You know it has been a rough year when we're saying things like "those poor celebrities" and meaning it.
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2016. What the heck happened?
It just seemed to be the worst year to be, well, anyone. And being both famous and breathing meant you were also on the endangered species list.
We lost some heavy hitters this year: Mohammed Ali, David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, Alan Rickman, and Carrie Fischer to name a few.
Some of these people just weren’t meant to die. They were immortals. It was all so puzzling. In fact “puzzling” seemed to sum up the whole year.
Experts, analysts and pollsters were perpetually perplexed.
No one seemed to see Brexit coming or Donald Trump tweeting his way to the presidency or, for that matter, the re-emergence of Pauline Hanson as a political force.
The world lost faith in democracy and no-one could really tell us why. And just when it seemed the only people less likely than the Arts Party to actually get elected were the Shooters and Fishers, Orange proved that wrong.
We were left puzzled again when Malcolm Turnbull, who narrowly won the election in July, went semi-MIA on election night, leaving commentators baffled during live coverage. He showed up again a few months later in Armidale.
But perhaps the real sign of the times was the way in which our self-diagnosed middle-class anxieties threatened to tip us over the edge.
Serious things seemed to happen all the time, but in circumstances that made it hard to take them seriously.
It was the year of first-world problems becoming frustratingly problematic. The year of perpetually odd socks and tangled headphone cables. The year of failing to get the bluetooth to work in the car and being unable to find a decent coffee anywhere, but still paying $4.50 for it.
Politically, 2016 was like a house party that goes longer than it should. The lights went down around July and things started to get weird. It was the year of the thousand-mile Senate ballot dominated by micro-parties and independents so bonkers they made the pirates look like the right choice.
Meanwhile, Barnaby defended our nation's biosecurity from a couple of vicious Hollywood terriers with a Facebook video shot in a hotel room. And then we tried to kill carp with herpes.
After 2016 – the year of great Australian motor cars with “Made in Germany” stickers on the bottom and iconic Aussie rockers, like Brian Johnson from ACDC, getting too old to play loud music – we reckon it’s time for a new year.
