Sunday, January 01, 2006

2005: The Year of Living Dangerously

It’s now 2006.

So on behalf of the entire planet allow me to just state this for the record: THANK FUCKING GOD! I, for one, was beginning to think that this ‘craptacular suck fest’ of year would never come to an end. Maybe now I will feel secure enough to be able to take down the boards from my windows or perhaps once again venture out into the city streets…

...well, maybe not quite yet.

As I cheerfully fulfilled my long-standing New Years tradition of consuming way too much hallucinogens and cleaning the apartment, I reflected back on this past year and came to the conclusion that I am fucking lucky just to be god damn alive! As I polished the toilet* I ran through the past years worth of news worthy events and decided that I would like to forget that 2005 ever happened.

I can’t imagine anyone really holding dear to this particular year in lieu of all that’s happened, apart from say CNN ghoul Anderson Cooper who hasn’t been flaccid for the entire past 365 days. There has been so much suffering and sheer political ridiculousness this year that one could almost go insane contemplating it all. Even Queen Elizabeth herself in her annual Christmas speech referred to the year 2005 as “a terrible year”. And you now this old broad isn’t one to exaggerate needlessly.

Lets just review the list of notable highlights shall we?

The year practically started off with a wave of destruction – literally – as a killer tsunami washed over the coastlines of the Indian Ocean killing more than 230,000 people and creating more grizzly Times magazines photo ops than you could shake a dead corpse at. It did however provide an opportunity for people worldwide to come together in order to lend aid and help finance the massive recovery efforts necessary; as well as a chance to unload all our back-catalogue stocks of women’s dress shoes and winter tents.

This however was only the beginning for what Nature had intended for us this past year. It’s as if Mother Nature herself decided to gave mankind a huge wake-up call with one massive golden shower to the face in 2005. Let us not forget the mudslides in Guatemala or the massive earthquake in Pakistan. These disasters, however, may have only received a mere few seconds of actual press time in the lingering shadow of all the Gulf Coast hurricanes this past summer. Hurricane Katrina in particular was directly responsible for the literal destruction of old New Orleans giving way to public looting and the declaration of martial law as desperate people ran in the streets with armloads of Huggies and designer jeans. After the ritual sacrificing of FEMA director, and Dubya crony Michael Brown to the angry public and media types, it did offer the chance for Hollywood celebrities to brush the dust off their haloes and wave at soggy star struck victims from the windows of their pimped out luxury SUV’s and "tsktsktsk-ing" before the media cameras in mock sympathy. One thing is for sure – if any of these morons who had their homes swept away when they refused to leave as advised, over and over again, are still sitting on their dilapidated porches facing the coast again this coming summer – I hope Neptune himself rises up and takes a colossal dump on their chest.

The world also mourned the passing of Pope John Paul II and stared expectantly at Vatican chimneys for little wafts of smoke. After the public funeral in St. Peter’s Square that would have put any Superbowl halftime show to shame, the rest of the Vatican bishops voted Senator Palpatine as the next Pope in a ceremony so shrouded in mystery that it would make any Masons lodge meeting seem like a company picnic by comparison. Palpatine then renamed himself after an omelet and everything returned back to business as usual in Vatican City.

And if that wasn’t enough mystical hocus-pocus for you, lets not forget that frogs were found exploding in German parks. Honestly, did anybody ever think to check to see that the rivers hadn’t turned to blood?

2005 was also a year of escalating violence worldwide as well. It seems so long ago now when all we had to worry about in 2004 were those pesky Weapons of Mass Destruction that weren’t really there and the odd beheading of kidnapped tourists and reporters in retaliation by some fanatical religious Jihad group…*sigh*…those were the days. It seems now however that 2005 turned out to be the ‘Year of the Anarchist’ as terrorist bombing attacks were successfully carried out with devastating results in the U.K., Spain, and Egypt. Shit, I can’t even ride on a city bus now without wearing a suit of armor and even then I still fear that I may panic and club someone to death if ever they should suddenly start fiddling suspiciously with their MP3 players underneath their jacket. On top of this, in Paris, radical French Muslims burned cars and rioted in the streets after two North African boys were fried to crispy tots in an industrial complex. How on earth these two incidents are related exactly is still to be determined once we manage to successfully design a super computer powerful enough to analysis all the prevalent historical data. And heaven fucking help you if you are a Boy Scout this past year!

Lets just say that a lot of people were pissed off this year and had lots to be pissed off at – myself included. Not because I was personally faced with, or even remotely affected by any of these disasters, but because even my only beloved means of escape – Reality Television – took a mighty turn straight down the dumper in 2005 as well. ‘Survivor: Guatemala’ crowned another skinny-ass chick as the ultimate survivor and winner of the million dollar prize. Gay Mormon survivalist and all-round nice guy, Rafe, was screwed out of contention when he lost himself momentarily in the final immunity challenge and openly invited Danni, the eventual victor, to not choose him for the final two - and thereby costing me twenty dollars that I had on him to win. If hope he fucking chokes on his ethics! In the wake of the fiasco that was the Survivor finale, the Linz family managed to beat out the born again bible-thumping Weaver family in the ‘Amazing Race’. It just wasn’t a good year for God’s chosen people in general was it? But all this was nothing compared to the royal ass fucking Randal would dish out to Rebecca on this season’s finale of ‘The Apprentice’ by denying her the chance to also be hired on by Donald Trump. “I honestly believe there can be only one. This is the Apprentice, not the Apprenti”...OUCH! Randal couldn’t have been any more blunt had he driven a stake through her heart right there on the set before a live television audience – or at least pissed on her leg. If I were Rebecca, I’d have been waiting for his black ass in the parking lot afterwards with a tire iron. Lastly, Martha Stewart chose blonde carbon-copy Dawna, despite her clusterfuck coordinating of “The Liz Claiborne Fashion Show & Charity Benefit” in the final project. Her victory over the fiery Latina beauty Bethanny was so anticlimactic that no one even so much as flinched as she rode off into the sunset in her new sports car. You mean the founder and publisher of a female sports magazine won the appointment of working at another future Martha Stewart Living magazine? Wow - there’s a fucking shocker! Thanks Martha – glad to see those months at ‘Camp Cupcake’ didn’t dampen your creativity none. That season finale was about as thrilling as watching invalids playing Bocce.

