Awesomest/Shittiest Things of 2013

It’s that time once again, people. Time to look back at the awesomest and shittiest things of 2013. As always, it remains a struggle to find things for the awesome category, and to keep the shitty category to a minimum. Check it out:

Awesome

1. Stephen Colbert Snubbed by Daft Punk – One of the biggest highlights from the world of music this year was the long-awaited release of a new Daft Punk album. I’ve always been a big fan, and I happily welcomed their new work. The most popular song from the album was titled Get Lucky It was one of the most popular songs this summer. Daft Punk is sort of notorious for being camera shy (which I whole-heartedly endorse for all celebrities), and rarely make public appearances. I was shocked (and excited) to hear that they were going to appear on The Colbert Report to play their “song of the summer.” And then they didn’t show up. No, they opted out and left Colbert high and dry. Fortunately, the episode we got was much funnier than what had been intended. Cobert danced to a recording of Get Lucky and had his famous friends join in. Hugh Laurie, Jeff Bridges, Jimmy Fallon, Bryan Cranston, Matt Damon, and more showed up to join in the fun. It was absolutely fucking hilarious. By a stroke of good luck, Robin Thicke was in New York promoting his new album and hot summer song Blurred Lines at the same time. Colbert managed to snag Thicke, and he performed the real “song of the summer” live on-stage. All in all, this was the music/comedy highlight of 2013.
2. Horse Meat Scandal – I wrote a post on this earlier in the year. I find it totally, outrageously crazy that this scandal ravaged Europe. In case you didn’t hear, the basics boil down to this: people thought they were getting the same old processed meat in their foods as always, but as it turned out, they were getting beef mixed with horse. And in some cases, 100% horse. My thoughts are still the same. If nobody can tell the difference, then what’s the big fucking deal? The only reason people care is because horses are cute and cows aren’t. I’m still a long way from finishing my quest to eat every cute animal in the world. Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it.
3. Dennis Rodman Goes to North Korea – The world was stunned to learn that former NBA star Dennis Rodman visited North Korea in February. Apparently, that was the start of a beautiful friendship, as Rodman has gone on record several times talking about new BFF Kim Jong-Un. Rodman stated that Kim was a “friend for life”, a “great dad”, and that Obama should give him a call sometime. Rodman has gone again since then, and he plans to return in January 2014 to help coach a series of basketball games. This news story ends up in the Awesome category because it is so completely insane that it has no choice other than to be awesome. I can only imagine what it’s like, seeing a 6 ft. 7 in. tall, black, green-haired, face-pierced guy being best friends with a chubby Korean midget. They have to make a sitcom out of this. How can they not? Hilarity would ensue. On a more serious note, I hope that Rodman could potentially open Kim’s mind a bit about relaxing the human rights atrocities his country is notorious for. But I’m not going to hold my breath.
4. Manti Te’O’s Fake Girlfriend – Super-genius football player Manti Te’O played at the collegiate level for Notre Dame. He entered the national spotlight when he stated that his close girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died after battling Leukemia. Or was it in a car wreck? I’m not sure. Neither was Te’O. As it turns out, she wasn’t his girlfriend at all. She wasn’t even a girl. In fact, she wasn’t even a real person. Kekua turned out to be completely fictious, dreamed up by a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo (no doubt a true humanitarian), because he had fallen in love with Te’O and figured this was the only way they could be together. They had met through online dating and became very serious, despite never having met in person. While the story was pretty awesome and hilarious on its own, it does speak to the dangers of our online world. People can be duplicitous, and just imagine how much damage could have been created if Tuiasosopo actually had a vendetta against Te’O. Humanity is doomed.
5. Dog Butt Jesus – This summer everyone got a little hysterical when a picture surfaced of a dog’s butt (and hind legs) that looked like our lord and savior. If you search for the image online and check it out you’ll see that, yeah, it kind of looks like Jesus. It’s amazing that a dog’s butt could be such a holy thing, when usually all its good for is taking dumps and shitting out random objects like plastic and strings. If the Virgin Mary could show up in a grilled cheese sandwich and religious people would cheer, then I don’t understand why they’d be upset about Jesus showing up in a dog’s butt. Dog is man’s best friend, after all, and humans spend a lot of time around dog butt. It seems like the most logical place for Jesus to show up.

