First off, a couple of notes to those buzzkills who love to remind us that this is not really the end of a decade, just like 2000 was not really a new millennium:

1) You are technically correct, and
2) Nobody cares.

See, these numbers don’t have any real significance to begin with; they’re just human constructs imposed on what is really an undifferentiated flow of time. And our simple human brains get excited when the bigger numbers roll over. Nobody wants to hear your bitching, and especially not now. One is hesitant to write off an entire decade, but I don’t think many of us are sad to see this one go.

It even started as a disappointment. We were promised massive power outages, spontaneous explosions, rioting in the streets…instead, everybody went to bed early, and I found myself wandering around Seattle looking for a party to crash. Things didn’t improve much from there. We got George W. Bush, 9/11, a couple of wars, George W. Bush again, more war, Katrina, economic disaster, global warming looming on the horizon…there was a bit of an uptick with the election of Boom Obizzle, but it’s already clear that the systemic problems in this country are a lot more than one smart guy and his smart friends can fix. It seems only right that the decade should come to a close with one idiot trying to kaboom an airplane on Christmas Day with explosives in his underpants, and succeeding only in blowing his own nuts off. I guess you could say it began and ended with a fizzle.

There were some good times, to be sure, but on the whole I’m looking at it as an adjustment period. With any luck the 21st century, and the future as a whole, may now begin in earnest.