The last of the Christmas decorations have been boxed up the New Year’s hangovers have finally worn off, and supermarkets are already beginning their three-month chocolate-egg-and-hot-cross-bun assault on consumers — the Summer holidays are finally over for another year and around the country, Aussies are dragging their sunburned bums back into office chairs, greeted back from their beach breaks with over-flowing in-trays, mail boxes and answering machines.

But if you’re one of the many sitting grumbling at the mountains of paperwork already piling up on your desk, spare a thought for another type of office drone who could only dream of kicking off 2010 with too much work to do: journalists.

Yep, holidays may be over, but every year, January and February are a barren wasteland of news content for the Australian media. Yet there are column inches, screen pixels and radio air to pad out, and so journalists resort to “quirky” wire copy, insipid lifestyle features and huge photo galleries in a desperate attempt to fill the dead space.

Hey, we’re not judging — you’ll probably notice a much more “slimmed-down” (or, as we like to say: “streamlined”) Crikey for the next week or so — but poking fun at the churnalism and “news-lite” stories that are so endemic in the Aussie press this time of year is one of our new year’s traditions.

Stories like the giant tub of hummus that seems to have so captured the press’s attention. Or the endless stream of weight-loss-related articles shamelessly cashing-in on readers’ fleeting and fruitless annual dieting resolutions.

Each day, we’ll be collecting the silliest, weakest and most inexplicable articles masquerading as “news” across the country, and we’d love to turn it into a team sport.

So if you spot a real corker of a crap piece, name and shame it in the comments or send it through to boss@crikey.com.au.