The Nothing

The new decade has fallen upon us. I don’t know about you, but it snuck up on me. Almost like a predator jumping out from the darkness of the thick jungle canapé above. I simply didn’t expect the last decade to end so... abruptly. But here we are, staring straight into the face of 2010. What are we calling this new decade? The tens? The Teens? The Tweens? I am unsure. Appropriately however, it feels like the world is just entering puberty. Everyone seems uncertain of their future, naively optimistic about their prospects for happiness and utterly confused about what the hell is going to happen next. It feels as if the world is about to enter middle school and all that rubbish that occurred during grade school was completely pointless and is now relegated to an increasingly small part of our fading memory. Did we really make popsicle-stick sculptures in class a few years ago? Why? What was the name of that little girl I thought was so cute? I can’t recall. It all seems so long-ago and irrelevant. Remember that time we played kick-ball in gym class and Ronny broke his arm? Or how about the time we invaded Iraq to get WMD’s? No? Me neither. Did we really elect G. W. Bush twice? You're joking.

But rather than look forward and try to predict what’s going to happen as we enter puberty I thought I’d take a stab at classifying the time we’ve spent together these last ten years. We need to have a catch-phrase for... The Aughts? The Naughts? The Zeroes? I am unsure. But it needs to be called: “The ________ Decade". I’m not really sure if anything in particular stands out. I mean, really is there anything we can hang our collective hats on as the overriding social order of the last ten years? Not really. Which is just about perfect for a ten year period commonly known as “The Naughts”. Because I’d say that “naught” a God Damned good thing happened over the last ten years. Nothing of any real positive importance anyway.

Future generations will look back at this first decade of the 21st century as a time when we lost our way. When things really, really started to get markedly worse in the world. They will see the dawn of this new century as the beginning of the end of prosperity, culture and integrity. We didn’t really invent anything, cure anything or create anything of lasting value for future generations. No real progress (of any type) was made… not scientifically, spiritually, economically or politically. The human genome project perhaps qualifies as something of an achievement. That may be the only thing of substance to come out of the last ten years, but even that was a 13-year long project that ended in 2003, which really makes it an accomplishment of the 90’s that just sort of wrapped itself up in this decade. It seems that all we've accomplished as a society in the last ten years is a significant improvement in the creation and advertising of drugs that prolong erections. Well thank God for that!

No… the last ten years may as well not even have happened. In fact, judging by the way things ended up at the end, we’d have all been much better off if it hadn’t. What a complete fucking waste of ten years. So join me in saying good riddance to the last ten years… “The Nothing Decade”.