This year in bleh...

Although at least they didn't have to
deal with two-factor authentication
in the sixth century, so toss-up?

I kind of feel like this year just felt like more of last year, you know? We added another long-running, apparently endless war. COVID is still a thing, albeit more of a "yup it's going around again" than a "let's hoard toilet paper and soup." In many ways 2024 just felt like 2023-B. Bad, yes, but not quite the rancid garbage fire of say your 536 with it's volcanic winter and subsequent global starvation. Or 2020's height of the pandemic combined with real-life bad 1985 Biff Tannen behind the wheel. Keeping with the movie theme, maybe 2023 was like a forgettable sequel?

Or when someone adapts a book series into a bunch of movies, but decides they want to squeeze just one more out? Like, Dead Reckoning pt. 1, or Mocking Jay pt. 2. Like, 2023 was the Desolation of Smaug of the 2020's. But that's not to say nothing happened. 

Above: butter, seen here being scrapped over too much bread.

"So it's agreed then? No need to do
anything at all about fossils fuels."

-basically

Lots happened, but it was just more of the same. The planet had a giant climate change convention and in classic "we not even going to pretend we care about this anymore," an actual oil executive ran it. Speaking of cognitive dissonance, the Republican Party slid further down the path of acknowledging that their frontrunner for the nomination is a fascist who committed actual sedition, but at the same time being ok with it because he's their fascist who committed actual sedition. 

And here we are. You know, I miss the 90's. I was a teenager, so I'm sure my fondness for that time is rooted largely in having no responsibilities, but there wasn't this persistent, inescapable dread of the future back then. There probably should have been, as we're living in the future of the 1990's now, but you know what I mean? 

To be clear, I'm not saying the 1990's were all that great, I'm just saying that they
were, in maybe ways better than now, and that I wasn't really cognizant of the
things that sucked about them because I was too busy playing video games.

Pictured: the family values party.

Climate change was a vague, far off problem for our generation's great, great grandkids. Nobody had ever heard of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. And elected officials were just kind of sleazy, and not "attempt a coup" and then get a pass because they appointed all the federal judges, and then run for office again threatening vengeance on entire cities because they didn't support his bid for dictatorship sleazy. Oh, and remember JNCO jeans? Wild times...

Shit, are the 90's my 60's? You know in that way older people can't shut up about the Beatles and how everything was better back when they were teens? And what about kids now? Are they going to sit around camp fires in the burnt out remnants of civilization pining for the days of Twitter (you heard me) and Taylor Swift ticket fiascos?

I mean, yeah, in a best case scenario...