The browse-kill-ring in debian/ubuntu emacs-goodies can be set to run when you use M-y without having yanked anything first. It displays a list of everything in the kill ring in an extra buffer allowing you to choose what to yank from a list rather than yank something then cycle through the rest with M-y.

Great if you have a bad memory like me. Set it up with:

sudo apt-get install emacs-goodies-el

Then stick this in your .emacs

 (when (require 'browse-kill-ring nil 'noerror)
   (browse-kill-ring-default-keybindings))