once more into this foul effluvium

So, OK, 2021. It’s gone just now, and good riddance, I say, to fantastically bad rubbish.

But why all this contrariness, you ask, so new into 2022? I mean it’s not like 2021 was 2020, or anything, y’know?

Like hell it wasn’t.

Right out of the gate, my mother, my blessed angel of a mother, died, Jan. 5, of complications from COVID. Now here it is newly January again, and several folks I know are right now in the throes of, or getting over, guess what? COVID.

Then, the very day following my dear mother’s death, an appallingly large number of my fellow Americans, blisteringly idiotic to the almost invariably MAGA-hatted man or woman, tried to stage a coup, an actual coup, to take down the new and duly elected U.S. government. It was, to be sure, a blisteringly idiotic coup, though woefully suggestive of a blisteringly idiotic American future.

Six days in, and already too much more than a goddamn ‘nuff, y’know?

But, oh. As in let’s give 2021 a little bit more of look-see:

>>> Members of my family were struck with additional life-changing hardships – losses and personal pitched battles, plus that seems-like-ever-present down-break blues. These, however, are not mine to share. But goddammit, already. So, onward.

>>> The entire West Coast of the U.S. again became a burning ember. The same went for parts of Australia, putting the very future of koala bears – adorable, eucalyptus-stoned koala bears – in jeopardy. Meanwhile, parts of Europe tried like hell to drown.

>>> The autocratic prick running Brazil continued to turn a blind eye to the rampant, irreparable destruction of the Amazon, as he did for much of the previous year with COVID-19.

>>> My would-be-glorious seven-day beach vacation in October, literally my first real vacation of any kind in several years, and so profoundly needed, was clipped short, to two-and-a-half days.

>>> An appallingly rich idiot shot a penis rocket into space. Meanwhile, here on Earth: famine; educational disparities; human-rights atrocities; gender, racial and economic inequalities; and disease; disease; disease.

>>> Aaron Rogers single-handedly made me hate my favorite football team.

>>> On a peripheral note, Joe Rogan still had a fucking job. Of any kind. I watched you when you took over co-hosting Comedy Central’s already midling Manshow, dude. And that, as they say, was the end of that.

>>> In the midst of a global plague, a new plague arose, of anti-vaxxers, chest-thumping chucklefucks defiant about taking a life-saving vaccine even as COVID’s tiny airborne balls of spike-proteined how-do-you-do have been killing the hell out of folks for more than a year now. I’m not sure what else to even add here, except Jesus, you people sure make being dumb look easy.

>>> Russia continued locking up or killing anyone who pointed out that Russia was locking up and killing anyone, all while amassing combat troops along the Ukrainian border. My grandmother was from the Ukraine. That last bit is in regards to nothing, except to say, fuck you, Russia, and your thuggy little saggy-pecs President, too.

>>> Warren Zevon remained dead, as did Tom Petty, David Bowie, John Prine and Leonard Cohen. None of that made anything else any easier.

>>> Warren Zevon was still not inducted into the interminable Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Hey, you Hall o’ Fame fucks: Here’s hoping Vladimir Putin starts hating you.

>>> The Proud Boy-looking goober around the corner from my house, who lives directly next door to a black family, took down his Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” porch flag to replace it with an all-black no-surrender flag, often associated with soldiers of the Confederacy. Certainly by Proud Boy-looking goobers, it is, anyway.

>>> Globally, the climate continued circling the drain. And no one said boo. Not a goddamn power broker of any consequence so much as said boo.

>>> A former U.S. “president” proved, over and over again, and in brazen plain sight, that our judicial system can be played like a cheap, out-of-tune fiddle, and that leagues of fascistic yahoos would line up and declare the music beautiful, and then dance their dreaded redneck-cracker dance.

>>> International supply-chain issues made my favorite wine recurringly impossible to find. Which is just cruelty in the face of more cruelty.

>>> I spent more than a quarter of the year in post-surgical discomfort, often genuine pain, still present. And did I mention the bit about my wine?

>>> Bones Hillman died. Look him up. All praise Bones Hillman.

>>> Tucker Carlson, however, did not have the decency to follow Rush Limbaugh’s lead in doing the same.

>>> And speaking now specifically of the newly dead, though as with Bonesy, back to the mourned and not shrugged-off dead:

<<< Joan Didion, among my writing heroes, now gone.

<<< So too acting icons Cicely Tyson, Ed Asner and Cloris Leachman; sports and civil rights colossus Hank Aaron; jazz magician Chick Corea and Broadway god Stephen Sondheim; along with one of history’s moral pillars, a light on humanity’s own hill, the Bishop Desmond Tutu. What kind of a wretched fucking year kills my angel of a mother and Desmond Tutu?

<<< And then American treasure Betty White, adorable, funny Betty, bit it just yesterday, New Year’s Eve. On the last day of that foul year of our apparently vacationing Lord, 2021. I mean WTF, 2021? WTF?

>>> Also, I killed a tree. It had it coming. It was a bad tree.

OK, I’m told these things should end on a positive note, a little upswing toward optimism, cuz who doesn’t love a happy ending? So I figure, what the hey, let’s do it. Let’s go with that loverely old chestnut, hope in the future. The light at the end of the tunnel. The hard-fought hero gets the gal. The barbarians defeated at the goodly town’s gates. The Grinch and his long-last big-heart Christmas. Scrooge and his psychotic epiphany.

This whole hope thing is reputed to be a real proud pleaser.

So here’s hoping like hell that 2022 is a damn sight better than the hell of 2021. Cuz that hope thing sure paid off at the end of 2020, right?

Right.

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