2008 The Year That Was (Abridged Version)

In keeping with the spirit of last year's kick-off to the year-end lists, I've decided to create another yearly review of the events that have shaped all of our lives over the course of the past 12 months. Instead of a devastatingly long recounting, I've decided - this year - to list only 2 or 3 moments from each month (courtesy of Wikipedia) accompanied by scathing commentary and exemplary wit. Enjoy I'm at the mercy of your jests.

January
-Price of Oil hits $100/barrel for the first time. The big three automakers are too busy polishing their jets to hear their own death knell.
-Stock markets around the world plunge amid growing fears of a U.S. recession, fueled by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis. Unbeknownst to the the rest of the world, the US was already, secretly, in a recession. Shhh, don't tell anyone. No one has to know our little secret.

February
-The British government introduces emergency legislation temporarily to nationalize Northern Rock, the fifth largest mortgage bank in the UK, due to the bank's financial crisis. First the abolition of slavery now this. Damnit, the British are always one step ahead of us.
-Fidel Castro announces his resignation as President of Cuba, effective on February 24. Fidel Castro actually died February 24th 1996.

March
- Rising food and fuel prices trigger riots and unrest in the Third World. Rising Gas prices and raw material costs trigger sighs in the First World which may soon be the new Third World, but the First World doesn't know it yet but when they do it will trigger riots and unrest in the first world. But in actuality isn't the third world really the first world, since civilization began in what is now the third world? And while we're on the topic, who makes up the Second World? Australia, I guess.
- An exploding star halfway across the visible universe becomes the farthest known object ever visible to the naked eye. Exactly how does one know where the halfway point is in the visible universe using only one's, supposed, "naked eye?"
-Presidential and parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe. Observers from the European Union or the United States were not admitted, but Zimbabwe invited 47 observer teams, including observers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union, China, Russia, and Iran. All agree that the nations invited are the true beacon's of Democracy.

April
-Surgeons at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital perform the first operations using bionic eyes, implanting them into two blind patients. The patients are still blind, but they have bionic eyes, which is cool.
-India sets a world record by sending 10 satellites into orbit in a single launch. Not to be outdone China sends 800 satellites into orbit in a single launch, but it's later found out that they were computer generated satellites. The attempt was seen as a success and plans went into place for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

May
-Over 133,000 in Burma/Myanmar are killed by Cyclone Nargis, the deadliest natural disaster since the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004
-Over 69,000 are killed in central south-west China by the Chengdu quake, an earthquake measuring 8.0M_w. The epicenter is 90 kilometers (55 miles) west-northwest of the provincial capital Chengdu, Sichuan province.
-A series of bomb blasts kills at least 63 and injures 216 in Jaipur, India.
-The continent of Asia declares that May was a very bad month.

June
-Ireland votes to reject the Treaty of Lisbon, in the only referendum to be held by a European Union member state on the treaty. The referendum was held because the EU would not recognize U2's "Elevation" as the Eurozone's national anthem.
-President Robert Mugabe is reelected with 85.5% of the vote in the second round of the controversial Zimbabwean presidential election. Mugabe runs on a platform of Non-Change and his slogan is "No we can't."
-After three decades as the Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates steps down from daily duties to concentrate on philanthropy. "Philanthropy" is a new program made by Microsoft that calculates tax deductions for charitable contributions.

July
-World Youth Day takes place in Sydney, Australia. Pope Benedict XVI appears at the event. Aides later inform the pope that he is not 8 years old, but rather 81. Pope disagrees. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is reported to be loosely based on Pope Benedict's condition of reverse aging.
-Radovan Karadžić, the first president of the Republika Srpska, is arrested in Belgrade, Serbia on allegations of war crimes, following a 12-year long manhunt. Actor Gary Busey is the reported capturer. Busey who starred in the film "Surviving the Game", which involved game hunting a homeless Ice-T for sport, stated that he was able to use the techniques he learned from filming for his role in this latest "Manhunt."

