Got to admit, 2009 was one lousy year for headlines. If it wasn’t for Tiger Woods riding to the rescue to provide some comedy relief with his 14 identical girlfriends as the year drew to a close, it would have been a clean sweep for bad news. Tiger saved the day for like, 3 weeks straight, and if it cost him his marriage, well, what the hell, he’s only a golfer and a celebrity, not a real person. Besides, the guy cheated his way into being a billionaire by being an athlete. Everyone knows golf is not an actual sport, its a game for soft, out-of-shape husbands who don’t like home life all that much!

Of course an athlete would excel at something like that. Not only did Tiger Woods hijack their pitty-pat little game that involves no running, no heavy exertion and no defense (basically walking around slowly for an afternoon) he outdid them all in extra-marital activities. Serves him right to lose a couple of hundred mil. Hell, he’s got plenty more  where that came from. Anyway, he did us all a favor by knocking Mr. Bad News off the front pages for a few weeks. Hopefully the coming New Year will provide some more upbeat headlines for a long overdue change. Maybe stuff like this:

OBAMA ENDS BOTH WARS! TROOPS BEGIN PULLING OUT IMMEDIATELY. PRESIDENT DECLARES: “WHAT WERE WE THINKING?”

MAJOR MUSLIM HEADS OF STATE AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS CONDEMN TERRORISM IN THE NAME OF ISLAM. PAKISTAN HANDS OVER OSAMA BIN LADEN

GOLDMAN SACHS VOTES TO AWARD BONUSES TO THEIR INVESTORS AND CUSTOMERS

CHEEZ-WHIZ FOUND TO CURE CANCER!

SOCCER OUTLAWED IN AMERICA. CONGRESS: “SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING NEXT!”

PATRIOT ACT REPEALED, BILL OF RIGHTS RESTORED!

DICK CHENEY TO MARRY KARL ROVE IN MASSACHUSETTS

BUSH THE YOUNGER ARRESTED FOR WAR CRIMES, HEADED FOR THE HAGUE IN HANDCUFFS. PLANS “STUPIDITY DEFENSE,”  BLAMES MR. AND MR. CHENEY!

TALIBAN OUSTED FROM POWER IN PEACEFUL AFGHAN ELECTIONS, ORDERLY TRANSITION OCCURS.

INVENTOR ANNOUNCES PETROLEUM’S REPLACEMENT: GREENHOUSE GASSES! PERFECT ECOLOGICAL BALANCE ACHIEVED!

SIMON COWELL BEATEN INTO A COMA BY SUSAN BOYLE

STEVE McQUEEN VOTED COOLEST DEAD WHITE GUY EVER. LEAST COOL DEAD WHITE GUY: RICHARD NIXON

SARAH PALIN ATTACKED BY ROGUE MOOSE, MAKEUP SMEARED, GUCCI TOOLED-LEATHER RIFLE SLING DAMAGED

WEALTHY PEOPLE VOLUNTEER TO PAY TAXES AGAIN

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PASSED ALMOST UNANIMOUSLY, COVERING EVERY AMERICAN EXCEPT JOE LIEBERMAN

NEW ENERGY SOURCE AND AGRICULTURAL METHODS END WORLD HUNGER! SALLY STRUTHERS RETIRES.

POPE ADMITS HE HAS NO IDEA WHY HE WEARS THAT POINTY HAT

ALIENS ABDUCT SMART GUY FROM BIG CITY

CANADA FINALLY FORMS AN OPINION ON SOMETHING! DETAILS TO FOLLOW IN NEXT DECADE OR TWO

Being the most genial racist around means about as much as being the kindest serial ax murderer ever. Nice try, but not that nice. Go away.

Last week bobcrespo.com published the obligatory “predictions for 2010,” the usual bag of hot air for forums of this sort. We are well aware of what a crap shoot (and a load of crap) that is, and almost none of the predictions will come to pass, which is about the same track record as everyone else has when it comes to fortune telling. So, today we go with a bunch of predictions that have a 100% chance of being true, since they already happened. Whatever the slim odds of something occurring are beforehand, well, once it happens, those figure go right out the window.

