Just last night, I was drinking.  Not a typo; I was drinking. . .a lot.  It’s what I do when I’m on vacation.  I find it to be cheaper than flying anywhere, and it also gives me the chance to offend people I might actually see again.  Win/win, really.

As I was saying, I was drinking. . .and texting, because I was nowhere near a computer so I could post some idiotic ramblings on the intrawebs.  So, I text Dan and let him know that I’m half in the bag.  He replies, “You should write something.”  Thinking it might be easier once I get out of the pizza place, I decided to write the next day.  My problem is I hate to sit down and dedicate long hours to my craft.  With that in mind, I present my thoughts on the Year that was 2009.  The catch?  I’m only going to write as much as I can remember (keep in mind, the drinking) in 15 minutes.  Come with me as I stroll, or stumble, down memory lane.

The year started with all the optimism one expects in any year.  Ah, but this year was different.  We were going to install an African-American in the presidency.  Yeah, Barack Obama had everyone misty-eyed with the promise of “change” and “hope” in rebuilding our once-proud nation.  Hasn’t really worked out the way we all planned, has it?   The prez has hit the same brick wall we all have faced for the past, oh, 50 years: politics.  Want something done?   Want it done quickly? How much you got?  Better yet, what can you do for my favorite lobby? Sheesh. The guy is from Chicago (by way of Hawaii, Kansas, and Kenya).  You think he’d be expecting strong-arming, graft, pork barrels, and back-room deals.  Nope, ol’ Barry went in eyes-wide-open and then stomps his foot if he doesn’t get his way.  Let’s face it, national medical insurance will be a boondoggle, the troops will move from Iraq to Afghanistan, and our taxes will remain our biggest expense.

The economy?  It sucked for almost all of 2009.  We lent the biggest banks in the land a shitload of cash (something like $700 trillion, I think?) so they could lead us out of the darkness.  We then gave the auto makers another boatload of money so they could build better cars.  If that wasn’t enough, we also told them to get those “clunkers” of the road and get those new, better cars on the road.  Results?  Well, the banks are paying us back, with interest; GM declared bankruptcy and fired its CFO; and the “Cash for Clunkers” program was the biggest joke ever devised by our own government against the people.  On paper CFC looked good.  Bring in your old “gas guzzler” and the dealership will give you up to $4,000 (you can check on this; I really don’t have the time or desire) for a new car.  Of course, the government was giving the dealers the cash to give to the consumer for their trade-in, so really, you and I were springing for the down payment for your neighbor’s brand-new Fort Flex.  There were catches, hidden requirements, and enough idiocy within the program to make it a joke (just check into what they had to do with the clunkers once they bought them; put it this way, China got a lot of cheap recycled metal).  The real problem was with the dealers themselves.  Most tried to sell the CFC program as a “discount” on a new car instead of a down- payment.  Most would not even negotiate on the price of the new cars, making it a complete windfall for car dealers (don’t have to pay for the old car and sell the new car at full price?  Awesome) and a boil on the ass of the American taxpayer.

Let’s see, entertainment was. . .interesting in 2009. TV became a series of shows about people who need rehab, are in rehab, have fallen out of rehab, and had children when they were teenagers. . .in rehab.  My daughters watch the MTV networks.  Their newest series Jersey Shore follows a bunch of hot chicks (Editor's Note: REALLY, Ron?) and the douchebags they call “Guidos.”  It’s all very entertaining if you’ve already sacrificed any intelligence you had left to one of the 10,000 other “reality” shows MTV pukes out at any given moment. Thanks to MTV, every idiot in the United States will have his or her 15 minutes of fame by the end of 2010; I’m scheduled for August 22, 2010 between 2:45 and 3:00 a.m.  Woohoo!

In other entertainment news, Michael Jackson died.  Don’t worry, his family still won’t have to work a day in their lives and can go one telling everyone how much they loved Michael despite the fact he refused to have anything to do with the entire lot of moneygrubbers while he was alive.  Of more importance to me was the passing of Vic Mizzy.  Follow the link and behold the genius that was Mr. Mizzy.  That’s all I’m saying on that.

Finally, sports were hugely disappointing to me in 2009.  The baseball team I follow, Los Doyers, started the season hotter than an 18 year-old Russian porn star, only to have everything come crashing down with a 50 game drug suspension handed to overpaid superstar, Manny Ramirez.  This led to one of the funniest sports moments of the year at AT&T Park in San Francisco; my friend and I were treated to several rounds of the chant, “Manny is a tranny.”  It was funny. . .for the first 5 innings.  Things got a little old when the Dodgers were leading, Manny had already hit an RBI double, and the Giants were sucking, yet the chant continued.  The guys leading the chant were OK; they bought us a beer.

I guess there was other sports news like what happened to Tiger Woods (this sort of thing happens all the time in England and Europe; they call it, “being a player in the English Premier League").  Were people really surprised at what unfolded? Let’s see, in his early 30’s, makes about $40 million per year, is of mixed-race background (making him “exotic”), and is more well known than the Pope (I seriously could not remember the Pope’s name just last night. . .I resorted to calling him, “The German Guy”).  Yeah, he’s gonna be faithful to his wife.  My wife works with a (hot) doctor who went to Vegas for a bachelorette party. They went to some club at the Mandalay Bay where one of the bouncers asked if they’d like to be “guests” of Tiger in the VIP area.  The ladies (all hot, I’m figuring) say, “Sure, what’s the catch?”  No catch; you just have to be willing to spend some “private time” with Tiger if he asks.   Apparently the bride to be, the hot doctor, and one other party goer passed.  The others accepted.  Safe to say, the guy was getting more ass than a toilet seat.

Well folks, time’s up.  What can I say, I can type fast.  Maybe I should look into doing this more next year (one essay at each end of 2009 is not exactly “productive”).  Hope your 2009 didn’t suck as much as mine (at least I didn’t get the H1N1 shit - although I could stand to lose 10 pounds and take a couple weeks off work).  Never fear, 2010 is here, and it will likely suck as much as 2009.  Don’t say I didn’t warn ye.