caotica.com

Another holiday season has come and gone, dear friends. The Festivus pole is back in the rafters of the garage, safely ensconced in layers of custom-cut styrofoam. The paella is gone, devoured at the Festivus dinner. The packages of decorative tinsel remain unopened (it’s too distracting).

And yet, one part of Festivus still remains, the one thing that never leaves us. It’s that feisty, combative, Festivus spirit, which we here at CAOTICA carry inside us the whole year round.

As is tradition, we will spend the final hours leading up to 2016 complaining about everything that went wrong in 2015. And boy-oh-boy, did a lot of things ever manage to go topside up in 2016, the official banner year for outrage and overhype.

Festivus for the Rest

Let the airing of the grievances commence!

  • Blood/Super Moon
    • The Book of Joel suggests a blood moon would precede the second coming of Jesus. We’re still here though, so I guess this was nothing more than a rare and spectacular lunar tetrad. Boring.
  • CISA
    • How do you pass a incredibly unpopular bill like the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act? Slap it on a must-pass budget bill as a rider! Now your personal information will be dispersed through multiple government agencies as part of increasing state surveillance on citizens. Thanks Obama.
  • Silent Hills Cancellation
    • The mind-bending playable trailer was a sensation all on it’s own, and hinted at what could have been the most haunting entry in series in years. A chilling atmosphere, fantastic graphics, and full of genuine scares. Now, the game is (at best) lost in development hell, and the trailer isn’t even available as a download any more.
    • If you missed your window to play this, watch this:

  • Overhyped Retreads
    Hollywood is flat out of ideas, but has plenty left in the marketing budget.

    • Terminator Genesys: Each Terminator film forces you to rethink the logic of the time-travelling robot series, a huge mistake that ensures diminishing returns. Bonus (negative) points for a terrible name.
    • Spectre: Daniel Craig’s boring swan song means bumps Quantum of Solace out of the bottom spot from his tenure as Bond.
    • Fantastic Four: Sure they’re just making these to keep the rights current, but they have to make a good one eventually, right? Right?
    • Vacation: This reboot of a much-loved franchise has it’s characters swim in raw sewage, a gag worthy of a Sandler/Schneider production.
    • Jurassic World: The best entry in the franchise since Jurassic Park fails to realize that dinosaurs are pretty magical as they are.
  • The Force Awakens
    • It captured the spirit of the original films because it’s a three hour piece of New Hope fan fiction. Entertaining and well made, you won’t notice that it completely invalidates everything the Rebel Alliance accomplished in the first three films until after you’ve purchased a few hundred dollars of Star Wars merchandise.
  • MayPac Fight
    • $100 for 12 rounds of fancy dancing around the ring.
  • Lead up to the US 2016 Election
    • The campaign trail thus far has been, especially on the GOP side, a shrill circus. Worst of all, there is a legitimate chance Americans could be voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016.
    • There’s normally no shortage of wing nuts in the GOP, but when Jeb Bush is the most reasonable option on the table? Think about that. Voting in a third Bush actually seems palatable right now.
  • The Apple Watch
    • Dick Tracy’s 1930’s radio watch is better designed than this. An overpriced squarish lump that doesn’t perform like it should. In fact, most of Apple’s current product line gets a curt and frankly dismissive “hmm” from the staff here. Get it together, Apple.
  • Amazon Prime Day
    • Croc sandals and smoothie mix have never been so affordable. Amazon made money hand over fist though, so at least one of the world’s most exploitive corporations came out on top from this overplayed garage sale.
  • Paris Agreement
    • Everyone agreed to play nice and stop global warming (again), but none of this is binding until ratified, and it hasn’t been ratified. Meanwhile, Beijing is a smoggy nightmare, while India has decided the treaty didn’t apply to them and doubled coal production.
  • Justin Trudeau
    • Canada voted our least experienced candidate into our highest office on the basis of good looks, an established brand name, unachievable campaign promises, a vague dedication to the nebulous concept of “Canadian values”, and getting Stephen Harper out of office.
  • Northern White Rhino
    • It’s extinct. Great work, humanity.
  • Walking Dead Mid Season Finale
    • Of course he was under the dumpster. What, you thought waiting three weeks to confirm was building suspense?
  • “End of the World” Articles
    • An awful lot of people are being paid good money to tell us that it’s already too late to save the world. Hoo-ray.
  • Reality Catches up with Back To The Future
    • Disappointingly, none of the film’s predictions came true. Our future is perhaps more optimistic than the one in the film, but my clothing is on the right way and doesn’t inflate automatically so it’s all a wash to me.
    • See: Hoverboards.
  • ISIS in Paris
    • Nobody in their right mind would consider an attack against France a military success, but ISIS has yet to fade and that’s horrifying.
  • Hoverboards
    • Never buy the first-gen product. This is just a fancy, light-up skateboard that sets itself on fire once in awhile.
  • Blue Jays
    • This was a genuine loss. It’s inspiring that Canada’s only baseball team made it so close to whatever that baseball trophy is (Pennant? Pendant?) but I’ve never seen so many Torontonians weep, and easterners displaying emotion disgusts me.
  • Miss Universe
    • Technically a success on two fronts: World’s nicest guy Steve Harvey gets the biggest laugh of his career with an honest mistake, and the Miss Universe competition briefly becomes interesting (not relevant) news item again. Voted a negative for turning Steve Harvey into a meme he doesn’t deserve to be.
  • TIDAL
    • The most out-of-touch marketing campaign we’ve ever seen, a $20 price point most consumers can’t or won’t meet, and a promoted on the basis of audio-quality most listeners don’t have the equipment to appreciate. Wealthy, corporate musicians have decided what’s good for the music industry, and it’s their new business venture.

  • Oil Prices
    • See: Sinking Canadian Dollar
  • The Canadian Dollar
    • And we were doing so well for awhile there too.
  • Whiny Hannibal Fans
    • Pretentious serial killer Hannibal cut down just as he was perfecting his long speeches about high culture and elaborate, poorly justified murders. Now we’ll never get to see Will Graham and Hannibal kiss.
  • Complaints about Caitlin Jenner’s WOTY Award
    • She didn’t win “Woman of the Year“, she won a “Transgender Champion” award at Glamour’s “Women of the Year Awards” ceremony. It makes sense. Stop complaining.Did people even care about this awards ceremony before this?
    • She also won the Arthur Ashe courage award, and killed somebody. These are both more troublesome, but nobody seems too worried about that.

Happy Festivus

Happy new year, dear readers! Did we miss any of your grievances? Let us know in the comments and we’ll make sure to rage against them in 2016.

If you’re still feeling angry, why not read what we hated in 2014?

The Shop at Caotica.com…Books and Music