Mag 46 - FU, 2010!

Oh, you have been a difficult one, you son-of-a-bitch. Our time together has been epic, with given months drowned in sorrow, and many days punctuated by fears and tears. I am seething with fury at the thought of another hour in your company.

When I think of the cards you dealt us I am left with an overriding wish that cannot be fulfilled: I wish for a re-shuffling, only this time let Earth cut the cards. My memory of you will forever be bogged down in an unforgiving, stinking oil dragging on the airy feathers of what once was. Long live the (memory of) the Louisiana Brown Pelican, and all the etceteras struggling to survive in the Gulf ecosystem.

Do you think that we will forget that earthquake in April in China that killed 2000 and injured more than 10,000 simply because the population there is so massive? No, those lives mattered...... However, it would have been brilliant of you to have enlightened the planet about world overpopulation because it is at the crux of our capacity to deal with the kind of changes you made so evident. There are too many of us and we are becoming insensitive to the uniqueness of one another, and to the creatures who share this world with us.

Incidentally, how many animals were lost in July in the flooding in Pakistan? We know that 1600 people were killed and more than one million were displaced by those floods, and it's a cinch you didn't discriminate in dealing out death and misery cards.

The idiotic voices that were a part of your sound effects.....I mean, really, did you have to introduce Glenn Beck to me and to the many others who also probably had never even heard of the guy? Did you not think that still having Sarah Palin's shrill rolling mouthiness -- senselessword-into-rehearsedsenselessword -- was sufficient proof of how little respect you have for high-minded, well-reasoned thought and any semblance of a cultured life? Some kind of tea party.....

Speaking of culture, how are people to recover theirs after an earthquake, a hurricane, cholera and political turbulence? It borders on the near impossible for Haiti.

Speaking of borders, the exchange of artillery shells on Yeonpyeong Island near a disputed maritime border, followed by the biggest-ever joint military exercises by Japan and the U.S., makes for damn lousy year-end fireworks.

Speaking of fireworks, the repeated eruptions of Mount Merapi in Central Java, Indonesia, forced hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate. They probably hardly had time to bury the 240 people who died. Where are all those hundreds of thousands of people now? How are they?

Speaking of eruptions, we didn't need the Eyjafjalla glacier in Iceland to erupt, forcing cancellation of about 100,000 flights in Europe. That was a mean game to gamble with the euro, but you had plenty of practice gambling with the euro and the dollar all through our time together. Have you enjoyed the increasing public discontent due to austerity measures in Europe, and the growing public realization that the U.S. may be following the euro-model? And you must delight in large-scale airline cancellations, as evidenced by your treatment of holiday travelers in the Great Snows of December on the east coast of the U.S. (that closely followed the Great Rains of December on the west coast of the U.S. and their resulting landslides and widespread damage).

Very heartwarming and welcome touch back in October with that rescue of all 33 trapped Chilean miners. Why, then, did 153 miners have to be sacrificed in China in March, and why did 29 miners have to die in West Virginia in April, and another 29 in New Zealand in November?

To counter the October celebrations over the miners in Chile you decided to throw in another earthquake and consequent tsunami, off the coast of Sumatra, that same month, killing 400. You sicko.

I have had it with you. What with deforestation, wars, stampedes at festivals, suicide bombers, airline crashes, long-term unemployment, business closures, home foreclosures and more losses of the "American Dream" than we thought possible in this day and age, increasing hunger and homelessness, and the beginning of construction of the two-lane road in Tanzania that will bisect the Serengeti and forever alter and ultimately ruin The Great Migration -- all to make easier the removal and transport of a metal named "colton" that is a vital part of cell phones and laptop computers........ well, I am disgusted by you...you miserable excuse for a year. Take that! And THAT!  And FU, 2010.

MLydiaM ~ December 2010

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