Happy New Year! What if 2008 was a Hoax?

I’m going to start the new year with some thoughts about 2009, which I like more than last year for one triv­ial rea­son already: it’s far eas­ier to type. But before that, one final reflec­tion on 2008: On the evening news, a reporter asked some peo­ple on the street this ques­tion: If you had to describe 2008 in a word, what would that word be? Most (but not all) gave words with neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions. I remem­ber some responses, includ­ing ‘chal­leng­ing’, ‘dif­fi­cult’, and ‘unfor­tu­nate’. I’m not sure what my answer would have been. On the one hand, lots of bad stuff hap­pened last year, but on the other, the US elected the first African-American Pres­i­dent and it was not all bad for me, per­son­ally. Matt Hard­ing, the guy who was behind the Inter­net viral video Where in the Hell is Matt claims that his beau­ti­ful danc­ing trip and Inter­net video was actu­ally an elab­o­rate hoax. I’d like to join with him, and actu­ally sug­gest that all of last year was just a hoax, too.

All except for the bit about Obama get­ting elected and a bunch of other things, that is.