For example, in 2008, the odds that all the world’s largest banks, mortgage lenders and insurance companies would engage in criminal acts that nearly bankrupted  the whole world’s economies were 100%, a sure thing, while in 2007 that same prediction would be a million-to-one shot. See, that’s the beauty of predicting the past, you can hit the bullseye every time! They’ll be calling us Nostradamus Junior soon. So, being that the year is almost over, here is bobcrespo.com’s 20 SURE SHOT PREDICTIONS FOR 2009:

1. Michael Jackson will die unexpectedly while preparing for a big comeback. There, that was easy, no?

2. The lousy economic situation left over from 2008 will continue to suck, the serious recession deepening with near-record home foreclosures and high unemployment. On the plus side, the super-wealthy bankers will begin collecting huge bonuses from other people’s money again.

3. Barack Obama, the first black President of the United States, will take office, making history and world headlines. We’re on a roll now!

4. The second most famous half-black man in the world, Tiger Woods, will make world headlines by having 14 girlfriends that look exactly like his wife, displaying the tenacious consistency that made him the best golfer in the world, which, truth be told, is the less impressive accomplishment. Hell, even fat guys can be great golfers, but few people can have 15 identical women.

5. In several desperate efforts to remain relevant, the disgraced right wingers in America will ensure their continued downward spiral by dusting off Shotgun Dick Cheney to do a media tour saying the most hateful things imaginable, Glen Beck will be promoted as the Second Coming of Rush Limbaugh and The Republican Party will unveil Michael Steele as their official House Nigger.

6. Senator Ted Kennedy will die of brain cancer, which will turn out to be a blessing for him since he won’t have to witness his fellow Senators flush his life’s work down the crapper by turning the Health Care Reform Bill into an endorsement for The Way Things Already Are, reforming nothing while earnestly lining their own pockets with hefty bribes.

7. We’re going out on a limb here and predicting a story for nearly the very end of 2009, when we predict there will be a huge blizzard over the entire Northeast United States a week before Christmas. Which is not the big story here since, what the hell, it will be December and these things happen. The big story will be that television weather reporters will continue to be surprised when it snows in the winter in places where it frequently snows in the winter. This will once again bring high praise for TV stations for hiring the mentally handicapped as weather reporters.

8. In entertainment news, men will find out from their wives and girlfriends that Oprah Winfrey announced that she will quit her television show, which will come as a big surprise to them since they were only vaguely aware of the Oprah Winfrey Show and weren’t certain if it was still on the air or not.

9. The President of The United States will both escalate the war in Afghanistan and win the Nobel Peace Prize. That sounds like a pretty insane prediction, but we guarantee it will come true! What can you expect from a Peace Prize named after the the guy who invented dynamite? If not for their beautiful blonde women, no one would pay any mind to Sweden or their whacky prizes.

10. Rod Blagojevich will be impeached as the Governor of Illinois for trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, the first of 2 State Governors to get in trouble in 2009. The other guy will be Mark Sanford, who will at least get famous in the time-honored Disgraced Governor Tradition, a good old All-American Sex Scandal. Fittingly, Sanford will keep his job while Blagojevich will be impeached. If only Blagojevich tried to trade the Senate seat for some pussy instead of money, he’d still be running things in Illinois.

11. Bernie Madoff, age 70 and the poster boy for Guys Who Are Already Super Rich But Steal Anyway, will be sentenced to 150 years in prison. In a related story, most of America’s veteran bank robbers and stickup artists will weigh the $150 billion he stole against his advanced age, and agree it was well worth it, figuring old age is no picnic no matter where you spend it, in a penthouse or the Big House, and he got away with it his whole life.

12. A relatively mild strain of the fu will spread, just like every year, but this one will cause worldwide panic and be named after pigs; Swine Flu. Scientists will call it a pandemic and it will kill 10,000 people worldwide in 2009, about as many as will die of starvation every 6 hours and 20 minutes, which will cause no one to lose a minute’s sleep.

