Good riddance, 2011. Sack the coach! Throw the bums out! If I never see another…  Just once I’d like to see…  You fill in the rest. I, for one, have little faith that the world-at-large or the local village quite small, are going to see much improvement in the level of civility of fellow man. The more things change the more they seem to change for the worse. Lead stories: suicide bombers, remote-control drones inadvertently targeting civilians in the course of endless wars; yellow police tape marking off  various urban kill zones, including headless corpses left lying around Mexican landscapes compliments of drug cartels to act as sensational scarecrows for all to see; and generally all the flotsom and jetsom of modern living: skin heads, dickheads, dipshits, dumbasses, dingdongs, nitwits, halfwits, numbskulls, digitally dazed zombies, the impolite, the oblivious, the petty, the haughty, the cheats, backstabbers, double-dealers, two-timers, con artists, scammers, schemers, cheaters and chumps. Oh, there’s much more, but you KNOW what I’m talking about. And it’s been dangerous out there for a long time. None of these bits of anecdotal evidence are really “news”.  History, to paraphrase a famous quote, is a nightmare from which I need to awake. After the rubble and ruin has been academically analyzed, there’s always new chapters for the coming year’s tomes on the times in which we live, or have lived. There are always feel good stories, too, tho more often than not, they derive from some initial  outrage: Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords making a miraculous recovery from a lunatic gun shot to her head; countless war vets overcoming loss of limbs with the help of prosthetics and perseverance; 911 survivors; those rehabbing from an encounter with a drunk driver, or a drive-by shooter; someone finally being cleared on all charges via DNA testing–20 years after being sent to prison, and similar tales of straightening out one’s life following a vicious twist of fate. Then there’s Mother Nature adding to the angst via tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes.  More subtlely we have the politics of greed and corruption, the haves and the have-nots, the pampered, the persecuted, the passed-over.  But maybe, just maybe, in some barely perceptible way, 2012 will be more civil, more sedate. Next year is going to be different! Under new management. A new game plan. A fresh infusion of comradery and compassion! This year is going to be the year! Hope! Change we can really believe in and confirm! Reforms, new regulations, fairness and balance. Dare we dream?  Certainly. Dream on. Turn over, go back to sleep and drift off again. All will be made well…or all may be Orwell. Which way trends the tilt? I want to be more positive, and see the world become a quieter, more cooperative place, but history won’t let me wake up to such a  brave new world.