As if those God-awful year-end retrospectives the media keep feeding us weren't bad enough, now we have to put up with decade retrospectives, as well.
It's almost an insult that nearly every mainstream media outlet in the country is about to assume I don't remember September 11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Iraq War.
I'm ready for them to remind me that 2009 saw the deaths of Michael Jackson, Ted Kennedy, and all the equity in my house. If I wasn't paying attention when it happened, what makes you think I'm paying attention now?
The only thing worse than seeing all this drivel in the news media is knowing that people actually read it.
One critical function of the media, I've realized, is to validate our reality. We want to see that someone else remembers it the same way we do, even if that someone else is the same people who told us about it in the first place.
It's lame.
I understand journalists have to fill air time and copy inches during the news void that is the week after Christmas. But why not go back and fill me up with interesting stories that I probably missed the first time around? Let's see something new, not something old.
Let's give it a try:
2000: I manage to graduate from college, despite commuting to class on Firestone tires, spending 30 hours a week downloading songs from Napster and playing "Twisted Metal" on the Playstation 2.
2001: The United States experienced an event of soul-chilling violence that exposed our vulnerabilities, left us confused and scared, and sucked us into intense conflicts. Or, as people in the Jerusalem call it, "Tuesday."
2002: I took a leave of absence from my job and drove around America for four months, searching for the soul of a nation, wondering what I might see that someone could hate so intensely. I quickly learned that the UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico is not open when it claims to be.
2003: The United Nations proclaimed 2003 the "International Year of Freshwater," which President Bush observed by standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declaring that everyone in the world already had ample access to fresh water.
2004: A dead whale exploded in downtown Tainan City, Taiwan, while being transported to a university for study. The bursting whale splattered blood and whale guts over surrounding shop-fronts, bystanders, and cars, proving that Americans really do need to pay closer attention to international news.
2005: Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma bully and batter a lot of people we don't know living in places that are far away. Gas prices jump well over $4 per gallon. Yikes!
2006: Upon noticing that the decade is not going well, the world takes a year off.
2007: Caught up in the hysteria over Bird Flu, I buy 50 pounds of extra non-perishable food and store it in the shed. It has since perished.
2008: Somehow, "Kung Fu Panda" becomes the third-highest grossing film of the year, finishing behind some Indiana Jones movie and some Batman movie. Ridiculous.
2009: Wake me up when it's over.
1 comment:
I enjoy that "exploding whale" is one of your tags. I give you the blogging equivalent of a Michelin Star, which is a 20oz of Mountain Dew. Remind me that I owe you one.
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