(2016: when men were women and burritos were drug mules)
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Well, my fellow Americans, we did it again. It’s January 2017. We made it…we survived another odd year. How odd? Here’s how odd: each year, the folks that publish the Merriam-Webster dictionary choose a word of the year, after reviewing online searches, pondering media usage and, I’m guessing, sampling several beers. And Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2016?
Surreal.
There were several events during the last year that were associated with searches containing the term surreal, a word that means unbelievable, fantastic, or “marked by the intense irrationality of a dream.” For example, the Chicago Cubs capturing the World Series. Or Donald Trump’s hair.
Now, for Hollywood, the mainstream media, and anybody named Hillary, the most surreal event of 2016 had to be the landslide electoral college victory for President-Elect Trump and his running mate (the hair). It was certainly surreal for the political pundit community, who had totally discounted citizen Trump’s chances of winning, even though he was the first Presidential candidate in American history to promise to build a wall, and to make Pink Floyd pay for it.
And after the election, half of Hollywood threatened to move to Canada, until Canada heard about the evacuation plan and quickly built their own wall.
Some other most-searched-for words during 2016?
Bigly
A word employed by candidate Trump during the Presidential debates. Some scoffers say it was a bastardization of “big league;” others, including Merriam-Webster’s crew, insist that “bigly” is actually a valid adverb, as in “Hillary, I’m going to cut taxes, bigly,” or Bill Clinton’s memorable denial, “I did not have bigly sex with that woman.” Personally, I’m not sure I agree with Merriam-Webster on this one; at best, I only agree smally.
Deplorable
A derogatory term used by candidate Hillary “The People’s Uterus” Clinton to describe anybody who bigly supported candidate Trump. (According to political analysts, it was bone-headed, ham-handed gaffes like that which might have caused candidate Hillary to lose the election, except the FBI and the Russians got there first.)
Icon
This term often appeared in online searches, as fans tried to deal with the fact that musical legend Prince had died, but musical legend Keith Richards still hadn’t.
Revenant
Lots of people looked up the definition of this word after the release of the movie “The Revenant,” an intense film in which actor Leonardo DiCaprio slept inside a horse. And if you think that’s surreal, imagine how the horse felt.
But there were plenty of other surreal events that took place in 2016. Let’s look at a few:
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According to a poll taken in February, 38% of Florida voters believed that Ted Cruz might be the infamous Zodiac Killer. And, because Florida is, well, Florida, the 38% were not swayed in the least by the fact that the Zodiac Killer’s first homicides occurred in the late 1960s … two years before Ted was born.
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In May of 2016, a 29-year-old Mexican woman armed with two burritos was arrested at the Arizona border by US Customs officers, after the officers’ drug-sniffing dogs pointed out that the burritos were actually two large bags of meth wrapped in tortillas.
As it turned out, the bogus burritos contained more than a pound of meth, not to mention several ounces of hashish oil cleverly masquerading as Mole Poblano.
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Speaking of Mexico, Pope Francis visited that country for the first time ever in 2016, where he personally met with the seven remaining Mexican citizens who hadn’t moved to the United States. Later in the week, the Holy Father forgave a reformed burrito.
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Meanwhile, back in the perennially weird Sunshine State, a member of the South Florida Water Management District released a photograph of an alligator swimming away, towing a monstrous Burmese python in its jaws.
By the way, Burmese pythons are considered a “nuisance species” in Florida, as are mosquitos, transient winter visitors from Upstate New York, and Ted Cruz.
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In June 2016’s surprising “Brexit” referendum, England voted to leave the European Union and relocate to Hollywood, California, which they’d heard would be bigly vacant if Trump became President.
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The 2016 Summer Olympics were held in Rio de Janeiro, attracting millions of visitors, including at least six tourists that were not robbed at gunpoint. Allegedly.
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But maybe the most surreal news story of 2016 was North Carolina’s notorious “Bathroom Bill” – an anti-discrimination legal challenge claiming that guys had the right to use the ladies’ room, even though guys are, well, guys. See, thanks to 2016, if a guy just identified as a female, then he obviously should be considered a female, with all the rights thereof, including shoes.
Yeah. Right. A dude says he identified as a woman, so he’s a she. Right. That’d be like me showing up to play point guard for the Lakers, simply because I identified as being Magic Johnson.
So, guys, I wish you luck in the ladies’ room. Remember, things are different in there…and you’re gonna look bigly silly standing there, in a row, facing a porcelain-free wall.
Happy New Year!