2016 has been, in many ways, an unrepentant bastard of a year.

Basically all of the defining cultural icons of D’s generation have shuffled off this mortal coil, along with people like the gent who wrote Watership Down and the lady who proved that Dark Matter is a thing(1).

1. Someone on the facebarge suggested that this is all evidence that David Bowie has created an alternate universe and is selectively populating it. I’m down with that. 

Burning Man was even more contentious than usual (though not in my little circle of super-cool Burners: we try to actually talk rationally about the problems in Burning Man and find ways to solve them, instead of exploding in anger). 

Kentucky installed a governor who is the living personification of everything people from Connecticut imagine to be true about people from Kentucky, but don’t generally say because we’re busy reminding ourselves that it’s wrong to think that way(2).

2. It’s human nature, so feeling guilty about it is pointless, but it’s still wrong. Guilt accomplishes nothing; action, on the other hand, moves mountains. Just like it’s human nature to punch your little brother in the arm and take his candy, but you learn to overcome that impulse (even though sometimes as an adult you still want to punch people people and take their candy  self-righteous bombast). The process of becoming a good human is often the process of learning to master the desire to be a giant Chrome Dickface(3). It’s a process in which mountains are moved one pebble at a time. 
3. Chrome Dickface, in turn, is a kind of ur-asshat character that Robert and I made up by accident one time when we were chatting on the Internets and Chrome was being a dickface. Chrome Dickface has now come to stand in for basically all forms of ass-hattery in my world. 

People got their knickers in a twist over whether transfolk should be allowed to pee in peace. People couldn’t understand what it meant when other people said Black Lives Matter. People did the exact opposite of what Jesus/the Buddha/Muhammad/Ghandi/Mother Theresa/etc would do, and often did it in the name of G-d. 

To them I say:

And let’s not even get started on the whole US general election fiasco (4) and Brexit(5). 

1. Less the results (bad enough) than the general ass-hattery on all sides leading up to Election Day (demoralizing). 
2. I can’t help seeing seeing these as related cultural phenomena; two expressions of the same simmering discontent, one in each side of the pond: Chrome Asshat Victorious.

This isn’t to say that good things didn’t happen. They certainly did for me (Summer intensives! Triple turns! BW’s class! Marco Island! Commuting manatees!) 

But the Zeitgeist, frankly, is probably best characterized as a destructive toddler who occasionally offers a bite of his candy bar to individual people whilst still generally creating wrack and ruin. 

As such, I’m thinking about hosting a Whine and Jeez party, maybe after the New Year commences, to see off this dumpster fire of a 2016. The idea is that it will be a place to safely whinge about the Disasters of 2016, say “Jeez, I’m glad that’s over,” and commiserate whilst snacking.

I’m still on the fence about it, because I’m afraid to host parties because I don’t think anyone will come. Deep within, I’m still the wildly unpopular kid who cannot believe that anyone actually likes him.

But I rather like the idea, anyway.

So that’s my idea for sending off 2016.