Kommentary Korner: Goodnight, Sweet 2000s

Another decade. Boom. Gone. Just like that. Frankly, to me it felt more like 11 or 12 years, but considering the breadth of time, space and all that other Carl Sagan shit, even a dozen doesn’t amount to a hill of legumes.
Anyways, for the sake of retrospection, the past tenth of a century was really something. A watershed decade in a lot of ways. Not only did rivers continue to play an integral role in the cycling of water worldwide, a lot of game-changing crap occurred.
I don’t need to go over everything that happened since January 1, 2000. You were alive. You witnessed it all—unless you are a hermit or young child, which in either case you wouldn’t be reading this anyways.
Suffice it to say, life is different today than it was ten years ago. MP3 players have changed the way we port thousands of songs. Reality shows have revolutionized the way we voyeuristically observe our social betters. Unmanned aerial war drones have allowed us to remotely rain fire down from the sky upon our enemies at the effortless push of a button. Unparalleled technological advancements coupled with heaping portions of human suffering have proven themselves a potent match since the Y2K scare abruptly fizzled out.
Many have vilified the vapid, skin-deep extravagances of this soon-to-expire decade as humanity’s worst yet. Not so. Granted, my outlook on pretty much anything is exceptionally bleak—I’m just saying that the 00s didn’t suck as much as other arbitrary 10-year zeitgeists in recent memory. Take the 90s for example. The economy was too stable. Television programs and movies were too well-written. The music too catchy. How did we survive such tedious tranquility? Say what you will about this past decade, but at least it kept us on our toes. It's strife-ridden uncertainty is what made it great.
A man nearly as wise as I once said, “Kontentment is the enemy of kreativity.” That said, my fingers are crossed that the 2010s will be an era marked by unthinkable levels of hardship, tumult and all-around adversity on a global scale. For only in the worst of times can true Kreativity rear its cherubic face. And only when Kreativity reigns can our world become a better place.
So, First-Decade-Of-The-New-Millennium, with all your excesses and gnashing of teeth, we bid thee adieu. --Peter Doe