The First 15 days of '09 - Death, Awards, and the Slow End of an Era( and the rise of a new one...)

Happy belated New Year, everyone! Although, those that still go by the Julian Calendar, the New Year begun yesterday - so welcome to 2009, ya crazy people! The rest of the civilized world has been in 2009 for the first 15 days. And if the first 15 days are any indication what the rest of the year is gonna be like, well, we're pretty boned!

• "They've been fighting for thousands of years, what's another year or two?" - Yeah, so Israel is still continuing its attack on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, there is some outrage in the rest of the international communties, despite being potentially labeled as anti-Semites. Clearly there are two solutions: either let them just slug it out in a winner-takes-all death match, or we abolish all religions and embrace atheism. If option two is selected, consider this a preemptive warning: I'm not fighting ostrich-riding otters in an Atheist's world, okay?
• "Care to see my Oscar and two Golden Globes?" - Yes, awards season kicked off with the Golden Globe Awards. No real big surprise winners as far as I could tell. Wall-E won for best animated film (Suck it, Igor!), some other movie I haven't heard of until now (Slumdog Millionaire) won the most awards for the night. Heath Ledger won for the role that pretty much killed him, Mickey Rourke won for best actor in a movie that hasn't been released nationally yet and my local movie store will get three copies of it while a bazillion copies of My Best Friend's Girl sit on the shelf, and Canadian Anna Paquin won like "Best Tits in a Premium Cable Show About Vampires" or something along those lines.
• The Grim Reaper's been a busy lad - Some pretty high profile deaths have occurred so far. John Travolta's son Jett died from hitting his head in the shower after an apparent seizure. Part of me wants to grieve for the Travoltas, another part of me wants to go "LOL, $cientology!" since they were apparently using their kooky methods to treat this ailment. Ah well, his thetans are with Xenu now. Other deaths, caused by old age I think, include Patrick McGoohan (star of the short lived, yet classic show The Prisoner) and Ricardo Montalban (apparent great actor, will be best remembered by pop culture junkies for his roles on Fantasy Island and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan).
• Speaking of other dead things... - George W. Bush's reign of incompentancy and evilness is about done. Talk about pissing away any goodwill and confidence in the American government since 9/11. Now with a looming recession, two different combat missions overseas, and that pesky Osama bin Laden possibly still alive if his latest trolling video is correct, ol' Dubaya sure is leaving quite the mess for the poor bastards movin' on up into the White House... which seguays nicely into:
  
• Five more days, and Black Jesus is in control - Yep, in five days time, Barack Hussein Obama will be sworn in officially as the 44th president of the United States of America. While some people still might feel like those in the following scene from Blazing Saddles, these could be interesting times for the Americans.

That's all I got right now. Time to bounce on out, yo!