That being said, I do now possess expertise on the topic of awful holiday parties.
I don't have a page in my notebook listing "topics too awful or sensitive or offensive to sing about".
In the end, perhaps one of the most revealing character sketches here is a short section on Private Eye, which for some years ran a column called "The Life of Dr Jonathan", casting Miller ("the Great Doctor") as a latterday Johnson, dilating at length to "importunate savants" on "topics too awful and profound to bear thinking of".
Today the ranking general-interest boards, like Off Topic and Something Awful, have more than 100 million posts.
Qwiki's biggest claim to fame is how it manages to cobble together different forms of media into a cohesive (but not over-blown) presentation, even on super-obscure topics like the awful live-action Gundam movie.
Still, I strongly recommend Alex Seitz-Wald's excellent reporting on the topic for Salon, including the awful tale of Gene Rosen.
She said, "I learned that he's a baseball fan and much more comfortable if I change the topic to baseball...It's awful when you have to try to make them feel comfortable, but that's the way it is" (pp 1260) [ 30].
This afternoon, Glenn Beck had been fulminating on topics, varied and sundry, including how awful John McCain is, for liking Theodore Roosevelt.
It is no surprise that the two hottest topics today throughout the area are the awful traffic and the servant problem.
Critics and concertgoers alike deemed her setlist "awful" and "unrecognizable" -- sentiments that resulted in a trending topic on Twitter, according to The Guardian.
