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Friday 31 December 2021: A Years In Review (2019 - 2021)

Been a while since I did a yearly news story roundup, because the world went to shit, and that’s all I have to say on that. So here’s a bullet-style review of the last four years, starting with 2019, because that’s how counting backwards works;

In 2019:

·         Fifty people were killed in mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, in the country's worst-ever mass shooting. This led to increases in requirements for gun ownership, and a voluntary gun buyback scheme – which took guns out of the hands of responsible gun owners, and left them in the black market, due to its voluntary nature.

·         In a case of ‘rich Americans think they can do what they want’, dozens of wealthy and well-known parents were accused of paying to embellish their kids' college applications to get them unfairly admitted to elite institutions. The next step would, of course, be to get them admitted into large companies because of ‘their own work’ using Daddy’s network, or receive upper-class lifestyles as a direct result of their own hard-earned nepotism, right?

·         In April, the world watched in horror as the iconic spire of the 850-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned down. To the well-initiated, this would serve as a metaphor for the entire Western world, on a number of levels.

·         Astronomers released the first-ever image of a black hole, which they said "feels like looking at the gates of Hell.” Or the Trump presidency. Conspiracy theory alert: it was just a photo of the Donald, but with really bad aperture. Haha, ape-rture. Well, at least he’s the right colour. Ish. If you close one eye, then the other eye, then you turn around and walk away.

·         The special counsel Robert Mueller released his 400-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. It was just the words ‘there are links between Trump and the Russians’ in really, really large font. You’d think that meant something got done about it – but no. Apparently there was no evidence of fraud (although, one only needs to look at Trump’s whole career for that…)

·         The world (minus British tabloids) celebrated as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle welcomed their first baby, Archie, in May. In other news, Jeremy Clarkson got so mad about it he had a stroke. Not literally, but his newspaper columns became deranged, and this is the only rational explanation.

·         Amid a bumbling Brexit deal, Theresa May resigned as prime minister of Great Britain in June, and the bumbling Boris bumbled into the bumbling Brexit deal. A true ‘match made in Hell’ situation.

·         What started as protests against an extradition bill in Hong Kong in June grew into sweeping, student-led unrest across the territory. Well, the Government seemed to use teargas as though it was a street-sweeping aid, which worked out well as it has every other time that’s gotten done.

·         By August, the Amazon rainforest had suffered more than 70,000 wildfires since the start of the year. But climate change isn’t a thing, right?

·         In August, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in prison. Or whatever the politically adequate version of ‘someone more powerful than him had him taken care of’ happens to be at this moment in time.

·         In September, climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered an impassioned speech at the UN, telling world leaders: "How dare you!". One would have thought the world needed only to look at the fires in the Amazon (not the Bezos variety), but alas. It would seem global indignation at the tone of voice in a monologue is what it took to get attention on the issue. Which is to say, nothing actually got done even after that.

·         After a suit-sizing snafu (too big tiddies) earlier in the year, the first all-female spacewalk outside the International Space Station finally took place. Well, knowing misogyny, it was probably functionally similar to walking a plank

·         After being touted as a healthier alternative to smoking cigarettes, vaping was linked to dozens of deaths across the US. Ah, love the taste of irony in my lungs.

·         A whistleblower said President Donald Trump had asked the Ukrainian leader for help investigating political rival Joe Biden. It led to the president's impeachment in December. Although, I am impressed he learned how to communicate all of that with a whistle.

2019 was painful, let’s change it up and do 2020 monologue style.

You know what they say, hindsight is 2020. Or 2021. Or 2022. I’m pretty sure someone’s done that joke before. Bears repeating, though. Well, in this country you sometimes get kiwis repeating on the wallpaper of some old woman’ house, but the point still stands. But yes, been a while since I could structure a thought – some people still say I can’t. Well, it’s more like ‘you structure sentence can’t words’ but I think that’s what they’re saying. Because words are hard and need brainpower, and obviously I don’t have any, what with all of the bullshit taking my will to live. What bullshit? Oh, boy. You don’t know? They say ignorance is bliss but I would perhaps argue that indifference is ascension. The argument there of course is whether that is a place you want to go to. Or indeed a discussion you want to have … on Christmas Day. You just end up with your racist uncle yelling at you from in the rafters while your mother is screaming at him to get down and your grandma pokes him with a broom. Then they tell you that the discussion shouldn’t have even been started. How would I have known Steve was on a bungee cord. Oh, there he’s just fallen down; broken his skull but there was no brain in there anyway. Hindsight is 2020 …

