2018: Good Riddance

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time   ~Green Day


Ah, 2018. Let's hear it for the good things that happened in 2018.

- The evil New England Patriots and their cyborg quarterback Tom Brady did not win The Super Bowl.  It was won by the Philadelphia Eagles whose quarterback was Norm Snead.  Not really. The Eagles quarterback was Nick Somebody.

Norm Snead, in a cool Eagles helmet

- Atlanta United, which is a professional soccer team, won the MLS soccer championship despite being only a two-year-old franchise and being from Atlanta.

Really, Atlanta won a championship

-John Prine, a sort of/kinda of/ country-folk-rock singer who at one time was a "new Dylan" released a record called "The Tree Of Forgiveness" and was the number one country album on the charts even though it was a good record.  Prine, who is around 114 years old, has written a bunch of classic songs like the one that says when he gets to heaven he's going to "smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long".  If you have heard any country music in the past ten years, you know that's the most intelligent thing anyone has said in a long time.

-The Atlanta Braves did not suck this year.

Other than that, it seemed that 2018 was 2017 Redux.

-The President continued to be the mature and thoughtful leader he was in 2017. Hahahahahahahaha.

-No really, nobody cringed at all at anything The President said.  Yeah, right.

-The Mueller Probe, as it is called, is supposed to find out if there was any "Russian collusion" in the 2016 election because there was no way Trump would ever get elected if somebody hadn't rigged the election like he said the election was rigged for Hillary Clinton.

-Actually, The Mueller Probe is just a pretext for "We've got to get him out of The White House somehow".  Interestingly enough, it doesn't appear that the Russians had any real influence in the election except for some well placed Facebook memes.

-BUT, it looks like Trump made secret payouts to a porn actress named "Stormy" (of course!) and for the impeachment crowd, this is close enough for jazz.

-The President still wants his wall. The Democrats want "comprehensive immigration reform" which apparently means anyone can come over here at any time for any reason. Oh yeah, Jesus was a refugee, too.

-A kid with a history of emotional/psychological problems shot and killed 17 students at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.  Despite the sheriff's department receiving tips in 2016 and 2017 that the student was going to attack the school and the FBI learning of a YouTube video of the student saying he was going to attack the school, we soon learned it was all Marco Rubio's fault.

-Speaking of kids, an early fad this year was teenagers videoing themselves eating Tide Pods.  Financial analysts advised us to sell our bonds.

-The winner of the 2018 Oscar for Best Picture was "The Shape of Water" which was a "romantic dark comedy".  This means it was a movie about a woman who does it with a Fish Man.

-Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy retired and the President selected Brett Kavanaugh to replace him.

-Naturally,  this became a circus.

-One Senator, who just may be running for President in 2020, declared that he was "Spartacus.", like any woke millennial would have any idea who that is.

Spartacus

-One Senator, who just may be the only Democrat besides Scoop Jackson (who can't because he is technically dead) that is not running for President in 2020, asked Kavanaugh what "boof" means.  Apparently, it was Georgetown rich kids lingo for "barking spiders".

Not A Candidate in 2020

-Kavanaugh became the only Supreme Court Justice to admit, under oath, that he likes beer.

-In the middle of this, we had an election.

-The Republicans kept control of the Senate. The Democrats regained control of The House. All of this means exactly nothing is going to happen in the next two years.

-Cobb County, the county in which I live, had a blue wave. Democrats won two seats on the School Board and immediately called for higher property taxes and a repeal of the senior citizen school property tax exemption. This always goes over well in Cobb County.

-It wasn't all bad news for Republicans.  Republicans found out a way to be praised in the news media:  die.   Both John McCain and former President George Bush received the best coverage of their lives when they were no longer with us.

-Twitter continued to be the source of all stupidity.  How many people have been fired over what they said on Twitter this past year?  We did learn from Roseanne Barr not to tweet when you are on Ambien.

-On a personal note, my family and I did go to The Bahamas this year. So the year wasn't that bad.