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Highly Aggregated for 2011

Collected, tagged and bagged, the year's big moments and various signs of the Apocalypse.

Mark Leiren-Young 30 Dec 2011TheTyee.ca

Mark Leiren-Young is the writer and director of the widely praised The Green Chain. Mark's also a regular contributor to The Tyee; find his stories here. For more on Mark, visit his website.

It was a year of occupants and arrogance, trending and endings, fascinators and abdicators, smart meters and dumb tweeters, winners and Liberals. The four seasons were Arab Spring, overheated Summer, Nuclear Winter and falling governments. The Tea Party was decaffeinated, the Republicans were decapitated (as in headless, as in Newt Gingrich and the pizza guy were frontrunners). Fukushima leaked and the News of the World was tapped out.

TIME Magazine's "Person of the Year" was the Unknown Protester and everybody was either part of the crowd or crowd-sourcing. It's a year almost no one in North America wants to remember, but according to the Mayans it's the last year we've got before the end-times and lo the signs of the Apocalypse were legion...

Democracy moved to the Middle East after discovering it was no longer welcome in North America.

Hashtag success Occupied Wall Street, "Hashtag fail" occupied Stornoway.

The Americans finally found Osama Bin Laden -- and his porn stash.

Google+ convinced people to stick with Facebook.

Jack Layton, Vaclav Havel and Amy Winehouse died, but Charlie Sheen and Kim Kardashian lived. North Korea's Beloved Leader Kim Jong-Il passed away after someone revealed his actual golf handicap. Steve Jobs escaped this mortal coil after discovering that without him, Apple had no clue how to make an iPhone 5.

Rebecca Black was born on the YouTube, just like Justin Bieber. According to Mayan prophecies, Black will mate with Bieber to bring about the birth of the anti-Cobain.

Canada's other golden child, Justin Trudeau, announced he wouldn't run for the leadership of the Liberal party. Then Trudeau called Tar Sands Minister Peter Kent "a piece of shit" and became Canada's most beloved Liberal.

We are all Canucks -- except the a-hole in the Linden jersey smashing the window at The Bay

So few charges have been laid in the Stanley Cup riots that police are now positing the lone rioter theory, where a single rioter threw one "magic brick" from the book depository at Library Square and that brick ricocheted from building to building causing nearly a million dollars worth of property damage while everyone except the police filmed the destruction on the iPhones.

The word of the year was "meh" -- which was coined to describe the Canucks performance in Game 7 against the Bruins.

The BC Lions won the Grey Cup and dozens of fans flooded the streets of Vancouver to see where the Stanley Cup rioters broke all the windows.

Sidney Crosby was concussed and Don Cherry acted like he'd been elbowed in the head.

Jack Layton perfected his Canadian Moses impersonation, leading his people to the promised land of Stornoway, but never entering.

Iggy-mania swept... American intellectual circles.

The Bloc was decimated so badly that they're considering replacing BlocHead Gilles Duceppe with Michael Ignatieff.

Bob Rae took over the temporary leadership of the Liberal party promising to do for the federal Liberals what he did for the Ontario NDP. That laughter you heard that sounded like Lord Voldemort's was Stephen Harper's.

The Tories cancelled the long form census because they realized they can find out everything they need to know about us by friending us on Facebook.

Canada Post went on strike. Most Canadians were unaware of this until we read the news on Twitter.

Christy Clark left her talk show and stopped talking to voters

B.C.'s Beloved Leader Gordon Campbell stepped down as premier and was given the Order of B.C., a new job in London and a pony. The BC Liberals then scoured the radio waves to find the best talk show host for the job. Meanwhile, the BC NDP replaced their Beloved Leader... Carole Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out... with Adrian Dix.

Provincial leaders Bill Tieleman and Bill Vander Zalm brought down the HST. The Cohen Commission decided there was something not quite kosher about B.C. salmon. The RCMP's image took such a beating that Disney wants to sell them back to Canada to avoid sullying their family-friendly brand.

Ontario decided it was their turn to elect the most ridiculous politician in Canada and gifted us with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, a sort of Vander Zalm-lite -- Zalm without the brains or charisma.

Dumb reactions to smart meters as British Columbians dialed their cell phone and sent outraged messages via Wi-Fi to complain about possible radiation from a device that emits less radioactivity than the microwaves, baby monitors, TV sets and computers it's tracking.

Kate Middleton pranked the world when she wore her wedding cake on her head.

Hope Solo was hotter than Hans Solo and was responsible for a lot more boys soloing with their light sabers.

Facebook introduced a Timeline and just like the Mayan timeline it stops in 2012 and includes a lot of information you wish your friends didn't know. Meanwhile, more people are worried about ancient prophecies of doom than modern scientific data about what's actually killing us.

And the absolute proof that the Mayans are right and we shouldn't buy any green bananas... The Vancouver Canucks are the favourite to win the 2012 Stanley Cup, which would pretty much guarantee the end of the world -- or at least the end of Robson Street.  [Tyee]

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