… And 2020 was shit. I didn’t really have anything other than that to say before now, you see. Political mess, social mess, economic mess, everything was a mess, except for my bank statement which was clean as fuck cos I didn’t go outside. Nothing happened at all … started in March and continued intermittently for the rest of the year stopping only for a brief respite in January for the fireworks. Not that there was anything to celebrate. The officials called it ‘Nothing’ because the first guy that got Covid responded that he ‘had Nothing’ when asked about it by Health Official. Normally it would be Officials, plural, but China only needs one guy with a rifle. It doesn’t help also that at the time I was unemployed, so the Nothing just compounded. Well, working part time at the hardware store, but that’s not work. Not proper work, anyway. You come in, stand there, give rote responses and then leave – and that’s all before you’ve woken up! But now I work in tech support and I swear – if I hear one more computer bitching about it’s impending divorce, I will riot!

So in like June, I walked past the stock exchange and saw one guy with a piece of wood with holes in go up to another guy who also had one. World's most obvious drug deal. Or practice for rugby scrum? You decide. But yeah the markets in early Covid were a sight to behold. How fast could it drop? Then it would ping around and come right back up, only to drop again with the next outbreak wherever in the globe. Everyone on the news has nothing to say either. It’s interesting how much they’ll pay for absolutely nothing, how much it’s worth just to … have a voice. Even though when you tell people you do things like this, they laugh. I went to a party once where the weed brownies had police caution tape around them. Later transpired that there wasn’t any and they just liked putting caution tape places. At least you could convince people they were having a good time, which became increasingly hard to do as the pandemic wore on. In the real world, nothing continued to happen – but the global political sphere saw a Trump, Boris and Putin love triangle, with Bolsonaro watching at the window. Or at least that’s how it seemed. Just wanted Trump-senpai to notice him. And yet, he seemed to be noticed by almost every other world leader. Certainly seemed like years before the US got itself under control (if such a thing were even possible). But hey, can’t win really. Only varying levels of ‘lose’. Someone should have told me that up front, rather than leaving me to figure it out by myself.

Although I guess I knew that already, what with the year starting with the worse-than-usual Australian bushfires, and continuing on to the worse-than-usual viral pandemic (and no, I’m not referring to the genesis of TikTok; that’s an essay for another day which will definitely not be recorded in a 60 second video). At the very least, the beginning of the year brought a new Roald Dahl book – Trump and the Second Giant Peach. I’m assuming the Government attempted to shove him in there or something. Perhaps the overall theme of this mess is that it’s a mess. Which is normally how messes work – which is to say that they don’t. Speaking of things that didn’t work – Brexit was finalised in January in a deal which was designed to fail, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex step down as ‘senior’ royals, even though I could have sworn they were under 40. In a lot of cases, it seemed like this years was going to be the Year of the Consequences (although that’s not an astrological position), with Harvey Weinersteiner going to prison for existing.

Hopefully 2021 can be more focussed and faster, so let’s go back to bulleting.

·         The COVID-19 pandemic: Continues, although everyone in the world tried to pretend it wasn’t. Which worked exactly as well as you’d expect. That is to say, about as well as the average employee. So, not at all. But if you’re pretending Covid is solved, then that means it’s solved, right?

·         While the most functional part of the American Government (a title only won by comparison) was ‘busy’ finalising the votes in the US election, thousands of people gathered at the U.S. Capitol as a show of support for the former president amid his baseless claims of election fraud. They then overwhelmed police, who are easily stressed out, you know. The mob was eventually stopped after they’d vandalised everything they could get their hands on, and detained by police after the fact – because intervention beforehand would have been too useful. I can only imagine American workers taking Trump’s advice to the mob seriously and leaving early; “We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special.” So special, with a special disciplinary hearing, being more consequences than anyone in charge of the riot received. An investigation remains ongoing to determine if the former president holds any responsibility for the events of the day. Spoiler alert: yes.

·         A container ship named Ever Given made headlines in March after becoming stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal, halting much of the world’s shipping channels. This triggered a flood of memes (word choice).

·         The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan after the United States withdrew its remaining troops to bring to an end a two-decade-long war. But America bears no responsibility for the genesis of this war in the first place. No, none at all.

·         Rocket launches were a hot topic in 2021 as Blue Origin (da ba dee), SpaceX (why’d she leave you?), and Virgin Galactic (lmao) competed to revolutionize and commercialize space travel. That’s Amazon, Bmazon and Cmazon, if you’re keeping track.

Climate crisis still ongoing, not that you’d know about it from the news. Just the small annoyance of getting unseasonal weather all of the time, which doesn’t cause any issues at all. Everything is absolutely fine.