13. Nerds all over the world will rejoice when another dumb ass Harrry Potter movie is released.

14. Not to be outdone by movie nerds, political nerds will bring Sarah Palin back out of obscurity after she quits her job as Governor of Alaska because it’s boring. Ms. Palin will then release an “autobiography” written by someone with an actual command of the English language and take up where she left off in 2008, saying incredibly stupid things to audiences of incredibly stupid people. This will somehow pass as news.

15. Bobcrespo.com will be declared The World’s Second Best Website for the second year in a row, by Bob Crespo.

16.Nobody will capture Osama bin Laden but several more of his “#2 men” will be slain by robot predator aircraft, making the job of being # 2 man in al Qaeda the Worst Job Ever according to high school guidance counselors.

17. Making official what has been happening for decades, 2 out of the Big 3 American auto makers will file for Bankruptcy, claiming that they were victims of unfair business practices because foreign auto makers manufactured better cars and sold them for reasonable prices. The United States government lends them billions of dollars anyway.

18. There will be a Global Warming Conference in the freezing cold city of Copenhagen, Denmark, where representatives of every nation on Earth will command the planet not to warm up by more than 3 degrees. Planet Earth will issues a terse ” no comment,” several volcanic eruptions and a couple of giant blizzards.

19. We’re going to go out on a limb again here and provide the exact date and time of this prediction: On January 15th, 2009, at precisely 3:31 P.M., Eastern Standard Time, a jet plane carrying 158 people from New York’s LaGuardia airport will experience double engine failure due to sucking in a bunch of geese, but will not crash. Instead, it will be landed safely by her pilot, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, in the Hudson River, a stone’s throw from Manhattan, with no loss of life and only several minor injuries. Sully will instantly become the most popular man in America.

20. For the 142nd straight year in Canada, nothing of any interest will occur. What doesn’t happen in Canada, stays in Canada, thank God.

And there you go, a list of predictions that will all come true. Ta-da! Don’t know why we didn’t think of this sooner. Maybe we’ll do 1976 soon. Meanwhile, have a Happy New Year and don’t make any ridiculous resolutions you’ll never keep. Here’s a good one: Visit bobcrespo.com every day and check out all the changes that will be added to the site in 2010. It is, after all, The World’s Second Best Website. That’s true, and you can look it up. On bobcrespo.com.

Before we get all weepy about the power of our computers, remember that Albert Einstein performed the most difficult mental feats in the history of computing with only the aid of pencil and paper. Even super computers cannot write poems or stories or formulate complex theories. The insight, intuitive leaps and creativity of the human brain can’t be matched or replaced.

Got to love those Global Positioning Satellite devices, GPS for short. They sure know the way, even if you don’t. When you make a wrong turn, the soothing female voice reassures you that you won’t get hopelessly lost by announcing that she is “recalculating.” Sure enough, she instructs you to drive .7 miles and make a left, then a right, then keep right and merge. It’s so damned sexy the way she purrs the word “mmhuurge.” Before you know it, you’re back on track and soon she will be triumphantly announcing that you are “arriving at your destination, on left!” It’s all you can do to control yourself at that point.

The GPS lady is your muse, your secret friend, an unflappably calm presence that makes traveling into unfamiliar territory so much less traumatic. Once you get out of the car, though, there’s no one to guide you. All the calculations are your own at that point and you have to deal with other people all by your lonesome. And yourself too. There are no satellite maps to negotiate human hearts, yours or theirs, and no calm instructions coming your way from a sweet disembodied voice advising you how best to proceed.

People are tricky and unpredictable, never quite what they seem to be. Full of surprises, every one of us, and often we even surprise the person we know best, ourselves. You want to deal honestly and civilly with everyone you meet and hope that treatment is returned. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case, and some people are hostile, secretive and resentful for no apparent reason. That would be a good time for the GPS lady to pipe up and recalculate things for you, but she’s back in the car, recharging her batteries.

And then there’s life, Lord help us. Life is messy and full of any number of possible routes to follow, again with no soothing GPS lady to guide you when you make a whole bunch of wrong turns. How do you know they’re wrong turns when there’s no map or any specific destination and so many damned choices? Simple, you feel lost and out of sorts, and things just feel wrong. You don’t need a computer to tell you you’re not in Kansas anymore. At this point, it is up to you to recalculate, maybe even take the radical step of stopping to ask directions. What, you’re the first one to ever get lost? Hardly.

