It’s that time once again, people. Time to look back at the awesomest and shittiest things of 2015. 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
- Gay Marriage Legal in the U.S. – Finally, the U.S. gets with the program and allows all its citizens to marry. It’s been a long time coming. The religious nutjobs in this country wail and moan that this somehow infringes upon their rights to practice their religion or something. I know, it makes no sense. But now we can more easily ignore these assholes, and live it up at our fabulous gay friends’ weddings.
- Water on Mars – We’re one step closer to landing on the red planet now. A colony will come next. And then, we’ll all be living out our Total Recall fantasies. It’ll be awesome. Three-boobed aliens for everyone! Oh wait, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, this is a great step forward in space exploration.
- Martin Shkreli Indicted for Fraud – This little fucker thought he was a genius by taking a cheap drug and jacking up the price 5,000%. He immediately earned the ire of pretty much everyone in the world. And now, he’s been charged with fraud and arrested. Not for the price hike, mind you, but something else entirely. Hey, at least there’s some justice in the world. I hope he gets sent to a federal pound-you-in-the-ass-penitentiary, but he’ll probably wind up in a resort.
- Climate Change Conference – For the first time ever, a group of nations got together to create legislation to help save the planet from ourselves. While it’s unclear if the proposals will do any real good, it’s better than continuing to stick our heads in the sand and pretend their isn’t a problem. Now that we are taking this first step forward, hopefully we will be on the road to cleaning up the mess we’ve made of the world. I don’t want to be living in Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, do you?
- 250 People Pay it Forward at McDonald’s – One day in Florida, a woman decided to pay for the meal of the customer in the drive-through behind her. That caused a chain reaction in which 250 consecutive people “paid it forward.” Sometimes, in this cruel, shitty world in which we live, it’s hard to remember that we can be good to one another. At least some people remember.
Shitty
- Terrorist Attacks – It seems like you can’t turn on the damn TV without hearing about another terrorist attack somewhere in the world. France got hit twice garnering the most media coverage. But we can’t forget the Middle East where this sort of thing happens on a daily basis.
- Mass Shooting in the U.S. – a shooting at a church, a shooting at a holiday party, the shooting of TV reporters on the air, a shooting at an Oregon community college, a shooting at a Planned Parenthood, and probably several more. Yeah, the U.S. totally doesn’t have a gun problem. It’s not like we aren’t the only industrialized country in the world that doesn’t have this problem. Oh wait, we are? Nevermind. HURR DURR WE NEED DEM GUNS IN CASE WE NEED TO RISE UP AGAINST DE GUBMENT HURR DURR SECOND AMENDMENT PROTECTS ALL DE UTHERS HURR DURR.
- Refugee Crisis – The Arab Spring hasn’t turned out to be all that great in retrospect. In fact, it’s led to pretty much nothing but violence, terrorism, and civil wars. Syria’s refugee crisis has grown out of that, and has become a worldwide problem. People are deathly afraid to take in the refugees even though they are just regular people trying to get their families out of a horrible situation. If people would grow some balls and start helping these refugees, then maybe we could make the world a slightly better place. Still shitty, yes, but slightly better.
- U.S. Political Campaigns – I think I mention politics in every one of these posts. This year was no better. It seemed like the campaign for President began just as soon as Obama was re-elected. Republican doofuses started blasting us with fear mongering and divisive hate speech early this summer, and are only going to double-down as the next year gets underway. With perennial numbskull Donald Trump taking the lead, it’s a true race to the bottom. It seems like the dumber these guys act, the more support they get. Maybe I should move to Canada.
- Bill Cosby Charged with Aggravated Assault – The whole Cosby thing blew up last year, but he’s finally been charged. First of all, he hasn’t been convicted yet except for in the court of public opinion. Everyone assumes he’s guilty. He probably is, I realize that, but can’t the guy have a trial first? Second of all, I love The Cosby Show. And so do you. Everyone does. But now I’m suddenly supposed to never watch it again? It’s a brilliantly written show, and one of the greatest sitcoms of all time. Can’t people separate actors from their work? Are they that easily swayed? I guess so. If Cosby’s guilty, of course I want him prosecuted to the fullest extant, but until that day comes, I’m going to be watching reruns of The Cosby Show.
Well, another year has come and gone. 2016 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.