What a year! Please tell me it’s almost over. Some events were memorable, for all the wrong reasons. We’ve watched Syria engage in a masturbatory convulsion of violence. On the other hand, we watched the USA win a truckload of medals in the Rio Olympics and took joy in the fact that the Russian swim team did so poorly; especially the women, whose beards created too much resistance in the water.
Like most years, this one began in January… when Kim Jong Un executed six family members who had the effrontery to have names that came ahead of his in the alphabet. According to the official North Korean Hungwell News Agency, all six committed suicide by shooting themselves in the back. Kim celebrated by exploding a thermonuclear device and climbing Mounts Everest and Kilimanjaro in the same day. All of this truly amazed Donald Trump who dispatched to North Korea his BFF and Good Will Ambassador to the Universe, Dennis Rodman, to discuss whether Kim might consider heading the Justice Department in his Administration, on the off chance he were to win in November. Literary note: this is called foreshadowing. It’s kind of like foreplay, which for the men would take too long to explain, because we have to move onto….
February…. Where republicans and democrats decided to hold a primary in New Hampshire. It seems kind of stupid to hold an election there that time of year because it’s fucking cold. During one of the Republican debates, Donald Trump declared his penis – in spite of the cold – was so large it had three electoral votes. This crude remark was widely predicted to cost Donald Trump the election. So, of course he won New Hampshire, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and Uranus. Vladimir Putin (whose last name roughly translates into English, as “grab ‘em by the pussy”, sent Trump a bottle of vodka and an autographed copy of his new book, “Go Hack Yourself: how to beg, borrow and steal Internet secrets”.
Putin’s book was released in March… when Ben Carson, a kind, decent and exceptionally intelligent man, dropped out of the presidential race and promptly endorsed Donald Trump, who is exactly none of those. Not to be outdone, on the Dem side, Bernie “Feel the Bern” Sanders declared in front of God and everyone that Hillary Clinton did not, in fact, have a penis. Libertarian candidate, Gary “Ride The” Johnson, chose former Massachusetts governor William “Bill” Weld to be his running mate, prompting media pundits to ask, “Why the hell isn’t Weld running for president himself?”
NASA announced that 2015 was the warmest year ever recorded in the history of humankind. We’re not saying anything, but there’s a lot of Mexicans trying to head north. Maybe they’re related? Possibly, because…
In April things really began to heat up with the birth announcement for the world’s first baby born with DNA from three parents: Larry, Marie and someone named “Stan”. Video of the conception is available on PornHub. Also, a 26’ python was found in Malaysia living inside someone’s toilet and Donald Trump told Fox News host Megyn “Blood from her Wherever” Kelly she had a “nice rack”. This was widely predicted to be the beginning of the end of the Trump Candidacy. Also in April, a reunion of women allegedly raped by Bill “Spanish Fly” Cosby was held in Madison Square Garden. Trump then asked Cosby to be his running mate, because, hey, they have a lot in common. That and “the Blacks love me!” Commenting about “the Blacks” when, you know, they’re standing right there, was widely expected to mark the end of Trump’s candidacy.
By May it seemed to be that the country and the world were headed to Hell, but, as it so often happens, just in the nick of time, a 70 year old Indian woman gave birth to a son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the hospital. Ever been to India? There’s like a bazillion people there. There’s no room for fucking anybody! They all work for “tech support” companies and have names like “Bob” and “Joe”.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Brazil impeached their president because of corruption and replaced her with the previous vice president, himself earlier removed from office for, you guessed it, corruption. This all literally weeks before the Olympics.
Then Harambe the gorilla was shot in the Columbus Zoo.
It was a good thing that the schedule called for the month of June because on the 1st, Switzerland (literally “land of Switz”) opened their 57 km Gotthard (literally “stay hard”) tunnel through the Alps. This would have been very handy for Steve McQueen in the Great Escape. In science news, CO2 was successfully turned into “stone” by Icelandic scientists, in an effort to find out what to do with all this excess carbon floating around. Considering that this was in Iceland, methinks it was the scientists that were stoned. (I have my own solution to this problem: trap all the extra CO2 and use it for beer. More beer, less carbon in the atmosphere. A win-win.
Not much else happened in June, but on the 18th the first British astronaut, Sir Ian Austin Goldfinger Bond Powers, returned from the International space station. Fellow travelers, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Sonofavich and American Robert “Bob” Patton, said “Not a moment too soon. We couldn’t understand a word he said.”
By July, Donald Trump decided that he really did want to be president and accepted the Republican nomination. Hillary, in spite of having all the popularity among younger voters of a sexually transmitted disease, won the Democratic nomination with the help of so-called “super delegates”, meaning other politicians on whom Hillary had enough dirt that they really had to support her. Bernie didn’t give up without a fight, however, and gave a rousing speech at the convention, saying, and we quote, “This nation is something, something…. Free sex toys for someone…. Tax (we think) somebody…. Giant sucking sound…”. We’re not really sure but it sounded like he was discussing some unlawful acts with goats, but, honestly, we could understand Sir Goldfinger Bond Powers better.
Donald Trump nominated Mike Pence to be his running mate and Hillary Clinton nominated Tim Kane. Both of these gentlemen were as bland as matzah, but each possessed two indispensable qualifications: each were somewhat palatable to their party’s base and neither were under Federal indictment.
