LITERATURE
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2009 In Review
*Author’s Note: Just the
same as last year, everybody. I’m assuming people follow events well
enough to know when I’m just pulling your leg and when I’m being
serious. No offense intended. Thanks!*
Welcome one and all to the last few days of 2009. It’s seems almost impossible that a full year has come and gone since my joining SSBBW Magazine and yet, here we are. It’s been an exciting and trying year for us all, what with actually getting Year in Review articles in to our editors on time for a change rather than the February edition after the fact, or trying surveys no one wants to be a part of. Regardless, we press on, eagerly awaiting the new things ahead and more than happy to leave the Year of Natural Fibers and Year of Astronomy behind us for good.
Just
like last year, this article will only focus on the positives
of the year. This isn’t so much because I’m irreverent to the more
serious or generally darker aspects of the news and media; it’s more
because the market is so saturated with those things that it’s often
hard to find something to compare them to in the light of a terrible
economy, major armed conflicts the world over and so on. So, let’s
reflect on the year gone by and the coming to a close of a decade of
exciting natural fibers! Oh, excuse me, I meant: a decade of exciting
adventures!
In January…
To
begin on nothing less than pure oddity, and I promise you I am not making
this story up, Asuncion, capital of Paraguay – a place usually defined
as “not within the United States”, mind you – becomes the American
Capital of Culture. At the same time, Vilnius and Linz become the European
Capitals of Culture, but this at least makes sense since they actually
are located inside what is geographically defined as Europe. Midway
through the month, Ethiopian military forces withdraw from Somalia where
they had been keeping peace for over two years, which, while being good
news, I can’t really make a joke about as no one ever talked about
this before. Speaking of peacekeeping measures, a little later, a ceasefire
for the Gaza War is issued from Israel after nearly three weeks of open
warfare. It went into effect the very next day in Paraguay. Around the
same time, the United States elected its first minority president, Barack
Obama. Experts agree he will probably finally stop being on the news
in the year 2038. But that’s enough politics.
In February…
Let’s
see… what have we got for February? Economic devastation… war…
politics… oh, c’mon! It couldn’t have been that bad a year, could
it? Let’s check the movie lists, then. Pink Panther 2? Another Friday
the 13th movie? The Chun-Li movie?! Okay, so February was
Hell on earth. Let’s skip it.
In March…
NASA
sent up a photometer to search for extrasolar planets in the Milky Way
system as part of the Keplar Mission. Extrasolar means when they put
too much sauce on the pizza and the cheese slides off. No, wait, I apologize
– it means that it’s an object that revolves around a star other
than the sun. Which, if you stop and consider that everything in the
Milky Way revolves around the sun, is a tiny bit silly. Late in the
month, the president of Madagascar is overthrown in a coup d’état
following many rallies in Antananarivo. I’m not entirely sure if this
is actually “good” news or not, I just really like the word “Antananarivo”.
Antananarivo.
In April…
Early
in the month, the G-20 Summit meets in London to discuss the global
financial crisis. However, they remembered they are, in fact, politicians
and thus not being effected by the crisis and all went home. A few days
later, North Korea launches the Kwangmyongsong-2 rocket which also
has a really cool name, largely in response to the western nations joking
about Kim Jong-Il’s height. A few days later, Russia and America decided
that not only did the rocket not enter orbit, it and its payload
landed in the Pacific and sank and that Kim Jong-Il still looks pretty
funny.
In May…
Early
in the month, nothing happened. I wish I could say I was joking, but
I’m really not. No major news happened within the first 15 days of
the month. So, instead, I’ll discuss my own personal experiences with
turning 22… it’s a lot like being 21. Anyways, a few days later,
the Sri Lankan Civil War comes to an end after nearly 25 years. Americans
sigh in relief as they didn’t even know there was a Sri Lankan Civil
War. North Korea, still a shade of red from the previous month’s failed
rocket launch, announced how they performed a successful nuclear test,
but refused to let anyone see it or examine any evidence for it. The
United Nations Security Council passed a non-binding resolution to waggle
their index fingers very sternly in North Korea’s general direction.
In June…
NASA
sends up the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter probe (commonly abbreviated
as H1N1) to the moon. This is probably because they either had to justify
their government grants or because they still hope that there might
be dragons there, since we sure didn’t find any during our deep sea
expeditions. Greenland, in its continuing effort for independence from
the Kingdom of Denmark, assumes control over several key functions of
government, including the passing of non-binding resolutions. Content
that we have run that joke into the ground, let’s move on to…
July.
The
35th G8 Summit is held in L’Aquila, Italy, a place usually
referred to as “Not Rome”, more than likely to discuss just why
on Earth 2009 was such a depressingly bad year. Anyways, later on in
the month, the longest solar eclipse, lasting nearly as long as a certain,
high-budget environmentalist schlock-fest that shall remain nameless,
is recorded in Asia. Finding this month to be way too depressing,
however, we moved on to…
August.
Unfortunately,
August was no better than February. Seriously, this year must’ve been
rough.
In September…
In
a move that is described as “definitely not a power grab” the G-20
are set to replace the G-8 position in regards to global finance. This
is, sadly, the closest thing to good news that happened in September.
Next, in…
October.
We
are seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel here, so try to hang
with me until this is all over or I will certainly hang alone. The International
Olympics Committee announces that the 2016 Olympics will take place
in Rio de Janeiro. Meanwhile, I still await Christmas day for my copy
of Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic games. Not that I’m excited
or anything. Around the same time, Ireland holds a second referendum
concerning the Lisbon Treaty, whose name is no where near as cool as
Antananarivo, to more or less positive response.
In November…
NASA,
courtesy of the previously-mentioned lunar recon mission, discovers
that there is a “significant” amount of water on the moon, in a
specific crater. However, they fail to specify if there are any dragons
in it. In semi-related news, the Large Hadron Collider mentioned last
year apparently was given a set of jumper cables and sparked back to
activation to a truly underwhelming media response. And finally…
In December…
Astronomers
discover GJ1214b, the first-known exoplanet that might have dragons
on it. And, unfortunately, that’s all the good news I could scrounge
up on 2009!
For the future…
By
the time you fine folks at SSBBW Magazine get the chance to read this,
it will already be 2010 – the year of biodiversity! I’m not going
to lie to you, though, researching the events of 2009 was a painfully
depressing chore. It was just not a very good year, so here’s to hoping
that 2010 will be better for everyone!
Here’s to happy holidays and a much happier new year for us all here at SSBBW Magazine and to all of you at home. And remember: it’s never too soon nor too late to contribute your stories, experiences, thoughts, feelings or random bits you find in the news with us here. I hope to hear from you all soon and look forward to another year of serving as your humble literature section editor. See you next time!
Written by: Jeff M.
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"New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." ~Mark Twain |
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"Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true." ~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850 |