The year in review
My first annual “year in review” column is free to all, but I sure hope you’ll consider becoming a subscriber for all the 2022 fun. I can’t do this without you.
Please? And thank you..
I've never done a "year in review" sort of thing before, mostly because I couldn't be arsed to think that hard. Plus, this year has been so monumentally shitty that reliving in via a timeline that HAS TO start with Trump-loving patriots killing cops and busting windows and scaling the walls of the Capitol building in DC on 1/6 is just gonna make me even more sad. But law and order eventually prevailed and the President, who merely encouraged the overthrow of a democratically elected government, was immediately thrown into prison. Wait....what? He wasn't?
Oh that's right. He was banned from Twitter.
Well.....to him that's nearly as bad. All he had left was a quick “blog” that got laughed out of existence because nobody ever read it. His own branded long-promised social media platform is apparently in the same backroom as his health care plan......so he's still making do with official "press releases" on Mar-a-Lago stationary...which increasingly read like they were written in crayon. In short, nobody is holding their breath for the release of his memoirs, or his Presidential library.
Post-riot, Trump is impeached again, for old time's sake. I think this brings us to February, when Texas was suddenly and inexplicably encased in ice and a shivering Ted Cruz showed up at Cancun's border, begging for asylum. I have a soft spot for Texas, mostly because my brother lives there, and I love him dearly. Texas deserves better than dingbats like Ted Cruz, but Texas keeps re-electing dingbats like Ted Cruz, so it's easy to become conflicted. However, I live in Pennsylvania (Dr. Oz, anyone?), so I really don’t hold the intellectual high ground in this fight. Let’s move on, shall we?
It's now March, and Governor Cuomo of New York is outed as being yet another creepy, grabby, rapey white guy in a position of power. For a brief moment both sides of the aisle come together and kumbaya, demanding Cuomo resign, which of course he initially refuses to do, even after cringy video of him being creepy, grabby, and rapey is plastered all over social media. Also, the Suez canal is blocked by a container ship whose captain never learned to parallel park, thus disrupting the world. In retrospect, this will seem quaint and adorable.
In April Biden's dog "Major" starts biting everybody, and is eventually sent away for "additional training"....begging the question why can't the same be done with Marjorie Taylor Greene? The President also brings up his infrastructure plan for the first time, and Republicans who have spent the last 4 years spending money like drunken sailors are suddenly so fiscally woke that even Rand Paul seems shocked.
In May everybody stopped wearing their masks, and it became the honor system. In bars all over the nation Trump bros strutted in, and in their best Aaron Rodgers voices purred to suddenly horrified bartenders that "sure doll, I've been immunized..." Also, the winner of the Kentucky Derby got caught cheating, because this is 2021 and we simply cannot have nice things.
In June Biden's other dog dies. Not a good year for Biden pooches. The President jets off to Europe for a meeting with the G-7 leaders.....which is his first real chance to pull them aside one by one and apologize for previous buffoonery. The leaders all gather for a socially distanced photo, which ends up looking like a Pink Floyd album cover. Trump, who hates not being invited to these things, has to make do with golfing in his backyard with Kid Rock and holding a revenge/hate-rally in Ohio…his first since 1/6.
In July we really thought Covid was over, and then the Covid "delta variant" arrives, just in time for any backyard barbeques we can squeeze in between tornadoes and a non-stop barrage of floods and thunder storms. Everybody has to go through storage bins to find their old mask stash. Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, in the most expensive dick waving contest ever, blast themselves into space for reasons nobody can quite fathom. And, not to be out-weirded, the "2020 Olympics" begin in the summer of 2021, in a nation that doesn't want them.
August brings us the flawless and seamless Afghanistan withdrawal, in which the bullet-point on the list that said "inform the proper folks that we are withdrawing" was somehow overlooked. Photos of terrified Afghans literally hanging from departing US Cargo planes somewhat undercuts the administration claim that "it's going well". For Republicans still mad at Biden for sending their leader into exile, this is chum in the water, and they are suddenly broken-hearted over the Afghans Biden left behind, until it's explained to them that eventually he did get most of them out and they'll be needing a place to stay, and just like that the refugees are instantly transformed into Covid-ridden jihad-inspired rapists. For all the noise this debacle made at the time, it was forgotten as quickly as a school shooting....and only once in a while will some smart-ass like me mention that after spending $49684038304943039840303940394 and 20 years over there, we managed to leave the place exactly as we found it. That is, completely fucked.
In September Trump was informed by the company hired by Arizona's Republican controlled Senate that he actually lost the state by more votes than he thought....which served to convince Trump only that the "MASSIVE FRAUD" was way deeper than he thought, and had him considering another Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference with the pillow guy to uncover it all. In Covid news, Nicki Minaj informed the world that a recently vaccinated friend of hers got swollen balls, and all the anti-vaxx people screamed "I told you so!" at Dr Fauci, who had to be wondering who the fuck Nicki Minaj was.
October kick-started the "global supply chain" shortage, and we were bombarded with photos of what looked like Los Angeles rush hour traffic, except with ships. Christmas will be ruined, and just because the shelves are not at all empty at your store doesn't mean that they're not empty everywhere else....all you have to do is check the Fox News twitter feed for confirmation, you sheep. Meanwhile packages are piled on my porch on a daily basis, shortage be damned. I can hear USPS/UPS/FedEx/Amazon drivers on my new Ring camera cursing the family name. It's very confusing. Just about everything the nation orders is made in China. That'll show those bat-eating virus-creating BASTARDS!
Thanksgiving was a time to get out the yellow legal pad and keep track of who in your family is not vaccinated, so you can either exclude them entirely or inform them they have to sit at what you're calling the "Joe Rogan" table....which is in the basement. Also, it's increasingly obvious that anybody walking into an airport suddenly has a 50/50 chance of sleeping on the floor there, as airlines are shocked.....SHOCKED I tell you.....that they can't find enough people to stand there and be screamed at and assaulted by irate un-masked spittle-producing travelers who can't handle their Miller Lite cans. And all this in the midst of global-warming inspired whacked-out weather that might ground birds.
And it's when we first heard the word "omicron", which was either nothing to worry about or the final nail in the coffin of a doomed nation.
Which brings us full circle actually. Everybody we spend Christmas with either has Covid or thinks they do, and the CDC and Fauci have changed the quarantine rules from 10 days to "whatever the fuck", just in case the NFL might have to sit Aaron Rodgers for a playoff game….or some woke coach gets the commie idea to sign Colin Kaepernick instead of the guy stocking shelves at the supermarket.
In a final burst of NEPA dumbfuckery, 4 diverted planes of children, mostly refugees from Central America, part of an ongoing federal government refugee unification program, landed in Avoca over Christmas. Once here, they were taken by bus to their parents, or to approved sponsors. MAGA chuds, fresh out of church celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus in a horse stable, went wild with rage, and lit up comment sections with some of the must vile, ignorant gibberish ever seen in these parts. Lucky for Mary and Joseph they stopped in Bethlehem and not Avoca. Things might have turned out differently.
I think that covers it, eh?
Happy New Year.
In a bit..
—tf