The Public Eye
When 2009 finally and mercifully ends four days from this writing, it would seem only fitting that its departure be accompanied by a flushing sound.
Not to be too harsh, but 2009 stunk so bad that my dog wouldn’t roll on it and that’s saying something, since my dog thinks a half-decomposed turkey leg found on the street is something to be treasured. If only she could bury 2009 along with this prize.
There is no point in revisiting the major events of the past 12 months — bank collapses, bail-outs and politics so foul that my dog wouldn’t … (see above) — that ground has been plowed so many times that it needs a sediment control permit. But there do remain unexplored issues of some significance.
For instance, is it just me or is this instant replay-official review business in sports becoming even more annoying? Football used to have some spontaneity, but now there’s so much money riding on these games that every critical play has to be sent to the forensics lab before we know who did what.
They even employ play reviews in hockey, of all things, where the only real mystery is how the NHL expects to turn the sport into a game of finesse while also arming angry men with sticks. The only review they need is to find out who lost a tooth.
Another unanswered question as the year concludes involves health care reform. First, don’t believe anyone who claims to know what this legislation will or will not do, considering that most people can’t even decipher their phone bills, much less absorb and understand 2,000 pages of two versions of a measure that probably reads like “War and Peace” as written by competing colonies of ants.
What seems to have been lost in this debate is precisely how health care reform will affect the Scooter Store? Its seemingly universal television commercials indicate that half the national population is buzzing around on these things, which causes me to wonder, is the Scooter Store too big to fail? And if not, could it buy Chrysler and produce a highmileage sedan scooter … with a hemi?
Of all the unresolved issues, however, the greatest is why we had to have 2009 anyway? There is no natural law, as far as I can tell, that says the world will stop spinning if we simply skip a year now and then because it doesn’t look good going in. The human race did not invent time, after all, but only the means to track it.
Two thousand aught nine could have been like the 13th floor of a hotel: it’s there, but no one acknowledges its existence. That would be, of course, unless someone called for an official review, in which case I would sincerely hope that, on review, we aren’t ordered to have a do-over.