Shitty

1. NSA Scandal – While the horse meat scandal was hilarious, the recent United States NSA scandal was horrendous. There’s nothing like learning that the U.S. government spies on all of its citizens’ communications 24 hours a day. I suppose this should be expected, but I was hoping that the government still favored privacy and rights of people over HURR DURR WE HAVE TO DO THIS TO PROTECT US FROM TERRORISTS HURR DURR. President Obama promised to have one of the most transparent presidencies ever, but when this revelation came out, that was all blown to shit. And the guy who let us know about all this, Edward Snowden, is now forever on the run. Obama has actually lobbied hard to protect the rights of whistleblowers. Everyone is encouraged to speak out if we see that something is amiss (“If you see something, say something”). However, that’s a sham. If you see anything the government is doing illegally, you are supposed to keep your goddamn mouth shut. Things got even more ludicrously out of hand when we later found out the NSA was tapping the phones of high-ranking official of other governments, like the Chancellor of Germany. Great job there, NSA. Keep on monitoring those damn Nazis, never mind the fact that WWII ended in 1945. We are sliding down that slippery slope that will lead us into a total surveillance state. And with the godforsaken Xbox One monitoring us at all times through the Kinect, well, George Orwell’s predictions were proven right after all.
2. The Royal Baby – Ugh. For fuck’s sake, nobody gives a shit about the royal baby. Okay, sure, maybe the British do, but nobody else does. Why was the U.S. media insisting on making this a story? Prince Baldy and Princess So-Beautiful-She-Only-Married-Baldy-for-the-Status had sex and reproduced. They only did what everyone else on the planet is capable of doing. I’m sorry, but this is not a news worthy story. Now, if the baby had developed the theory for cold fusion, then, yes, I would be interested. But it didn’t do that. It did what all babies do: shit and cry. I have nothing against the baby, not at all. But the fact that the media insisted everyone should care about these do royals procreating was totally annoying. This was the year 2013, why do we care about royalty at all? They don’t do anything but collect taxes from people for no other reason than they used to be in charge a long time ago. And that makes them interesting? Didn’t we fight the Revolutionary War so we could ignore these assholes? Ugh. For fuck’s sake.
3. Action Stars’ Failed Comebacks – 2013 was the year that Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis all staged magnificent comebacks to the action movie genre. Of course, they all failed spectacularly. They unleashed some of the cheesiest, hammiest (now I’m getting hungry), most generic action movies in a long time. They wanted to recapture the magic of the 80s, but you know what? The 80s are over. I love those old movies, but they are a product of their time. The kind of stuff they did then just doesn’t work today. And I don’t think another 20 Expendables movies is going to change that.
4. U.S. Government Shutdown – The U.S. government is so completely fucked up that it managed to land not one but two spots on this year’s shitty list. The two party system is completely broken. The entire government, and the hundreds of thousands of federal employess, not to mention millions of citizens who depend on services, were held hostage over an ideological hissy-fit. Republicans got most of the blame and rightfully so. They kept trying to block the Affordable Care Act, despite their attempts at blocking it were denied countless times by the courts and the voters themselves. Democrats came out looking pretty good at the end, but they are not without blame. The fact that they play such a massive role in the perpetutation of the broken political system leaves them just as culpable. No government should have to shut down because the players are stuck in a pissing contest. They have proven definitively that they don’t give a shit about the American people. They only care about their personal legacies and catering to radical groups of voters who make up the minority of the public. Maybe the NSA should think about monitoring the politicians and arresting those assholes for crimes against the country. They would have no shortage of suspects, that’s for sure.
5. Miley Cyrus was Everywhere – I don’t have a problem with Miley Cyrus. She’s a kid, and she is acting like a kid: stupid. The only problem is that she’s a kid celebrity, and therefore her antics are plastered across our TVs and computers for all the world to see. I don’t need to see a vacuous bimbo shaking her ass with her tongue sticking out. I’ve been to college, I know what that’s like. We don’t need to keep recycling it over and over again. The shitty part about this was how the media kept trying to make her antics into a news story. No matter how expected her behavior was, the media kept trying to make it into something big, something it was not. Nobody cares about kids being stupid. That’s what they do best. Can we please stop paying attention to this nonsense?

Well, another year has come and gone. 2014 is just getting started. I’m sure there will be many more awesome and shitty things happening during the Earth’s long trek around the sun. Let’s hope, no matter what happens, we can ridicule them with reckless abandon.