Everything Is Awful: The Best Worst Moments of 2011

I'm probably not the right person to do a recap of the year post, because I basically remember nothing from this year. My chronic drinking and selective memory make most years fly by in a blur of shame, despair and confusion. But what I lack in memory, I make up for with bitterness and rage. I am also an excellent complainer, so who better to dredge up all the awful parts of the year you thought you'd successfully repressed and then rub them in your sad, frowny faces until you cry so hard you pass out and wake up wondering if it would have been better if you'd just died.

So let's get started party people!

5. Rebecca Black
   
   
    
   
   
   
   

2011 is when I lost my faith in humanity. Rebecca Black's Friday was a completely misunderstood and underrated MASTERPIECE and no one but me saw this. R-Bla, as I call her, even received death threats. C'mon people, DEATH THREATS? For a song that lasted three minutes and you only ever heard it if you went on Youtube and specifically searched for it and clicked play and then sat there for it's entire duration?

The song was clearly a ruthless satire of the Work Hard, Play Harder ethos that is so dominate in corporate culture. 'Friday' tells the story of an investment banker who drags himself through the working week like a mindless drone, sustained only by the promise of the weekend's cocaine binge and hooker mutilations that are an invariable part of social life in the City. In many ways, Rebecca Black's 'Friday' is this generations American Psycho or Bonfire of the Vanities, except it is much much better because it has a good beat and you can dance to it and you don't have to use your eyes and make them all squinty to focus on the page and then have to force yourself to keep your eyes in the same place even though they really want to look at the TV. 

Oh, and this might have happened in 2010, but whatever. Every year is pretty much an interchangeable continuation of the last as we trudge slowly towards the grave, letting videos of cats playing the keyboard distract us from the stark reality that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.

4. Kim Kardashian's Kar-Krash Kommitment Keremony
   
   

   

   I think she's crying because they put Kourtney's name before hers.

She was an American Princess, he was some tall guy who played some kind of sport or whatever, no one really cared about him. The wedding was a completely understated affair and there was absolutely nothing to prepare me for the happy couple getting divorced only 72 days after the wedding. I mean, c'mon kids, what happened to staying together to save face? That's how it worked in the old days. People got married, realised it was the worst mistake they'd ever made and that their lives were over, had children, felt even worse about their terrible lives, grew to resent one another more and more with each passing year, developed drinking problems, bought washing machines and died. And do you know why they did this? Out of social awkwardness. 

3. The Economy

This man is the 1% who uses 99% of our nation's hair product supplies.

Yeah, pretty bad, huh? As a vaunted economic expert, I have several theories on why things are not going so great in the world finance sitch. Basically, this is Penn Badgley's fault. His fancy new Jeff Buckley hair do takes a lot of hair spray and hair gel to maintain, more than the Gossip Girl hair and make-up department could handle. Badgley's outrageous demands for hair products put the manufacturers of Bryll Cream under increasing pressure and they were ultimately unable to supply the Gossip Girl star with enough products to keep his hair aloft. After they went out of business, Badgley began using liquid gold to style his hair. After Badgley exhausted his own gold supplies, President Obama sanctioned the use of the White House's super secret treasure trove, which is what Scrooge McDuck's Money Lair was based on, in order to style the star's hair. This led to the loss of America's Triple A rating, but when I spoke to Obama earlier this evening he insisted that “Penn Badgley's hair is a national treasure, the loss of volume and lustre in that beautiful boy's flowing mane would have been a disaster that would have far outweighed any financial crisis. And OMG, can you believe that Chuck and Blair are back together?!”

Penn Badgley at Occupy Wall Street deflecting attention from his own singlehanded destruction of the economy onto the innocent bankers. SHAME ON YOU PENN.

2. Climate Change
   
   

   

   Clarkson has been quoted as saying "BLAH BLAH BLAH, I HATE MINORITIES AND PENGUINS BUT I AM OKAY WITH ACID WASH DENIM."

This has been going on for way too long. It's like chill out already environment. I mean literally, it's going to be totally annoying if everything melts and it's hot all the time because I look really cute in boots and furry hats.

Anyway, I skim-read an article in The New Scientist today on the recent conference on climate change in Durban and it seems like the general consensus is that global warming is ALL Jeremy Clarkson's fault. Brainy scientist types have given power point presentations with pie charts that provide concrete evidence that Jeremy Clarkson and his inter-changeable pals, (they both have the same terrible hair cut) have literally destroyed the ozone layer just by their existence. When pressed on this, the scientists went on to confirm that C02 levels actually have not had as catastrophic an effect on the environment as the noxious W4NKER gas that is released into the atmosphere every time Jeremy Clarkson opens his mouth.

Moonlighting as a government advisor from time to time, my campaign to have Clarkson ritually sacrificed to the Sun God Ra has thus far fallen on deaf ears, but I'm hoping in light of recent evidence Prime Minister Cam-Cam will seriously re-think my advice. 

       1. The Senseless Destruction of a Priceless Work of Art

In a year of atrocities, this is surely the worst of all. The original had Kevin Bacon. This has... I don't even care. I don't want to live in world where this kind of shit happens.

If this list seems a little patchy, well, that's because I had so many 'black out' moments in 2011 that I've started calling the parts I do remember 'black ins'. I think some stuff happened in the news too, but honestly, I don't pay attention to the world because it is a cold, dead place and I would rather read about fat celebrities and shit.