Only trouble is, the only ones you can ask for directions are other people, and who knows which of them has a clue about this road we’re on? Who can we trust? What is the safe way to proceed? Who’s got the answers? Why did so-and-so disappear from my life, my trusted rock in a sea of turmoil? That still hurts so much and I’m so afraid! How can I cope on my own? “GPS lady, help me!,” you silently scream, but there is no reply, only you and your heart and your brain, left to your own devices in a place you’ve never been before: this moment. There’s nothing you can do about yesterday, and all the other yesterdays when you made so many wrong turns, there is only NOW.

As in “now what?” At this point you’ve got to realize that you are not really alone. There’s almost 7 billion people on this planet taking the same journey as you, so it stands to reason that at least some of them know what’s what. And you might know things some of them don’t. So you get together with others, compare notes and take that great leap of faith and once again learn to trust another human being, another person who by definition is just as prone to mistakes and poor judgement as yourself.

Pretty scary stuff, but at this point, when you are hopelessly lost, you’ve pretty much figured out who not to ask for help and who not to trust. And so you open your heart and mind once again, even though you’ve been burned before. Maybe you’ve been hurt badly by love gone wrong, or by grievous loss, or by being mistreated by people you thought were on your side. You have built walls around your heart to protect yourself, and figured you’d do better on your own. But that didn’t work out at all and made you lonely, made you isolated, made you sad, and very lost.

You’re smart enough now to realize that doesn’t make any sense in a world full of people, most of whom are good eggs trying to do their best with this life and their journey through it. So you connect again, share yourself with people, maybe even fall in love again, that scariest of all unknowns. Will you get burned again, or will you find your way and start taking all the right turns and merging seamlessly into the flow of life’s heavy traffic? You’ll never know until you open your heart. It dawns on you there’s no half way, it’s either wide open or slammed shut. Love is the answer, no matter what the question, and people are your guideposts on this journey through this chaotic, messy, difficult, exasperating, challenging and completely wonderful adventure called life. Recalculating…

Explaining life 591 times doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Yes, that’s right, it’s that time of year. Christmas is over, you got a little fatter, abused your liver a little more and you’re broke again. Same shit, different year. So now it’s time to make some New Year’s resolutions on the off-chance that you’re not going to fuck next year up like you did this one, and a whole bunch of other ones too. Just be glad it’s not a leap year with that extra day to screw the pooch. Trouble is, at this point you know yourself, and you figure that making resolutions is just one more way to let yourself down and feel like shit. You know damned well you’re not going to control your cholesterol, or cut down on your drinking or be a regular at some fool gymnasium.

As a matter of fact, you’re long past the point of even purchasing a gym membership to impress yourself or others, and the only six pack you’re looking forward to is not located on your abdomen. Underneath it is more like it. But still, you haven’t totally given up on yourself and you’re not a complete wreck just yet, and it is traditional to make New year’s resolutions. So you aim a little lower than attaining financial independence, the heart rate of a 20 year-old and singlehandedly bringing about world peace. You’re looking for a few things that are at least doable for someone as fun loving and with as little will power as yourself. Try some of these:

Tell more lies: This one’s a snap. Lie about your weight, your age, how much you drink, or smoke, or whatever it is people break your balls about. Why not? It’s not like they give a rat’s ass about you anyway, they just get on your case to be cruel and to feel better about their own miserable selves by acting superior to someone. Let them find another patsy this year.

Swear off Japanese models: It’s not exactly like you’re swimming in exotic Asian babes anyway, so make it a resolution that you’re not going to get romantically involved with some drop-dead gorgeous Japanese girl with a sexy accent and a captivating laugh. Piece of cake.

Give up sacrifice: This one’s perfect for Lent, too. Promise yourself you’re not going to make some self-righteous hollow declaration to prove you are better than others by depriving yourself of any of life’s little pleasures. Why be some showoff martyr?

Avoid pompous assholes: You already do this, so why not make it official and turn it into a virtue?

