Agnes by Tony Cochran for November 17, 2020

Some people just like to make a top ten list. I was looking at one on ME-TV a couple of days ago about the top ten monsters from the program “The Night Stalker.” Then they mentioned that there was only 20 episodes. Made the whole thing seem cheap and tawdry.

Cheap & Tawdry is what ME-TV is all about! Have you timed show vs. spots time ratio?

Well Agnes, Trout has a point. It DOES look classier if you use real words.

She could just have a top 10 list of lists…There’s the To do list, grocery list, when she gets one, a honey-do list…there’s a whole laundry list of lists out there. (A laundry list.)

I keep a list of the Not-Real-Words my wife’s tried to use when we play Scrabble (one of our top ten pandemic entertainments) so that I don’t have to look them up every time. Here’s a Top Ten:

ade, dox, ide, jif, lazer, ne, rez, tof, von, zor

It’s true. She’s tried all of these and more. For those fixing to tell me that some of these words are “real” – we don’t use informal or dialectical words. We’ve voted “zit” an exception (it’s informal) because every time she would get a “z”, she would ask if “zit” still isn’t good, adding “Well, is zit?” I couldn’t stand it any more.

OMG I love this kid!

Trout, it’s a perfectly cromulent list.

Trout is the cold water of reality to Agnes’s face!

Every day, I write a list of things I have to do. I’m going to add “write list” simply to give myself at least one thing I know I’ll accomplish.

But are there ten of them?

Agnes, there does have to be a what!

A list of the top ten non-words. What could be zmplerfr?