2017: Silliness about bitcoin, gluten and identity
Let’s move on, and let’s not give credence to a sketchy currency and president
As 2017 draws to a close I think I can say with all sincerity — good riddance!
It’s not that 2017 was a bad year, it was a terrible year. We could review the year and document its badness in painful detail, but we’re only two days from the end of the year and I’d like to go out sane.
Also, my wife has reminded me about 150 times this year not to be “grumpy.” Frankly, I don’t know what she’s on about. I stopped yelling at the neighbourhood kids months ago and I now only occasionally swear loudly while reading the newspaper. Unfortunately, it’s usually when I’m in a coffee shop.
So, instead of getting mad listing the terribleness of 2017, I thought I would be happy. Happy never to see, read or hear about these 10 things again.
(I could complain about 100 things, but my wife told me to keep it to 10 or people would stop listening. She did years ago.)
Bitcoin: Call me crazy but I’m a bit leery of paying $18,000 for something no one can explain. It’s money, it’s a payment system. It’s two! Two mints in one! For anyone even thinking of getting on the bitcoin bandwagon, I have one word for you: Bre-X.
Fake News: It started out being about three Macedonian teenagers writing goofy stories to make money and ended up making rational conversation about anything impossible. Now, thanks mostly to Trump, everything is “fake news.” Even fake news is fake news. Time to retire the term.
Gluten-free: What I can say scientifically about gluten-free is, “Oh for God’s sake, have a slice of bread!” Once a word only nutritionists knew, gluten has become the toxic waste of food. If gluten killed people, Italy would be populated by two celiacs and a dog. Calm down. Eat some pizza.
The Twitterverse: Whenever I hear that something “blew up on Twitter today” I rush breathlessly to my computer and … close the lid. Take a deep breath. If you think Twitter is indispensable, I ask you to recall MySpace and Friendster — if you can. Don’t worry about Twitter. Have a sandwich. With gluten-filled bread.
The Patriarchy: It’s great to be a member of a club I didn’t know existed. If I knew I was part of a world-dominating, oppressive, all-controlling hierarchy, I would have dressed better. Deconstruct it, destroy it, whatever. Just stop talking about it.
Harvey Weinstein: Reading about his downfall was OK at first, except for all the extra showers I had to take, but 150 stories later, I’ve had enough. Here’s an idea. Let’s just never, ever say his name again.
LRT: It only took about a million hours of debate for city council to answer the question: “Would you like $1 billion?” As Hamilton races into the future as a growing city of gleaming towers, you gotta wonder how city council thought thousands of people were going to get around. On rickshaws? LRT debate? RIP.
Kim Jong-UN: As my father said to me in Grade 7, “Stop playing with rockets. And get a haircut.”
Identity Politics: This year people decided dividing up into groups was a good idea: black and white, liberal and conservative, left and right, bowlers and non-bowlers. What we ended up with was crowds of people yelling at each other, “You’re not like me. I can’t talk to you!” The joke of it is when the first alien arrives, it’s going to look around and say, “Funny, they all look pretty much the same to me.”
Donald Trump: What more can be said of the orange-skinned, swoop-haired, narcissistic, crazy-tweeting, small-handed, junkfood eating, insult-hurling, women-groping train-wreck of a president that hasn’t already been said? About a thousand times over. And that’s just in the New York Times.
In 2018 the only time I want to hear the word “Trump” is if I’m playing euchre.
So, as this year comes to a close, I think that tomorrow night we can all join together, hold hands and by looking for all that is positive in the world, admit that 2017 really stank.
If I knew I was part of a world-dominating, oppressive, all-controlling hierarchy, I would have dressed better.