomy bag?
e. I knew you were clueless.
5. 2,873 commenters leave comments stating that lists themselves are stupid, that they, as the true arbiters of popular taste, are above lists, and that they are content with creating a year-end music matrix, the goal being to sniff haughtily at the very presupposition that music can be numerically and/or objectively rated.
6. All hell breaks loose when 5,983 commenters begin the round-robin debate on aesthetics, invoking names such as Cicero, Duns Scotus, Alberti, Shaftesbury, Hegel, and Ulrich of Strassburg.
7. Pitchfork publishes the definitive list at the actual (December 31st) end of the year.”

Ah, listicles: the only barometer of our annual accomplishments. There’s nothing left to say but “Take it away, Mannheim!”