Dear 2009,

Like every year, you started off cold and will end cold, but you filled that gap in between with nonsense, crap, and suck.

Right from the start, Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger  lands a damned plane in the Hudson River and saves the lives of all 155 people on board. Way to set the bar too high, 2009. Just over two weeks in and already nothing I can do in 2009 will be as badass.

On Jan. 20, Barack Obama was sworn in as president of the United States. I know a lot of conservatives who felt that this made 2009 suck, what with him being the anti-Christ socialist that he is. On the other, side however, this means that up until Jan. 20 Bush was still president. For a lot of liberals, just 20 days of Bush in 2009 was enough to ruin the rest of the year.

You know what used to be awesome? Pirates. Cutlasses and cannons, guns and pillaging, rum and plunder, and Keira Knightly in a corset. But in 2009 the “real” pirates off the coast of Somalia shattered everyone’s idea that pirates were fun. They were not all Johnny Depp, but instead struggling third world criminals who sped up to freighters on tiny motor boats and took control with rifles. Well, they used to until they hijacked a U.S. vessel and took the captain hostage.

Then we sent in troops, sniped the pirates from a boat, and redundantly made it clear nothing anyone did this year would be as badass.

You know how we didn’t need another thing to kill us? And then 2009, you decided to make swine flu a pandemic? Not only could I have died from a disease named after a pretty wussy animal, but then everyone started freaking out, dousing themselves in hand sanitizer and making bio-hazard suits fashionable? Not cool, 2009.

I often wondered why our Sports editor Dan Fenner was such a grump this year, but I realized that sports in 2009 sucked for us. The OU men’s basketball team missed their chance to enter the NCAA tournament this year in the last two seconds.

Then Michigan State made it all the way to the last game, had a chance to win the tournament in Detroit and jolt this depressed state back into being proud — but instead they got trounced on by the Tar Heels of North Carolina.

Then the Red Wings blew their shot at winning Stanley, at home, to Sidney “whiny little bastard” Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Then the Tigers lost in 12 innings to the Minnesota Twins in a tie breaking game to win the American League central. Rick Porcello’s good looks, according to You/Local editor Annie Stodola, were not enough to save them.

Then the Lions finally won a game, and jokers like me could no longer make fun of their losing streak. Sure, they still suck, but for a while, we were proud that we sucked more than anyone, and they blew it.

Death got greedy this year, 2009. Ted Kennedy, I can understand. Robert McNamara, yeah, he was old. Walter Cronkite? No, not cool Death. Michael Jackson I kind of figured was going to go out in some crazy fashion, and I’m still hearing crap about it.

Love him or hate him, we were not able to avoid it. Farrah Fawcett AND Patrick Swayze, did you really need both of them? Death, did you figure if you took Billy Mays the next celebrity came absolutely free?

Bea Arthur. You took Dorthy Zbornak from us, you son of a bitch.

The top three movies of 2009 were Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Up. Six of the top 10 movies were sequels, thus proving that the creative well has dried and people are still willing to spend millions of dollars for the same things they’ve seen before. If something blows up and either Meghan Fox or Daniel Radcliffe is on screen, people will spend their paycheck to go see it.

Everyone felt the economic crunch this year. I’d write more about it, but to save money and ride the going green wave, I’m not allowed to search any information about it and have to turn off my computer every few minutes to save money on electricity.

There were a lot of things we did not need in 2009. Bernie Madoff, balloon boy, Blagojevich. Did Sarah Palin really need to come back into the news? North Korea was still a whacky semi-nuclear hell hole and Iran was enriching enough uranium to blow up the sun. Twice.

The economy was tanking, car companies crashing, and clunkers suddenly became a commodity. Susan Boyle gets famous, Tiger Woods gets his van smashed with his own clubs, and Leno gets a new show and still isn’t that funny.

Kanye ruined the VMAs for Taylor Swift, Auto-tune ruined music as we know it, and “You can afford this” ruined Oakland’s reputation as a prestigious school and made us the joke of Michigan colleges.

2009, I’m sorry to say that I really won’t miss you. Hopefully 2010 will make up for your mistakes, but then again, I said that about you to 2008.

See you in hell,

Dan Simons

Mouthing Off editor

P.S. When you see 2004 in hell, tell him to kiss my ass.