It’s that time of year again. The time of year between January and January when I try to pass off dusty old writing as fresh one more time. Seeing as this is the Intertunnel, I have to add a Top Ten List, too. It’s like a law.

But recycling isn’t enough. I need to kill at least three birds with one stone if I’m going to get a half-day off on Christmas. So since our friend Aubuchon Connery, the general factotum over to the Rumford Meteor,  has asked me to help him catapult his “News straight from the seat of Oxford County” up into the rarified air of the greater World Wide Web — where it can explode into many interesting colors, or something — I figure I’ll recycle his stuff and knock off early. Western Maine needs the publicity in any case. If it wasn’t for the paper mill, no one downwind would even know we were here.

Actually, I think Aubuchon is angling to get Clint Locke Muskie, a local swell that runs an extravagant quarter-page ad for his fill dirt, artisanal cupcake, coal hod fabrication, storm door, and amateur podiatry business in the Lewiston Sun-Urinal (every week! A one-percenter fer sure!), to give the Meteor a try instead. Aubuchon says if he gets a guy like that on account, he can get his ice auger professionally sharpened twice a year and not give a second thought to the expense.

So here’s double duty, Rumfid style. The TOP TEN HEADLINES OF 2011 from The Rumford Meteor: Please disregard the fact that there are twenty five items in my top ten list. It’s a habit I got into in the ten-items-or-less checkout lane when I’m buying booze at the Mexico Walmart, and I can’t help myself anymore.

• Proposed New Red Sox Uniform Omits Shoelaces, Belt
• Maine’s Poet Laureate To Be Honored By Obamas For Discovering A Word That Rhymes With “Two-Holer”
• Stephen King Thinking Of Putting A Hobbit On Page 775 To See If You’re Still Paying Attention
• Good Samaritan Trying To Help The Irish Remember Anything
• $1.5 Million In Homeland Security Grants Available To Safeguard Maine’s Strategic Woodchip And Moxie Supply From Al Qaeda
• Surprise Award Ceremony Forces Middle School Teacher To Slam Laptop Shut Abruptly
• Bowdoin Students Pledge To Fight Against Corporate Greed Until Google Or Apple Offers Them A Job
• Governor Wants To Drug-Test Welfare Recipients If They Suddenly Start Hitting An Inordinate Amount Of Homers
• Rumford Hospital’s Diabetes Clinic Voted “Western Maine’s Worst Office Candy Dish”
• Clorox Princess Says Drug-Addicted Porcine Old Fart Lumberjack Welfare Queens Are Ruining Maine For Her And Her Trees
• Scottsdale Locavores Patiently Looking Forward To Arizona Maple Syrup Season
• Cranky Mainer Of Indeterminate Gender Rattles Off List Of Last Fourteen Things Seen On CNN
• Canada Inexplicably Forgot To Text Maine Man’s Wife When They Changed A Law
• Million Dollar Grant To 42-Year-Old Liberal Arts College Sure To Find A Way To Make The 9000-Year-Old Agriculture Industry “Sustainable”
• Felon Wonders Why His PHD In Total Awesomeness Doesn’t Cut Any Ice At Job Interviews
• If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, He’s Going To Ask For A Glass Of Milk. If You Give A Cellphone To Arianna, She’s Going To Ask Maverick To Break Your Leg With A Baseball Bat
• Local Woman Concerned About Trace Arsenic In Her Water, Ambivalent About Sunburn From The Little Light In The Refrigerator
• “Maine A Mecca For Gay Couples,” Trumpets Newspaper Unclear On Exactly What Happens To Gay Couples In Mecca
• Pundits Breathlessly Wonder If New Apple CEO Can Sell Old Lynyrd Skynyrd Songs For 99 Cents Apiece As Well As His Predecessor
• Bob Dylan Murmurs “Onceaponnawine Gnugnuance Slime Keepamonkeyspine And Quicktime Digideroo” To Rapt Audience In Bangor
• Several Brunswick Churches And A Homeless Shelter Solemnly Promise To Stop Atom-Bombing Hiroshima
• Environment Claims Environmentalist
• Fall Foliage Events Are Great Fun For The Whole Family Says Spokesman That Doesn’t Have A Teenager
• Unions’ Labor Day Barbecue Treats Hundreds To A Day Of Food, Fun, Facepainting, And Blame
• Maine Trying To Decide If 70,000 Acres With Nothing But Trees On It Is A State Park Or Just More Maine 

The Straight Dope says of the The Rumford Meteor: “It’s like Lake Wobegon. On Crack.”  They’re obviously “from away.” We’re all on Bath Salts around here.

The Rumford Meteor