Some shit happened in 2008. I might say it was rough, scratchy and uncomfortable. I might describe it as a heavier load than usual, too much to bear at times, stretching us to unwanted thresholds. And I think I speak for everyone when I say we could all stand to regain the spring in our step after loosing the nervous, oppressive weight that was ought-eight.
Tragedy in India, Darfur, Congo, and now Israel and Gaza, continuing war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the usual assortment of school and shopping mall shooting sprees, the worst market crash since the Great Depression, unemployment numbers that keep climbing, a cratered housing market, an imploding auto industry, a gas crunch, weather that attacks, a cartoonish vice presidential candidate from Alaska, and a Britney that lost custody of her kids. And that’s before we discuss local matters of losing one pro sports team and watching the others suck so hard it gives us a sinister case of IBS. So much for our great diversions.
Serious times, (Suntory times?), serious problems, seriously foul nuggets that need to be flushed.
But because the bad stuff of ‘08 looms so ridiculously large at the moment, there really is no other option than to enumerate all the good. Doing otherwise is a one-way ticket to the bottom of a bottle, a “sick” day, and another reason atop a mounting pile for your boss to make you redundant. So let’s think about this for a moment.
We had, uh, a new iPhone? You know, 3G. Awesome! But its finger-greas’d screen sucks battery like a tiny digital vampire and 3G drops calls like a poodle poops.
Heath Ledger gave a harrowing performance in Dark Knight. But then he died tragically.
There was the Large Hadron Collider that was supposed to be a pinnacle of scientific achievement. But it might have destroyed the universe had it worked properly and it broke anyway.
New Kids On The Block are back. Unfortunately, New Kids On The Block are back.
Tina Fey was really funny saying Sarah Palin’s words back verbatim. But the fact that art was imitating life so closely tempered the funny with a lot of freaky. How the hell did that Alaskan become the VP candidate in the first place?
John McCain selflessly suspended his presidential campaign to save the economy. Oddly, it’s still not saved.
George Bush is almost out of office. But in his final days he is rapidly passing sleazy laws that forward an agenda that most feel belongs in the crapper.
Oh, but wait! There’s that guy. That 47-year-old black guy from Chicago with no “executive experience,” a funny name and a hunky body. Rumor has it he’s going to be our next president. How the hell did this happen? I mean, holy crap, there’s going to be a black president and the American voters are directly responsible! It must have been a pretty shitty year!
So maybe 2008 has a silver lining after all. Maybe Obama’s message of hope is real. Not necessarily because he is the light at the end of George Bush’s dark, odorous tunnel. But because he is the light at the end of a multitude of dank, reeking, festering tunnels, the worst of which happened to cross streams and purge their nauseating and fetid contents in 2008.
Therefore I put forth that Barack Obama shall be the universal flush lever for our year-end crap tally. Even if you’re like me and don’t believe in his messianic powers of change because, heck, the guy’s a politician after all, you can still focus on him like your base root chakra. You must block out everything else and picture Barack – the one piece of good news from ‘08 – as that gleaming stainless steel lever. With your focus steadied, it takes just one flick of the wrist and the whole of the steaming, putrid, quivering, greasy, acrid, plopping, stomach-churning, rotting heap can be washed away.
Flick!