There was some slight satisfaction, however, in following the Michael Jackson child molestation trial. Personally, I just wanted to count how many times McCauley Culkin was going to be brought in to testify about his jewels not being diddled by “Freakshow” Jackson. Poor bastard.

2005 also found such noted politicians as Tom DeLay, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and Randy “Duke” Cunningham guilty of crimes and offences not becoming of appointed government officials; Libby in leaking the name of a covert CIA agent and Cunningham in accepting bribes from defense contractors**. But where Mr. DeLay seemed to be enjoying the whole arraignment proceedings with a freakishly happy expression on his face throughout, as with his released mug shot, Libby and Cunningham would take solace in that having already earned their prison bitch nicknames they could have an easier time making that smooth transition to their new prison lives.

But the granddaddy of all pending investigations may be the Justice Department inquiry into allegations that Republican uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave millions to at least 30 lawmakers — mostly powerful Republicans but also Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada — and pricey perks to buy legislative favor for his clients, including American Indian tribes with gaming interests. If I were Dubya, there’d be beads of sweat the size of small hams dropping from my forehead. And rightfully so, the Idiot Child has been back-paddling in his politics of 2004 slightly quicker than the rescuers to the St. Bernard Parish of News Orleans.

For Californian muscleman Arnold Schwartzenegger, it also was not such a glorious year in the public eye as his popularity plummeted drastically to that of Jesse Venture redux. The governor’s poll numbers tanked faster than a Hummer in quicksand: - but at least you can’t fuck dead bodies anymore. That’s something isn’t it?

As an interesting side note, Time magazine, reflecting the new mood of humanitarianism, picked as its Persons of the Year U2 front man Bono, along with Bill and Melinda Gates, citing their philanthropy and social activism. Well, with so many stumbling politicians and leaders dropping the ball***, who else are we going to turn to for guidance and leadership? Rock stars and computer geeks, of course!

Also on the positive side, we made the lights flicker in 2005 with the convictions and executions of part-time preacher and ex-Ku Klux Klan member Edgar Ray Killen and former Crips gang co-founder, Stanley “Tookie” Williams. The 80-year-old Killen looked frail in his wheelchair, inhaling oxygen and tended to by a nurse in a performance on par with Dennis Hopper in ‘Blue Velvet’. The jury didn’t care, and in June convicted him of three counts of manslaughter, for which a judge sentenced him to 20 years each. Tookie’s post-execution toxicology report has just returned revealing high enough levels of sodium thiopentol, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride to down a herd of water buffalo. Unfortunately though, these same levels are also found in any one of Courtney Love’s average everyday breakfasts and so she therefore continues to walk among us.

FUCK! I’ve had this ditzy train wreck in my office ‘Dead Pool’ for the last four years now and still this pony won’t kick off! This broad will outlive whatever nasty pandemics Nature has yet to still unleash on us - I swear.

Anyways, I don’t think it’s any strange coincidence that I also so happened to be ringing out the old year with a mop in hand, a head full of chemically charged mush, and the Brian Jonestown Massacre playing in the background. I’m a hipper, fatter, and hairier Lady MacBeth frantically scouring the filth of this past year from my apartment.

It must have been through some demented cosmic design that I find myself now surmising the past year so bleakly. But in doing so there is now also hope for a full new year of surprises. The good news is that my apartment is now spotless and I can see my reflection in the kitchen facets and I’m ready and eager to begin another year and hope to fucking Christ that it’s a tad bit better than the last one. The thought of having to endure another 12 months of similar trauma scares the Holy Guacamole out of me! It makes hairs stand up on parts of my body that you don’t want to know about.

Of course, there were some very positive things that happened this year as well; but that doesn't make for very interesting reading, now does it?

VIVA LAS 2006!

* It should be now noted here for the record that I have now cleaned my bowl to such a fine polish that one now has to wear protective eye wear each time they enter the bathroom to take a dump as not to not run the risk of having their retinas burned out by the intense light reflecting off the sparkling porcelain. I don’t know what it is about me and hallucinogens and cleaning. I just find the repetitive circular motions of scrubbing to be disturbingly meditative. It’s a hypnotic “Wax on; wax off” kind of state I get myself into.

** His audacious take included a Rolls Royce, living quarters on a yacht christened the “Duke-Stir” and a $7,200 Louis-Philippe commode.


*** In fact, there was more political ball handling accomplished in 2005 than Wilt Chamberlain’s entire 65-66 season with the Philadelphia Sixers.

1 Comments:

Blogger Nox said...

Such a marvelous sum up to a marvelous year. What I really need to know is why has it taken so long for us to turn to the rock stars and geeks for help? God knows this world is nothing without them.

I can't believe you missed the two biggest stories of the year; transvestites need their own bathrooms in Brazil. Apparently this will put an end to all the discrimination. I would like to see the submissions for door signs.
Look out up there because everyone's moving to Canada after this gets out. The ban on swingers clubs has now been lifted. That’s right, the debauchery in Canada is off the charts, and I think there is group sex going on in the streets as I type.

9:59 AM  

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