Shortly after my brog went down in April 2016, I started a document, bulleting things that want to potentially write about, in the event that the site would be back up within like a month or two. Obviously that never happened, but it didn’t really stop me from adding to the list on a regular basis, even if it continued for nearly four years.
At first, it was a pretty nitty-gritty list, straight to the point and pretty succinct at what I wanted to remember. But by the time 2018 rolled around, I noticed some patterns and categories in which things caught my attention and warranted notation, and so some categories started to take place.
I’m not entirely sure why I feel compelled to share all of this, but for whatever reason I’m following through with it, and basically this is going to be little more than a massive bulleted list of things that happened between mid-2016 through mid-2020, with probably not a lot of context, but likely some snark and veiled commentary peppered throughout.
2016
- Pokemon Go came, lit the world on fire for 15 minutes, and then flamed out harder than the FOX Fantastic Four films
- I became The Burrito King of Atlanta, winning Willy’s Road Trip promotion by visiting 27 Willy’s locations in four days
- Kobe Bryant retired from professional basketball, but not before dropping 60 in his final game
- The Golden State Warriors won 73 games and passed the ’96 Bulls’ unbreakable record, but then lost in the NBA finals like chumps
- The Atlanta Braves retired Turner Field for whiter pastures, by sucking hardcore and losing 93 games
- Hulk Hogan killed Gawker
- Went on a European cruise vacation with mythical then-gf, visiting Italy, Turkey, Croatia and Greece
- Went to Korea for the first time in my life, with my mom
- The Chicago Cubs won the World Series, breaking a 108-year long drought and endless memes
- An orange baked potato reality television personality inexplicably won the presidency of the United States of America
- A fuckton of people died from senseless gun violence
2017
- My parents got divorced
- My brother-in-law passed away from cancer
- I sold my old house in south Atlanta
- I bought a new house in a much nicer part of town
- I went to Korea again, this time with mythical then-gf, and also the Philippines
- Clemson beat Alabama for the college football national championship 🤮
- The Atlanta Falcons choked the mother of all chokes in the Super Bowl and lost to the Patriots
- The Atlanta Braves opened up a new ballpark in Smyrna, promptly christened it by losing 90 games
- I predicted the Houston Astros to win the World Series in the spring, and they did just that, because it’s important for sports fans to be right [yes, we’ll get to the cheating part later]
- I-85 literally collapsed
- White supremacists converged in Charlottesville, Virginia in a scene right out of the 1920s KKK rallies
- A solar eclipse occurred, leading to tons of fanaticism over goggles and people probably going brind
- Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem, starting a firestorm of political-racial tension
- #metoo
- A fuckton of people died from senseless gun violence
2018
- Personal
- HVAC died in my house, so I had to drop nearly $10,000 to get it replaced, but damn was it worth it
- Waited until mythical then-gf left the country for a month to start and procure an engagement ring
- Got my first-ever promotion professionally, ascended into a management role
- Tried to have fun at Dragon*Con again, failed
- Formally proposed to mythical gf and made her mythical fiancée
- Political
- The Baked Potato
- Started deporting people for no real reason
- Publicly called other countries shitholes
- Started a trade war with numerous other countries, slapping tariffs on everyone
- Basically went to war with Syria
- Basically pledged allegiance to Vladimir Putin, and defended their known tampering
- Provoked war with Iran – over Twitter, naturally
- Appointed Brett Cavanaugh to Chief Justice despite allegations of sexual assault
- Shutdown the government for 35 days, the longest shutdown in history
- Georgia’s governor race featured a gun-toting, racist, sexist, Trump-worshipping bigot, against a black woman; and because the gun-toting racist sexist Trump-worshipping bigot was also the sitting Secretary of State, he controlled the election and flagrantly tampered with the state’s voting process to ensure his victory, but only by an embarrassing margin
- North and South Koreas supposedly signed a peace treaty to “begin to cease war,” but still resulted in both sides’ presidents stepping foot onto the others’ soil for the first time in eons
- The Baked Potato
- Sports
- Alabama beat Georgia for the college football national championship
- Eagles beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl 🤮
- UVA chokes the mother of all chokes in the NCAA tournament, being the first #1 seed to ever lose to a #16, to UMBC
- The Golden State Warriors win the NBA championship over the Cleveland Cavaliers
- Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup, breaking the curse of DC sports
- Atlanta United won the MLS Cup, breaking the curse of Atlanta sports
- The Boston Red Sox won the World Series, but very high probability they cheated as well
- France won the World Cup, but not before Germany choked the mother of all chokes, getting bounced in the group stage, capped by a humiliating 2-0 loss to South Korea
- