A grizzled old man sits alone on a dowdy hassock in a stark anteroom just off Times Square. He sips his coffee, injects a few drops of Jim Beam and grouses to a visitor. “Oh sure, blame ME---it’s all 2020’s fault. Well, let me remind you, pardner, Donald Trump was born in 1946 and was elected in 2016. The Covid virus was discovered in Wuhan in December of 2019. I had nothing to do with any of it. I feel like I got hit by a bus, same as you do.”
Nobody likes to be celebrated for leaving, least of all an old warrior who tried to make things better. Maybe the grumblers should remember that 2020 was the year Trump was tossed out on his butt and Covid-19 saw the highway patrol in its rear-view mirror. The vaccines may not arrive en masse until 2021, but they were developed entirely in 2020.
Grandpa 2020 huffs and puffs. “If you think it’s bad NOW, how about 1329? Now, THAT was a stinker!” Good point, Pops. That was the year the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Half! That’s like cutting the left half of the USA off and tossing it in the Pacific Ocean. Which, after the last election, seems like a good idea if we could just have California back.
Medieval historian Michael McCormick says 2020 was nothing compared to 536, which he calls “The worst year in history.” In a Science Magazine article McCormick says “536 was beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst single year. A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night, for 18 months.” Byzantine historian Procopius wrote, “For the Sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.”
Diving temperatures in the summer of 536 initiated the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell in China, crops failed and huge numbers of people died. In 541, Bubonic Plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt, spread rapidly and wiped out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire, hastening its collapse. Conversely, in 2020, they still played football, the Dow Jones average reached record heights and Lil Uzi Vert invented the Futsal Shuffle.
“How do you like them apples?” sneered Old Man 2020, peeking out through the blinds at a sparsely-populated 42nd Street. “I feel sorry for the new kid, coming in to no whoop-de-doo, no applause. The square will be empty for the first time in my memory….little 2021 will think he’s arrived in Wyoming. Maybe I’ll hang around and buck him up a little….offer the kid a few pointers. I’ve damned sure learned a lot about what NOT to do, haven’t I? Hey Sonny, you got any more whiskey?”
The Year Of Living Dangerously
“I see the bad moon a-rising
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightning.
I see bad times today.”---John Fogerty
Creedence tried to warn us, but we wouldn’t listen. When the last glass ball dropped in Times Square, nothing seemed amiss. Revelers raised their glasses, blew their noisemakers and looked forward to happy days ahead. The golden diaper-clad babe representing the new year was hoisted high and bussed on both cheeks. When they finally put him down, however, an odd character in a black hood carrying a sharpened scythe tapped him on the shoulder and smiled. “It’s ON!” he cackled. And everything immediately went to hell.
Monster fires roared out of control in California, burning more than four million acres and doubling the previous record of two million set in 2018. The August Complex Fire burned more than one million acres, by far the largest fire in California’s history. Five of the six largest fires in the state’s history burned this year. Meanwhile, Colorado’s Cameron Peak blaze ripped through over 208,000 acres to become that state’s worst ever, surpassing the record set two months earlier by the Pine Gulch Fire.
Mixing in a little irony, heavy rains sent water levels in the Tittabawassee River to record highs in May, causing the failures of the Edenville and Sanford dams near Midland, Michigan. Over 10,000 residents had to bail due to the subsequent floods. Through September, the U.S. had 16 natural disasters (wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and drought) that each caused at least $1 billion in damages. For only the second time ever, the glut of hurricanes zipped through the entire official alphabetical list of hurricane names and dived down into the Greek letters. And then, of course, there were the unnatural disasters.
It Was The Worst Of Times. It Was The Worst Of Times.
On January 9, the World Health Organization announced that a deadly coronavirus had emerged in Wuhan, China. Before you could say, “So, What'?” it had jumped the ocean to England, where it ran around like the Roadrunner, infecting legions. Italy was next. Things got so bad there, the government confined people to their residences. Flying Pie correspondent Sherry Snyder reported from Siena: “They’re dropping like cold iguanas outside my apartment. I’m hanging up crucifixes, wolfbane and garlic all over the house. The place smells like a trattoria. Those safeguards plus dancing the tarentella for ten hours a day seems to be warding off the virus, but I might have to add a little oregano.”
We weren’t worried in the United States, though, because President Missedabeat promised us it would all go away if we just closed our eyes and wished hard enough. After all, if it was anything to worry about, the prez wouldn’t have dissolved the national security office that focused on pandemics, right?
