Free Republic

It was a year of reckoning, a year in which humanity finally began to understand that it faces an existential threat, a threat unlike any we have ever faced before, a threat that will wreak havoc on our fragile planet if we fail to stop it—and it may already be too late. We are referring, of course, to pickleball. Nobody knows where it started. Some scientists believe it escaped from a laboratory in China. But whatever its origin, it has been spreading like rancid mayonnaise ever since, to the point where pickleball courts now cover 43 percent of the continental...

Is there anything positive we can say about 2021? Yes. We can say that it was marginally better than 2020. Granted, this is not high praise. It’s like saying that somebody is marginally nicer than Hitler. But it’s something. What was better about 2021? For one thing, people finally emerged from their isolated pandemic cocoons and started connecting with others. Granted, the vast majority of the people who connected with us this year wanted to discuss our car’s extended warranty. But still. Another improvement was that most stores got rid of those one-way anti-COVID arrows on the floor. Remember those,...

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anaesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. 'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me... 'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If...

We can summarize 2018 in two words: It boofed. We’re not 100 percent sure what “boofing” is, despite the fact that this very issue was discussed in a hearing of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee. All we know for certain about boofing is that it is distasteful and stupid. In spades. What made this year so awful? We could list many factors, including natural disasters, man-made atrocities, the utter depravity of our national political discourse and the loss of Aretha Franklin. Instead we’ll cite one event that, while minor, epitomizes 2018: the debut of “Dr. Pimple Popper.” This is...

Perhaps you are one of the many Americans who are afraid of preparing their own income-tax returns. If so, let me offer these words of encouragement: You stupid idiot. I say this because doing your own taxes has never been easier, thanks to modern technology such as the telephone, the personal computer and the canned frozen margarita. Take me. I am not a so-called "Certified Public Accountant, " but I have been handling my own taxes for years, using a simple, three-step system: STEP ONE: One week before the April 15 tax deadline, I gather together all my financial records....

In the future, Americans — assuming there are any left — will look back at 2016 and remark: “What the HELL?” They will have a point. Over the past few decades, we here at the Year in Review have reviewed some pretty disturbing years. For example, there was 2000, when the outcome of a presidential election was decided by a tiny group of deeply confused Florida residents who had apparently attempted to vote by chewing on their ballots.

Sometimes we are accused -- believe it or not -- of being overly negative in our annual Year in Review. Critics say we ignore the many positive events in a given year and focus instead on the stupid, the tragic, the evil, the disgusting, the Kardashians. OK, critics: We have heard you. This year, instead of dwelling on the negatives, we're going to start our annual review with a List of the Top Ten Good Things That Happened in 2015. Ready? Here we go: 1. We didn't hear that much about Honey Boo Boo. 2. OK, we'll have to get...

Puff 'n' Fluff Dog Dryer The holidays are here, and-in the words of the heartwarming classic Andy Williams holiday tune we will hear so many times that by mid-December we will want to stuff figgy pudding into our ears - "it's the most wonderful time of the year." And it truly is, for many reasons. It's a time of good will, when people we barely know extend heartfelt season's greetings to us, often in the form of convenient envelopes with the words SEASONS GREETINGS printed right on them that we can use to give these people their holiday tips. It's...

So I read Fifty Shades of Grey. This is the book written by female British author “E. L. James” that became a huge bestseller, devoured by pretty much every woman on Earth except my wife (or so she claims). I think I might be the only man who read this book. I did it sneakily, hiding the cover, especially when I was on an airplane, which actually is a good place to read this book because you have access to a barf bag.

It was a year of mysteries. To list some of the more baffling ones: A huge airliner simply vanished, and to this day nobody has any idea what happened to it, despite literally thousands of hours of intensive speculation on CNN. Millions of Americans suddenly decided to make videos of themselves having ice water poured on their heads. Remember? There were rumors that this had something to do with charity, but for most of us, the connection was never clear. All we knew was that, for a while there, every time we turned on the TV, there was a local...

In the first paragraph of the prologue to his new book, The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way... And It Wasn't My Fault... And I'll Never Do It Again, political humor writer P.J. O'Rourke declares in no uncertain terms that he is "full of crap." Similarly, in the introduction to his upcoming book You Can Date Boys When You're Forty, humor columnist Dave Barry explains that his book, despite its subtitle "Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About," is not about parenting. It's easy to imagine that when these two bestselling authors and longtime pals get together,...

We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu." You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "High", that said: "Electrocution". Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth because [a] your teeth hurt and [b] you lack the strength. Midway through the brushingprocess, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam...

It was a cruel, cruel year — a year that kept raising our hopes, only to squash them flatter than a dead possum on the interstate. Example: This year the “reality” show Jersey Shore, which for six hideous seasons has been a compelling argument in favor of a major earth-asteroid collision, finally got canceled, and we dared to wonder if maybe, just maybe, we, as a society, were becoming slightly less stupid. But then, WHAP, we were slapped in our national face by the cold hard frozen mackerel of reality in the form of the hugely popular new “reality” show...

...On top of all that, right now downtown Charlotte boasts a huge sand sculpture of President Obama. It bears an uncanny resemblance to what the president would look like if he were made out of sand sculpted by somebody who had never actually seen him. The sculpture weighs more than 15 tons and cost $30,000, which was paid by the visitors bureau of Myrtle Beach, S.C., as a way of sending the message: "We have a great deal of sand."...

It was the kind of year that made a person look back fondly on the gulf oil spill. Granted, the oil spill was bad. But it did not result in a high-decibel, weeks-long national conversation about a bulge in a congressman’s underpants. Which is exactly what we had in the Festival of Sleaze that was 2011. Remember? There were days when you could not escape The Bulge. At dinnertime, parents of young children had to be constantly ready to hurl themselves in front of their TV screens, for fear that it would suddenly appear on the news in high definition....

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." So, on second thought, we see that this was, in fact, the worst year ever. The perfect symbol for the awfulness of 2010 was the BP oil spill, which...

Dear Super Bowl Visitor: Welcome to Miami! Get ready for a fun Super Bowl week, because you're going to see some serious partying ``Miami Style'' -- people eating, drinking, singing, shouting, fighting, discharging firearms, sacrificing animals, sinking motor yachts and dancing naked around burning buses. And those are our police officers. But don't worry! You are perfectly safe. Miami has been hosting Super Bowls for more than 150 years, and in all that time no harm has ever come to a visitor who didn't do something stupid such as venture outside the hotel. So have fun! Here are some tips...

It was a year of Hope -- at first in the sense of ``I feel hopeful!'' and later in the sense of ``I hope this year ends soon!'' It was also a year of Change, especially in Washington, where the tired old hacks of yesteryear finally yielded the reins of power to a group of fresh, young, idealistic, new-idea outsiders such as Nancy Pelosi. As a result Washington, rejecting ``business as usual,'' finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it and instead started trying to solve every problem by throwing trillions of taxpayer...

Excerpts: JANUARY...The No. 1 item on the agenda is fixing the economy, so the new administration immediately sets about the daunting task of trying to nominate somebody -- anybody -- to a high-level government post who actually remembered to pay his or her taxes. Among those who forgot this pesky chore is Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who sheepishly admits that he failed to pay $35,000 in federal self-employment taxes. He says that the error was a result of his using TurboTax, which he also blames for his involvement in an eight-state spree of bank robberies. He is...

It was a year of Hope -- at first in the sense of ``I feel hopeful!'' and later in the sense of ``I hope this year ends soon!''