It’s been another tough year, hasn’t it? As we’ve cycled through another of our increasingly limited revolutions around the sun, there’s not a lot to celebrate or dwell on with much heart. Nor is there much optimistic honesty with which to declare a Happy New Year as we drink ourselves into a stupor long before the midnight bell tolls.
But 2023 hasn’t all been gloom for the world at large; there have been bright spots and moments of hope -little joys amidst the pain that has kept life worth living. Indeed in some respects it has been a picnic this year, which I can speak to authoritatively as one whose consciousness this past month was transferred against my will into the mind of a forty-five year old Icelandic physics professor. In the span of a few hours I lived out the whole of 2024 in their life. Here is just some of what I witnessed through their eyes.
January -Following on the heels of several higher profile labour actions in 2023, teachers in Saskatchewan go on strike. In response, a smear campaign is launched by the provincial government likening teachers to Nazis and formal education to the Gulag. Roughly sixty per cent of parents subsequently pull their kids out of school permanently in order to raise them properly as good God-fearing drones.
February -The social media site formerly known as Twitter continues to lose money amid relentless scandals and technical incompetence. CEO Elon Musk’s attempt to drive up user engagement via a virtual reality feature Xhibit goes south after the only reality it can conjure is Musk’s own bedroom where his sycophants get bored of watching him masturbate to AI-generated images of Xi Jinping for four hours at a stretch.
March -The Oscar campaign for Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things having hit a snag due to the laborious process of editing out all the sex and nudity scenes for a Gen-Z voter screening, Barbie wins big on awards night. It is a victory that is somewhat tempered for the recipients however by the specialized plastic statuettes they receive that look less like gold trophies and more like dildos.
April -Little-known country singer Drew McGilligan becomes an overnight pop music sensation with his smash hit "Let's Nuke the Ghetto". Though criticized for lyrics such as "shoot the ones in turbans" and "be brave, make her a slave", McGilligan insists the song is not political and is rather about starting a dialogue, as he books his tour exclusively along well-known lynching sites.
May -After a suspiciously warm season across the northern hemisphere, winter comes with a freezing fury in the middle of May, burying swaths of Europe and North America in snow, much to the anxiety, and denial of residents of that part of the globe and the amusement of Australians. An international climate forum is held to address the crisis where a resolution is adopted to scale back on luxury private jet usage 50% by the year 2060.
June -A general election in the UK follows up on more than a year of devastating poll numbers for the incumbent Conservative Party by delivering a crushing defeat which sees them reduced to merely a couple dozen seats amid victories across the board for Diet Tory counterpart Labour. Befuddled new Prime Minister Keir Starmer proves a worthy representative of the national character as he sweats and flusters his way through a speech he stole from Churchill.
July -Looking to capture the phenomenon of “Barbenheimer” and recover from a series of mutual flops, Marvel and DC Studios join forces to release their two distinct projects simultaneously, Doctor Strange: Return to the Multiverse, and The Metaverse of Doctor Hugo Strange. Ultimately both films wind up under-performing while a new original movie by Jordan Peele, Literally Anything Else, soars to box office records.
August –The A.I. Art Revolution is in full swing to the delight of dozens of talentless tech bros and the horror of human artists everywhere whose careers and passions are driven into obsolescence. The twenty-first of August sees the first book written by A.I. hit the shelves, with the first movie released just a week later, curiously racist and vaguely pornographic imitations of Star Wars and Batman respectively.
September -Tensions between Canada and India are inflamed once again when a rogue Canadian agent assassinates prominent government official Amit Shah in Uttar Pradesh. A brief resumption of diplomatic nose-thumbing takes place before Joe Biden puts both Narendra Mohdi and Justin Trudeau in international relations time-out, while U.S. Special Ops takes out both respective assailants. The two countries go back to their prior relationship of India promptly ignoring Canada’s very existence.
October -A cult of incompetent mediums accidentally summons the ghost of Henry Kissinger. As the gruesome malevolent spectre makes off for South America to haunt the survivors of its atrocities in life, a more experienced psychic conjures up the spirit of Anthony Bourdain, who finally gets his wish to pursue and beat the ever-loving shit out of the remorseless monster on an eternal phantom plane forever.
November -Having died of a ruptured ventricle at a Florida McDonalds two months before the Presidential election, Donald Trump's running mate Kari Lake is elected President as Joe Biden's persistence in funding war crimes finally catches up with him at the ballot box. In the aftermath, a Democratic schism erupts resulting in the formation of new Conservative and Social-Democrat parties, making the U.S. electoral system look a smidge more normal as its President endeavours to outlaw books.
December -An asteroid hits the Earth! It leaves a small crater in Siberia that nobody expresses much concern over. But out of that crater there emerges a primordial sludge that quickly spreads across the land and neutralizes the people. By Christmas the enveloping tar has cocooned most of the population as gelatinous duplicates have been moulded in their place, greater custodians of a dying world than their precursors could ever have hoped to be. And the orgies are incredible too!
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