HOLLY CULP
Opinions Editor
Let’s fast forward mentally to 50 years from now when we are all old and grey. You turn to your friends and say, “Hey friends, remember back in 2009 when all that crazy shit happened?” But no one does because they were too awesome being drunk all the time to recall such important events as the inauguration of one Barack Obama, first blackish president of the United States.
Blackish presidents reminds me of brackish water, which is when freshwater mixes with salt water (what’s up, high school biology?) which makes me think of the polar ice caps and how they’re melting and everything everywhere is going to hell.
In years to come when we’re all living in our Phantom Menace Gungan-like sea-bubble cities we will remember 2009 as this year of Michael Jackson’s death, H1N1 hysteria and the increasing obnoxiousness of rabid mass media outlets like FOX News that, from the United States, manage to penetrate every facet of our lives and that hopefully, at that time, will have ceased to exist.
Looking back on it, 2009 seems kind of forgettable. Aside from the economic downturn the only things that will stand out in our memory will be the unimportant things like Michael Jackson and Kanye West’s douchebaggery. No one will likely be able to recall what the situation was like in the Middle East. Already you can tell that people are getting bored with global warming. Africa who?
Oh 2009, we’ll miss you and your ill-advised, unfortunate trends. Trends that we’ll look back on and regret like our moms regret aerobics wear and our dads regret thick, coke-bottle glasses. Trends like Twilight (which will unfortunately be banned in our new water-enveloped world, sad) and Ugg boots, which I will remember as having an unrepentant presence in the early years of the 21st century. (How do you not see these boots are terrible?) Trends like the short-lived resurrection of the scrunchy that American Apparel tried its darndest to bring about. Trends like the moustache Renaissance, which we may come to regret. Trends like environmentalism.
Whatever 2009 did for you personally — it could have been a great year for you or it could have been a shitty piece of shit year for you — I think that as far as years go it was pretty bleak; Sarah Palin’s memoir reached No. 1 on the bestsellers list and we all got eaten by the cannibals from The Road. Sadly, whatever squalor we’re living in 50 years from now will make 2009 seem like the most wonderful time the world has ever seen.