Remember when you were a very little kid and someone’s idea of a good gift for you was one of those joker-faced jack-in-the-boxes? You sit there, joyfully open it up, pop the top and this hideous head jumps out shrieking, forcing your mother to immediately change your diaper. Well, that kid is the USA when everybody discovered the truth of the matter. Oh, not everybody, of course. There’s a legion of blissed-out lemmings which sucks on the gorged teat of the president’s Kool-Aid cow. They’re not buying it. Their names, respectively, are Dumb and Dumber and their antics are causing overcrowding at our leading crematoriums. If you see them coming, better step aside—a lot of men didn’t and a lot of men died. Just direct your feet to the other side of the street. And you might want to tighten that mask.
And You Thought Idi Amin Was A Lousy President
To a formidable cross-section of The Great Unwashed, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Let’s elect Donald Trump president and wash those troubles right out of our hair. He’s a no-nonsense guy, a great businessman, perhaps an economic genius who dotes on the little man. He’ll slap those Chinamen around and run the furriners out of Alabama. Jobs? We’ll have jobs running out of our ears. Close your eyes and just imagine:
The farmers’ trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay.
Oh, I’m bound to go where there ain’t no snow, where the rain don’t fall and the winds don’t blow
In the Big Trump Candy Mountains.
When you live in Gooberland, nobody takes a closer look. If they did, they’d find Trump bought an airline in 1988, which failed by 1992; started a mortgage company which lasted a pitiful 18 months; closed down the Trump Steakhouse in Las Vegas in 2012 after receiving 51 health code violations including serving five-month-old duck; launched a magazine that died in a year-and-a-half; opened the bumbling Trump University in 2005 and closed it in 2013 after the N.Y. Attorney General sued the place for $40 million for defrauding students. Oh, and don’t forget those failed casinos in Atlantic City. How is it possible to fail in a turnkey operation like the casino business? Ask Donald Trump. He has a unique knack for screwing up anything. Needless to say, these operations would have all closed even sooner if Trump had paid any of his bills.
Once elected president, Donald Trump lugged Pandora’s Box into the oval office and opened it, smiling like a fool. Instantly, the fanged hounds were set loose on pitiful refugees, long interred corpses rose from the bigot fields, the ovens of industry dispatched smoke into the skies and filth into the waters. Trump retired from the Paris Accords, cut corporate taxes to the bone and began wooing the murderous Vladimir Putin the way you would a schoolgirl. He deserted American allies, promoted incompetent bootlickers and ignored an epic pandemic that would sweep across the land, killing 340,000 by year’s end. Attila The Hun was a piker by comparison. If there is a place in Hell reserved for those who betray their country, someone should begin turning down the bedcovers for Donald J. Trump. He’ll be arriving in three weeks on the bullet train.
The Rest Of The Story
As if all of the above wasn’t bad enough, the entire continent of Australia was burned to a crisp by bushfires, creating Black Summer. Flash floods rampaged through Indonesia and the scary Taal volcano erupted again in the Phillipines. 45 major earthquakes over 6 degrees on the Richter Scale had people in China, Iran, Russia, Turkey and the Caribbean all shook up (41 died in the Turkey quake). Cyclone Amphan, one of the worst ever, routed India and Bangladesh and Antarctica began turning green due to climate change and the bloom of snow algae. And then, as seems fitting, there were the locusts.
In the worst pest attack in 26 years, desert locusts descended on the Indian states of Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya, Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for a gobblefest. These critters have the power to destroy crops within seconds and they breed rapidly. Almost 150 million locusts can exist in a one-square-kilometer area when not fully dressed. Even the Lone Ranger is powerless to stop them. Once again, the warming temperatures seem to be the culprit.
Maybe 2021 will be better. Perhaps the storm clouds will part, the sun will appear in the East wearing a smile and Joe DiMaggio will come floating in on a puffy striped cloud. The Coronavirus will slowly ebb, people will return to the bleachers and the restaurants come back to life. The now-fashionable protective masks, of course, will remain, modified for easy breathing, illustrating the increasing importance of accessories. Nancy Pelosi will have one for each day of the month. And somewhere in the distance, a plaintive wail will rise up and briefly catch the attention of those nearby. Don’t worry, folks, just go about your business. That’s only Mike Pence singing his swan song.
That’s all, folks….
