Top 12 Moments of the 2010s!

Everyone’s already put together all their “Best of 2009” lists, and the snarkier among us even wrote jokey “Best of 2010” lists.

By pure luck, I topped them all: Last Sunday, instead of finding the customary New York Times at my doorstep, I somehow was given a newspaper dated 31 December 2019, containing an entire “Best of the 2010s” list in its Arts & Entertainings section. I didn’t even have to write anything. Here, in its entirety, is that list.


FOODEATS
The 2010s were huge in the advancement of foodeats. Fish-based snack cuisine became hugely popular among many peoples, particularly fermented Baltic herring, boiled salmon, whitefish roe, the incongruous “flygande Jacob” (chicken with bananas, peanuts, and bacon), and of course the hottest grab-and-run food of 2019, smørg (frozen herring on a stick, dipped in rose jam and dusted with radish), which took the fast-food world by storm.

POLITICALLY
In the politically world, Prime Minister Georg Erbørgdür broke boundaries as Swede-America’s first biracial prime minister, being both of the races of Swedish and North-Swedish. Bridging cultural divides is what he likes to do best, actually!

HISTORY JA
Why had not America foreseen Sweden’s steady buildup of armaments throughout the first decade of the century, leading to the apparently shocking S-Day? Why were they so unready when our bombing of major East Coast population centers (Orlando, Bangor, and Montpelier, VT) decimated their antimissile defenses, leaving them with not enough ordinance to mount a counterstrike? What fools the haughty Americans had for leaders! Its people were clearly lethargic from lack of grisfötter (delicious pigs’ feet served with beetroot).

MEDIATHING
A lot of citizens were förvånad (confused) or jättetrött (tired) by the shows which air now: Who Wants to Have Many Krona?, Married…With Barn, and Every Human Loves Bartoholomeus. But those who had the wherewithal to stick it with ended up enjoying the triumphant season finale of the popular postwar drama from the interned American perspective, The Amazing Adventures of Sigevoor and Ynge, Ordinary Not-Resistant-to-the-Revolution Citizens.

FASHIONABILITY WEARS
Sealskin fabrics have taken the Swedish world by storm. Baby seals have become the most popular pet and shoe.

MØSIC
Astrid Flodquist—The foremost pop star of her time, she had Swedes rocking out all the way from Los Ángæles to Ny Wörk, consisting of many banging hip-hop tunes, her warbling amplified with only the aid of the hollowed-out belly of a narwhal. Her tragic kidnapping and brutal torture at the hands of a renegade holdout group deep in the Sigürbrood Mountains (formerly the Rockies) was probably pure leftover American disgruntled sentiment that she was no, to put it delicately, ABBA.

Ü-TUBE & WEBSTUFFS
Coordinated cyber-attacks from a bunker deep beneath Borås Municipality (near Stockholm) downed every cell phone system in America, brutally divesting them of a communications way and leaving them vulnerable to our invasions by air, sea, land, fish, and theatre.

TRANSPORTATION METHODE
Use a Saab, for sure! Do not question: By the beards of dwarf-killing troll brothers Drafur and Gildur, you will not find a finer transport (aside from Volvo).

MOVIES FOR A LOOK
Chesapeake—A work Ingmar himself would have been proud of, this epic, starring the foremost actor of our time, Stellan Skarsgård, is really not bad at all. The shocking near-route of Swedish forces by the American troops at Chesapeake Bay almost turned Swedish War I around. This film examines what would the world look like now had not Sweden her inaugural conquering made. Skarsgård is the very height of withdrawn and repressed, having frozen his facial muscles with a daily injection of 100 millilitres of minnow fat, ensuring no facial movement whatsoever and guaranteeing himself a Guldbagge Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

MOMENT
No questioning: The moment of the decade was självklart (obviously) the sack of Brooklyn, despite Swedish forces being outnumbered 10-to-1 by our now Swede-American half-brothers. The terrific subjugation capped a daring invasion conducted with only a modicum of fissile material, but enough fortified herring to prevent the inhabitants from escaping for many fishing seasons. The blåögd (naïve) Americans eventually succumbed to humiliation and internal brooding.

TECHNOLOGY IS HERE
The Apple Smørgbook—The highest technology of the year is clearly this portable source of legends on a paper-thin, touch-sensitive tablet, able to digitally display “The Cat of Norrhult,” “The Master of Ugerup,” or even “The Tale of the Fermented Sausage That Believed Itself to Be Superior to Highly Processed American Sausages, and Was Correct About That.” The technology in this device will make you swear by the names of all three woodnymphs: Huldra, Skogsrå, plus Skogsfru!