August
-The 2008 Summer Olympics take place in Beijing, China. The opening ceremony depicts China History and the world coming together as one.
-The 2008 South Ossetia war begins as Georgia and Russia launch a major offensive inside the separatist region of South Ossetia after days of border skirmishes between the two sides.
-The Taliban insurgents kill 10 and injure 21 French soldiers in an ambush in Afghanistan
-A suicide bomber rams a car into an Algerian military academy and the resulting explosion kills 43 and injures 45.
-At least 60 die following twin suicide bombings outside the Pakistan Ordnance Factories in Wah, Pakistan.
-Pirates hijack German, Iranian, and Japanese cargo ships off the coast of Somalia, seven of such attacks since June 20
-The 2008 Summer Olympics take place in Beijing, China. The opening ceremony depicts China History and the world coming together as one.

September
-Hurricane Ike makes landfall on Texas as Category 2 and kills 27 in the United States, after killing 4 in Cuba, 1 in the Dominican Republic, and 75 in Haiti. Hurricane Ike is later investigated by the FBI as a seriel killer.
- Political crisis in Thailand: The Constitutional Court of Thailand orders Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to resign after receiving payment for appearing on a television cooking show. Nevermind the no-bid contracts awarded, the sex with prostitutes, and the directives to assasinate opposition leaders, Sundaravej will go down as that President on 30-Minute Meals with Rachel Ray.
-The proton beam is circulated for the first time in the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and the highest-energy particle accelerator, located at CERN, near Geneva, under the Franco-Swiss border. It is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the last unobserved particle among those predicted by the Standard Model. Though the Higgs boson was not observed, what was observed was how McDonalds gets their hamburgers to taste so delicious.

October
- Global financial crisis: U.S. President George W. Bush signs the revised Emergency Economic Stabilization Act into law, creating a 700 billion dollar Treasury fund to purchase failing bank assets. One man's crisis is another man's "holy bejeezus, I'm going to live in the White House." Obama takes a lead that he never relinquishes.
-The 2008 World Series was the 104th World Series between the American and National Leagues for the championship of Major League Baseball. The Philadelphia Phillies as champions of the National League and the Tampa Bay Rays, as American League champions, competed to win four games out of a possible seven. The Series started on Wednesday, October 22, and, after weather delays had postponed the end of Game 5, concluded the following Wednesday, October 29. Thus begins one of the greatest weeks of my life.

November
-In the United States presidential election, Barack Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States and Joe Biden is elected the 47th Vice President. Barack Obama becomes the first African-American President-elect. Thus concluding one of the greatest weeks of my life.
-The RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 departs on her last voyage from Southampton, UK to Dubai, UAE. She will become a floating hotel at Palm Jumeirah. (Unless she's taken over by pirates. At which point she will become a floating pirate ship hotel. Quite frankly, this seems way more appealing to vacationing families than just your run-of-the-mill "Floating hotels.")
-A series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India kills 164, and injures at least 250.

December
-The remains found in 1991 are finally identified with Tsar Nicholas II of Russia using DNA analysis. CSI Urals will debut on CBS this fall.
-Sark holds its first-ever general elections after abolishing feudalism in April. The first order of business for the new president, will be to advance the island's civilization from the 17th Century to, at the very least, the mid 19th Century.
-The Big Three U.S. manufacturers, (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler), have indicated that unless additional funding can be obtained over the short to medium term, there is a real danger of one or more companies declaring bankruptcy. Resistence to the bailout shows that the US Congress will not negotiate with corporations that employ poor management, greed principals, and business logic that's in opposition to what's good for the American people. (Meanwhile, AIG just made another bad investment and would like a little more cash, please. Mr. Paulson says "hell yes, AIG. It's Christmas, plus I'm still living the "Brewster's Millions" lifestyle. I would love for you to take some more of this borrowed cash surplus. Thank you. No, please take some more. Seriously, buy something for your kids. Hey, haven't I seen your wife driving one of those new Chevy Malibu's? Better take some more money and buy her a foreign car, cause those 3 are going down. Seriously, take some more....")

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