KEY POINTS:
The most important story of 2008 - 130,000 inflatable breasts floated off when bound for Sydney, tragically lost at sea. But hallelujah, mateys - they were recently found on the wrong boat.
I'm not a religious person but I'm pretty sure God raised his hand and said, "Yo, don't let these land in Invercargill." And it was so.
This is seminal, the stuff of NCEA essay exams. The marker of our time for humankind in 2008 is a shipload of lost inflatable plastic boobs. Discuss.
Couldn't Sudanese pirates have worked with us a little on this one? We could have handed over flat-chested Sydney women stupid enough to put airbags up their shirt, at a reduced ransom price. It would be like cleaning up the species with a pre-Christmas sale. Yo-ho-ho.
This year we lost Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Arthur C. Clarke, Dith Pran, George Carlin, Robert Rauschenberg and our own beloved Sir Ed. But you know whose widow just revealed that he'd left the world with his sperm on ice? Hunter S. Thompson's. Now what? Where does that leave us as a species?
This isn't the dawning of Aquarius, people; it's a new age of irony so pervasive its invisible to mere mortals. It's more beautiful than Puppy-cam or listening to a Hayley Westenra song over a pollution sunset.
Consider, now that Paul Newman is gone, it's his salad dressing that lives on.
The kid who played the beloved childhood wizard Harry Potter went naked on Broadway this year. And people in the Netherlands chose "swaffelen" - which means to swing your penis- as their 2008 word of the year, Do you think Harry Potter knew that when he showed us his wand?
Forget the economy, wars, new Kiwi prime ministers and US presidents, I want you to remember 2008 as the year that the Tony Soprano clone, Illinois Governor Rod "F***in' Golden" Blagojevich - the man who has a fringe like a giant slice of chocolate cake pasted to his head - revealed that he has a name for his hairbrush.
Yah, of course. It's "the football", an allusion to the "nuclear football", or the bomb code never to be out of reach of a US President. I can't tell you how joyously happy it makes me to know that the man of my former home state, the man stupid enough to allegedly try to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder even though he knew he'd been wiretapped by the Feds for years - calls his hairbrush a pet name.
Mr G, the drama teacher from Summer Heights High needs to use that in his school production next year, Hair II. Call Harry Potter. He'd get his kit off again.
A study this year said that almost half of women would forgo sex with their partner for two weeks rather than lose their internet.
There is so much brotherly love when you look at the world this way.
This was my first year of loving to hate any CEO who made over US$20 million ($35 million) in a single holiday bonus. It's so enjoyable. There were more than 50 people at Goldman Sachs in 2006 alone. I plan on sitting in front of CNN watching Mr "Ponzi" Madoff go down, armed with knitting needles, shrieking, "Guillotine! Guillotine!"
That's because instinctively I knew this was the year to move my disdain forward from George Dubya's maimed duckdom, currently in production for an Extreme Makeover episode. Makes a girl want to throw a shoe at somebody.
Though a woman would never have done that to George. Women understand shoes. They're too important to hurl as a farewell kiss. I would have thrown bonds or securities or old reruns of West Wing with Jeb Bartlett as President, my former political porn before Obama made his entrance ("Oh Martin Sheen, take me, I'm yours - in any district!")
Things are even looking promising for 2009. Dennis Blair, Obama's new intelligence chief, is a four-star admiral who once tried to water ski behind his Navy destroyer. He's known as an intellectual. True.
But if I had to pick a moment that encompasses the real pulse of this year, it has to be the headline that actor Jeremy Pivan has left David Mamet's play because of high levels of mercury in his blood. The actor apparently eats sushi twice a day and is now ill.
David Mamet commented to Daily Variety, "So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer."
Happy Christma-kkah. Joyous Festivas. Good Annum to you and your people.
And may your inflatable boobs always find their rightful home. See you in February.
* www.traceybarnett.co.nz
