Putting the last year in proper perspective

I was perusing the various things I peruse in the mornings and finally clicked on the link in my email to Dave Barry's column in the Miami Herald. Dave is semi-retired, it seems. That is, most of the column links I am sent are for reprints of old (sometimes several years old) columns. On occasion, however, they are new and timely columns that are salient and insightful. Wait a minute, the older ones are always insightful. Just not always timely.

But I mentally wander...

The one I was sent the other day, on the third of January of this year (to be precise) is rather long. It is a not all that brief recap of the events of 2010. Dave, and others, do these recaps of the past year because they assume we all have case of Alzheimer's and have lost our short term memory capability. Which is not true, of course. I remember everything that happened last year. Except I have a little trouble recalling it clearly.

In any event, Dave (he lets me call him by his first name because he has no idea who I am and that I am doing it) provides us with a absurdist's view of the most interesting and/or important events of the last year. As if still nursing a hangover from your over-indulgence on New Year's Eve and facing another year of poor to non-existent economic recovery wasn't depressing enough. Of course, unlike me, Dave is entertaining and (most importantly) amusing. That would make the recap fun to read.

So, if you have a spare several minutes (it was a busy year) and you want to recall the year 2010 without a smile leaving your lips, I highly recommend following this link

Dave Barry’s 2010 Year in Review

How can anything that starts off like this be ignored?

"Let’s put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been MUCH worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of all the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes we can, because they were not exposed to Jersey Shore."