I love the New York Times, perhaps an unhealthy amount. If the NYT were a human male, I would totally marry it and have it’s very fair, high quality - yet ever so slightly liberal - babies. Or, in my case, date it for about 7 years and have it’s babies while cohabiting. Semantics.

However, it really busts my buffers when a stupid story makes it to the top of the NYT’s “Most Popular” stories list. I have to wonder (again): What is wrong with people?

The second most popular story right now is entitled “10 Things to Scratch From Your Worry List.” It sounds like a pretty interesting, albeit vague, topic and hey - everyone likes a numbered list, right? So I perused this story. Number One was “Killer Hot Dogs.” Apparently, we don’t have to worry about nitrates anymore, contrary to all the hype. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘that seems like good news. I’m glad I read that!’

And then it deteriorated from there.

Here are the Top 10 Things we no longer need to worry about (according to John Tierney):

  1. Killer hot dogs
  2. Planet-destroying A/C
  3. Forbidden fruits from afar
  4. Carcinogenic cellphones
  5. Evil plastic bags
  6. Toxic plastic bottles
  7. Deadly sharks
  8. The Arctic’s missing ice
  9. The universe’s missing mass
  10. Unmarked wormholes

You know, NYT, it really is okay to stop your list at 6 or 7. Please, humor me with a show of hands. Who out there is losing sleep over the Universe’s Missing Mass? And Unmarked Wormholes? I don’t know what that even means!

See, I’m worried about the economy. And how we’re going to fund the war in Iraq and how destabilized the world has seemingly become. Oh yeah, and things like whether I’ll have enough money for retirement and whether I will ever be able to afford to buy a house. I guess those are items we unfortunately can’t scratch from our collective worry list.

Oh well, at least I don’t have to worry about those pesky wormholes anymore.