FURNITURE DESIGNED
Ikea is still by far the most full of handy excellence, and will be until Ragnarök, the great day of reckoning and fish-ascending.


Med vänliga hälsningar!

The Golden Age of Sweden that great King Olaf Trygvesson promised in 994 A.D. is finally here,

Timothy

Best of Timothy Year-End Roundup

It’s the end of the year again. That means it’s time for a thoughtful roundup of my personal funniest lines from my past year of posts, introduced by each post’s unique theme, topic, or premise. Most of these you probably already remember, but bear with.


From ANIMALS I’M GLAD DON’T EXIST:
The Palintaur

From FAVORITE VIDEO GAME INSTRUCTION MANUAL EXCERPTS:
Now you’re in Thrim Zërgatroid, the third indoor planet in Ogreworld Online. Immediately exit the town, taking the now-legless crone’s ivory scepter. Hike along the path until you get to the Living Forest of Guidos. Swim the river to avoid the Goatrees; take the left fork at the Dam of Hydraulic Energy Sponsored by Con Ed. Just before the rapids (you’ll hear them in the distance), get out of the river and walk along the meager forest path. You may want to stop and eat a Basilisk, which you’ll kill with either an InstantAge spell, or you can step on it. When your hike takes you above 1,000 troidometers (check your hip-mounted troidometer), walk along the western ridge, which will shade you from both suns and the orbiting prison-planet. At this point you should be able to see all of Ogreworld laid out before you in the profile a giant sad fat man alone in his room. That’s you. Now, sell your computer system on eBay.

From DANCE CRAZES THAT QUICKLY FADED INTO OBSCURITY:
FDR: The Funky Disabled Roosevelt

From HILARIOUS TITLES FOR UNPOPULAR BRITISH INVASION HITS STARTING WITH THE LETTER “B”:
“Botulism!”

From STUPIDEST PREDICTIONS OF THE 18th CENTURY:
Portable comp-uters shalle never be in poffeffion of more than 4 giga-bytef of flash RAMME, or if they are, simply wrap the mother boarde in a poultice and ensure it is given a brothe of St. John’s wort, pork-bones, cabbage clippings, and malted cow-fetus — one ingredient for each of the four digitalle humours.

From SLANG THAT NEVER TOOK OFF:
skippy-dippy (n.) visible blood, brain matter, or viscera. Example: “Oh God, Marianne, I’m so sorry, I thought I saw a possum or something in the road, I was just trying to avoid it, I don’t even know how I survived that rollover, I think I thought it was a dog or something, it all happened so fast, but I think we should be okay if I can just create a fire until someone finds us at the bottom of this isolated — whoa, Marianne, I can totally see your skippy-dippy.”

From PRODUCTS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD:
Cristal Meth — the methamphetamine you can comfortably name-drop

From DISTURBING ROBOT QUOTES FROM LOW-BUDGET ’70s ROBOT MOVIES:
But Master, I still fail to see anything wrong with a 67YTR-uuu5 version 3.4(alpha) model wearing short-shorts.

From WELL, THAT’S ALL FINE AND GOOD, BUT IF YOU WERE REALLY OUT WITH YOUR BUDDIES YOU COULD HAVE STILL AT LEAST TEXTED:
I’m tired. Lay off me, woman.

From TV HOSTS WHOSE NAMES DON’T RHYME WITH “NANTUCKET”:
Bear Grylls

From LEAST-COMFORTABLE SPORTSCASTING MOMENTS:
GOOOOOOO — My wife asked me for a divorce last night when I got home from the tapas bar, and I was too much of a wimp to ask her why. I mean, I know why — we haven’t really communicated in years. And with me always monitoring the temperature of the cheese-curdling cellar, it wasn’t like I exactly listened to or made time for her. Keep in mind that she and her high school boyfriend Greg have clearly had some sort of e-mail flirtation going on for the past 18 months, at least, and you can see why I just kind of let it gooooooAAAAAAAAAAL!!!!!!

From UNPOPULAR LAST MEALS TO ORDER BEFORE YOUR EXECUTION:
Pureed owl pellet sauce over raw fish bladder chunks, with a side of Big Red (pre-chewed).

From COMPELLING IMAGINARY FIGURES IN ALTERNATE HISTORY:
Living JFK