Promise that if a pompous asshole is on fire, you’ll piss on him: With this resolution, you can at least claim to be a humanitarian. Sort of.

Swear to be a better person: Between the horrible year you just had and your resolution to extinguish flaming assholes, this one should be low-hanging grapes.

Save some money: Okay, you know full well that you’re not going to score with every New Year’s resolution, but throw this one in for the hell of it. Just in case lightning strikes and you come into some money, try not to blow it all.

Lose weight swiftly: This can be attained in several ways besides tedious dieting and exercise. The only drawback is that week-long drug and sex binges with addict prostitutes sort of cancels out the “save some money” resolution, but you will lose weight in a hurry. Just use condoms if you don’t want to lose all your weight.

Be kinder to animals: In other words, don’t starve another dog to death when you’re on one of your week-long drug and sex binges. That’s always a chore explaining the smell to the neighbors.

Get a job: That might help in the old self-esteem department. How long can you rob liquor stores and 7-11s for a living anyway?

Get a new car: You need a new M.O. anyway. Switch from holdups to car theft. Far fewer car thieves than stickup artists get caught, and you can ride in style for a night or two before selling it to a reliable chop shop.

Be mindful of your parole officer: Another pressing reason to get a job. Those people can be pretty unreasonable.

Go to church more: A good place to meet women. Lonely, sexually repressed women with good jobs and apartments who will feel guilty for doing what you’re doing together and try to convince herself she can change you. That should take care of January, after which she’ll repent and toss your hoodlum ass out.

Visit different churches: Word gets out. What about February?

Be more charitable: Stop robbing the poor boxes at all those churches you’ve been visiting and automatically more money will go to charity.

Volunteer your time for a worthy cause: Charities, hospitals and soup kitchens are also great places to meet lonely women who want to save you.

Redecorate: A little plaster to fill the holes you punched in the walls when your church lady girlfriend dumped you is cheap and easy, and so is a can of Lysol to get rid of that dead dog smell. And new bed sheets for the windows wouldn’t hurt either, and are a lot cheaper than curtains.

Relocate: At some point in the New year, this might be the smarter move than redecorating, especially when you take into consideration the disgruntled girlfriends, the testy parole officer, the detectives closing in on you and the landlord bitching about the stink and all the holes in the walls. It’s in your best interests, really, and maybe you might consider not getting another dog anytime soon. You haven’t exactly been doing them any favors lately.

Try these simple and easy to keep New Year’s resolutions and you can feel like a decent human being again! Of course that will wear off swiftly, but that’s just the way it goes with New Year’s resolutions; here today, gone tomorrow. At least you haven’t promised yourself anything too dramatic, so your depression won’t be quite as deep as usual, with fewer holes in your new apartment walls.

In life, it is the journey, not the destination, that makes the trip worthwhile.

No one really wants to see the Messiah come, whatever we say about the matter. We’re so wrapped up in believing in such a thing that the reality of it would ruin a way of life. Perhaps that is God’s greatest gift to us, something to live for and the faith that fills our hearts. Religious faith is so very important to so many people. Their faith shapes their entire existence and defines their relationships to other people, for better or worse. Ideally it is for the better, but that’s not a unanimous reaction to deep faith.

For all the good religions have done, all the meaning they have put into so many lives, the powerful moral lessons imparted, the charitable acts performed and the love drawn from so many opened hearts, there is an ugly flip side to organized religions, every last one of them. Without getting into the ugly particulars, the wars, the torture, the oppression, hatred and guilt, the rapacious theft of wealth, the petty usurpation of power and dubious authority and who did to what to whom in the name of God, religion has a lot to answer for. Many sins to be atoned, if you will.

So many of our faiths believe in a Redeemer, a Messiah, a cleanser of this world and eraser of our sins. Our prayers reflect that belief as we beseech the Almighty to come down and make us whole and good and righteous. But that is a direct contradiction to so much of our lives and our human history, where we have striven to improve ourselves, our outlook on life, our tolerance and the continually improved living conditions we provide for our children. We have done these things ourselves, by trial and error, by recognizing our faults and correcting them, often through grievous suffering.

