A lot of people think 2016 was a terrible year. I don’t think we can blame the calendar for bad times. I think social and mainstream media just fed us all the ugly news we could swallow and we ran with it. Because sometimes we’re obtuse. Or lazy. I’m not sure which.
It did start out pretty good though. The entire country was finally united—behind a $1.8 billion Powerball. I guess it just went downhill from there. Likely because only three people got to enjoy it.
Animals probably think so too, I suppose. Harambe the gorilla gave his life so oblivious parents could feel safe letting their kids wander into wildlife enclosures. I’d call that one lazy.
The loudest complainers are still complaining that Trump is going to be President and there’s still nothing they can do about it. I’m going to complain about racist teens who slap other kids and run away because “all white people are Trump supporters.” (True story from nearby high school.) Hmm, that ties up the election and the decline of race relations in one swoop.
Some think it was a bad year because of all the celebrities who died. David Bowie, Prince, George Michael, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Nancy Reagan, Harper Lee, and, literally as I’m writing this, Carrie Fisher. Hate to be a jerk about it, but that happens every year, so it’s not 2016’s fault. Are we still mad at 1977 for killing Elvis?
Remember when all we could talk about was deleted emails and locker room talk with Billy Bush? Right about that time, New Horizons’ probe flew up on a protoplanet and an asteroid so big it has a name. We also found there’s likely another ninth planet, an enormous one, running around in our outer solar system and another 1,294 we can actually see. Cool.
And while I’m in space, can we please pay more attention to Elon Musk. He landed a reusable rocket on the launch pad good-as-new as if James Cameron CGI-d it. Musk is how we’re going to get back from Mars. Love that guy.
You probably didn’t know there is a 3-D pen that makes synthetic cartilage using stem cells to help avoid joint replacement for millions with arthritis because the news for a month was about the Disney alligator.
Sports: Cubs, anyone? Ledecke, Phelps and Biles won more medals than most countries. No, we had to hear about Ryan Lochte’s bathroom visit. Thanks.
Certainly the videos of the bleeding and crying in Aleppo is good for ratings so you probably don’t know about the Syrian emigré who has been risking his life, now nearly 30 times, to smuggle toys across the border for the kids who have lost everything.
Let’s talk about women. No, not more complaining about Trump. Japan elected its first female governor ever. She’s a hard conservative, tough on foreign policy and she speaks Arabic. Also want to point out our new FLOTUS speaks four languages. Take that, haters.
In awesome news, you’ll all be relieved to know flossing has been shown to not really be that much more effective than brushing. So no need to keep lying to the dentist.
How about Pope Francis announcing that the Catholic Church can forgive women who’ve terminated pregnancies. Catholic or not, that is a big deal. It used to mean instant excommunication.
Funny to think of all the things our country tries to do to deal with global warming (if it’s a real thing at least) when China and India open a new coal mine every day. Seems everything we do is negated somewhere else. Still, India has it’s first solar power plant now. For a country with more than a billion people, nice to know they’re making the effort.
Cute? Pokemon Go got a lot of gamer-vampires out into the fresh air.
Remember when we were arguing about transgender bathrooms? Many people, and even CNN, suggested we start adopting the same kind of bathrooms we have at home; with a real door for one person at a time. No one cares who is in there, no one can sneak in to harass you, and you can take your opposite sex child with you without getting the hairy-eye from other users. Too simple for news coverage I suppose.
How could we be mad at a year that saw Vladimir Putin as a calendar model? Let’s just be glad, for the eighth decade in a row, that we don’t live in Russia.
We also managed to prove Einstein’s theory of gravitational waves. If I understood what any of that means, I’m sure I would be really excited.
So I guess we’ve had better years. Farewell year of Zika, Erin Andrews, Obama, Brexit, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape, thousand-dollar epi-pens, cop-killers, creepy clowns, Andrew Jackson 20s, Justin Ross Harris, John Stumpe, ban on Cuban cigars, Supermoon, and Hillary.
All that said, I am actually still mad at 2016 for Alan Rickman.
