The End of '10

Sitting in the quiet late night at a downtown LA hotel, surrounded above and below by Rosy Bowlers getting their beauty sleep, I can't help but reflect on The End Of 2010.

Has there been another year in living memory that so spiked bad news with worse, and provided too few good omens to sooth a rattled psyche? Not in my memory, which still lives an active sort of life between uninformed youth and the fracturing of age.

Of course, as you contrarians out there will remind me, there were some good things in 2010. That is true, but I would reply that most were canceled by equal and opposite badness, like antimatter seeking out its matter clone.

You only need look at the economy for an example; when banks flourished again, and the stock market rose with corporate profits while jobs continued to disappear. Lack of gainful employment for far too many is the 800 pound antimatter Gorilla in the room, threatening to annihilate everything.

I've wracked my brain for something unequivocally positive to say about 2010. The best I can come up with is to note it was the year that scientists managed to create antihydrogen in the CERN Hadron collider, a long-desired feat. But whether that's positive or negative in the long run, depends on your perspective. For all of us made up of matter, it might not turn out so good ...

So, cherish your matter while it's intact and non-annihilated. And greet 2011 with hope and persistence.