We are human beings, by nature creatures who seek and strive and work towards a goal. We found out it was wrong to enslave other human beings, and we cut that crap out. We decided to learn all we could about disease and health and nutrition and now we live better lives in sanitary conditions and are able to combat a tremendous variety of ailments that were once routinely fatal. We eat better, live cleaner and much longer that we once did. What diseases we cannot heal, we study and research in an effort to unravel their secrets and alleviate human suffering.

None of these advances are the result of Divine intervention since, according to the great majority of religions, God has not spoken to any human being directly in well over a thousand years. It was human beings who affected our own intellectual and spiritual evolution, through education, enlightenment, communication and hard work. With all the evils and ills upon this world today, human life is infinitely better for the average person than it was a thousand years ago. He or she is smarter, better educated, better fed, healthier and lives twice as long and in greater material comfort than their counterparts from the past. We did this, not God.

We also do a lot of rotten things in this modern day and age, from allowing mass starvation to occur on a global scale, to waging wars, to spreading hatred and committing genocide to theft and murder and allowing a small wealthy elite to oppress poverty stricken masses in too many places. These facts tell many religious people that we need to be saved, saved from ourselves and our destructive tendencies, and delivered into Paradise. It tells others that mankind still has much work to do, much to learn. Maybe we can create our own Paradise.

Or if not, maybe if we live up to our potential, only then will we deserving of a heavenly paradise. It stands to reason that a race of beings who have saved themselves, who have learned and grown and progressed and prospered and matured, who have learned to live in peace and harmony and who have made certain that all people share this bountiful world, those beings would be more deserving of a reward than a bunch of petulant children who need to be saved from themselves.

Besides, aren’t we supposed to be spending our lives preparing for the redeemer, fixing what is wrong in our hearts and in the world around us? Looking around this troubled world, we’re way behind schedule for that rendezvous. Even the religions we follow are still seriously flawed and contradictory, even after countless reformations. Being “born again” is no guarantee you won’t still be an asshole, and too often being born again pretty much guarantees you’ll be an irritating jerkoff for the rest of your life.

Then there’s the “Fundamentalists” among us who figure that their best religious bet is to go back a bunch of centuries and act like a real severe, ignorant and smug hateful prick. Who’s that helping? What the hell was the point of all our centuries of spiritual and intellectual progress we’ve worked so hard to attain if you’re just going to throw it all away and go all Medieval on your fellow man? And what Messiah worth his salt would want anything to do with such miserable clods with so little love in their hearts?

No, we don’t really want a Savior, as much as we’d love to believe we do. We’re certainly not ready for one either, and as humans, we need to do the work ourselves, to really live the Golden Rule and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. And to do so not because it is a difficult chore or some sort of sacrifice but because it comes naturally, and is the normal way to behave. We need to open our hearts and truly share the love in our hearts, the greatest power that human beings possess, greater that our curiosity, our unceasing work and our imaginative intellects.

Love leads to mutual respect, understanding, tolerance and peace. Love should inform our every action and thought and all the work we need to do to save ourselves, our world and our brothers and sisters, all of them. The Redeemer, the whole idea of a Redeemer, has served us well at times and other times has caused us great pain. The simple lessons of love, peace, charity, humanity and understanding that our religions teach us have been overanalyzed and overcomplicated to the point of creating hatred, mistrust and bloodshed over what should be a beautiful and fulfilling experience.

What we have done is put the burden on another entity, on our God, to improve us, to do the math for us, and to save us, when it is our responsibility to clean up our act and to grow and evolve into the full potential of our humanity. If we use our brains, our hearts, our souls and our love, we just might be able to figure this world out. Then maybe we can have some reason to offer a Messiah to come around and visit us. Meanwhile, we have much to do.

Here’s wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas, full of joy, peace and love. May the New Year find all of you well, and may your loved ones prosper. Let us all remember those separated from their families by war, and pray for their safety and an end to all wars on this birthday of The Prince of Peace. Let us remember those who are no longer with us, and recall the times of joy we shared with them. Let all our hearts be filled with love. Merry Christmas.