August represents the “dog days” of summer in most of Murica, and 2016 was no different, except, the Summer Olympics opened in Rio. Preparations were finally, well sorta, almost… not really, complete. However, at least each Olympic athlete received 40! condoms. The Olympics last but a fortnight and each participant got enough latex to git ‘r done almost three times/day. These athletes were honed and skilled and apparently also quite randy. But 3 times a day? Whatever happened to the days when my old high school coach told us to “keep ‘it’ in our pants” the night before the big game? Not that there was much chance of “it” being used for much other than taking a leak, but I, at least, did make sure “it” was very, very clean, if you get my drift.
Anyway, the Olympics came off more or less without a glitch, if you don’t consider the Olympic diving pool, which turned the color of Augusta National midway through the competition. NBC, fearful that Putin would drop a nuke on Rockefeller Center, didn’t disclose the cause of the color change, but it appears a Russian diver went wee wee in the pool and all the drugs in her urine turned the pool into a giant version of those field ID kits they use to identify seizures on Border Wars.
There was also the small issue of members of the US Swim team deciding to hold up a convenience store because they had already used all their official Trojans.
The Olympics at least took our minds off the election for a while, but by September it was in full swing. Even Bill Clinton got involved after he heard the word “swing”. Staff members had to explain it wasn’t that kind of swinging and Bill decided he should have just stayed in Rio.
At the Vatican, Mother Theresa was “canonized” (literally, “shot out of a canon”) after someone claimed they saw her in a vision give 3-1 odds that the Cubs would win the World Series. St Theresa of Las Vegas, Calcutta and Monaco is the newest saint in the “Roman” Catholic pantheon.
NASA launched the Osiris-Rex probe to retrieve a rock sample off the Kardashian asteroid, so called because it’s almost as big as Kim’s ass. Also in science, the world’s oldest fishhooks were discovered in Okinawa, accompanied by an ancient Popiel Pocket Fisherman and a stone tablet version of Playboy magazine; featuring “articles” and a prehistoric centerfold of a model named “Og” (literally, “they’re not real”).
All this stimulation was too much so we ejaculated ourselves straight into October where an audio recording surfaced of Donald Trump being interviewed by Howard Stern. These recordings caused much weeping and gnashing of teeth amongst everyone but actual voters who seemed to have already factored such things into their disdain or support for Trump. Even so, this was widely predicted to mark the end of Trump’s chances of winning the presidency.
South Korean firm Samsung recalled their Notes 7 phones when they proved to have a tendency to catch fire; an undesirable feature of a product typically held next to the user’s face. This proved to be especially troublesome for some women in the Dallas and Houston areas who are known for using copious amounts of – as it turns out – highly flammable hairspray.
In cultural news, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Really.
By November it was time to finally get the US presidential election over with. So, like a kidney stone, it came to pass that on November 8th, a date which shall live in high school textbooks everywhere, Donald Trump won the presidency. He performed unexpectedly well, confounding media pundits (with the exception of Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un (literally “single penis Kim”). Trump even won Michigan, as voters there basically said, “what the hell? It can’t possibly get any worse” and Wisconsin where Trump carried the state by 40,000 votes in spite of CNN not being able to find a single voter who would admit doing so. Not long after the election, Russian president Putin was accused by the CIA, FBI, and the NFL of meddling in the election. Evidence included a check for $100,000,000 made out to Trump for America that was signed by “V. Putin”, billboards all across Moscow featuring Putin and Trump in a vaguely homoerotic embrace (this really happened, well mostly), and campaign balloons that were suspiciously underinflated. (Did I mention that Tom Brady supported Trump, as well?).
When the fullness of November’s days had come, she opened her thighs and gave birth to December, whereupon on some specific date, French president Francois Hollande (literally “Frank Holland”) said “fuck this shit” and announced he was not running for a second term. Not to be outdone, Donald Trump called the president of Taiwan and attempted to order Chinese carry out, thus pissing off both Taiwan and the Mainland. (Historical footnote: Trump stiffed the delivery person).
Philippine president Something Duterte boasted he personally killed criminals when he was mayor of some city in the Philippines. Not to be outdone Donald Trump announced he will hold public executions at the White House. Speaking of the White House, the Cabinet will again be all white with one token black dude, Ben Carson, who was nominated to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Unfortunately, on his way to the white house to meet the president he was pulled over by a white Fairfax county police officer named “Earl” and arrested because he was a) black and b) clearly not an NBA player or rapper and c) obviously no black man could afford a Mercedes unless he was an athlete, rapper, or a drug dealer.
A series of cease fires were declared in Aleppo, some of which lasted as long as 4, even 5 minutes, before devolving into an orgy of artillery fire. During these interludes (literally from the Latin meaning “time to reload”) as many as a dozen civilians were evacuated from the city before the firing would start again.
And so you have it. 2016. A year in which America, united for all of two weeks for the Olympics, won more medals than ever, but ended up more divided than before. Where one candidate was elected without technically getting more votes (well if you don’t count California he won by 2 million votes, if you do, he lost by 3.5 or something… this is humor, not an effing history book). Where al Qaeda has been replaced by something so much worse, we long for the days of bin Laden. Where the Soviet Union seems being rebuilt republic by republic. Where Great Britain voted to leave the European Union. (This happened earlier in the year, but we forgot to mention it. Or maybe it was last year. Everyone talks about it so damn much you’d think the vote was last week. Frankly, we don’t give a shit.)
The only thing certain is that on January 1, 2017 will be upon us… and you know what that means: The Trump presidency! This will surely lead to an even more eventful, not to mention hilarious look at 2017, what it was, about this time next year. Until then, I have to ask: did those athletes really use all those condoms?
PS: The Cubs won the World Series! Woo hoo! You’d think they cured HIV or discovered cold fusion or something the way these people carry on. Can we get on with our lives now. Please?
Life Along the Edge 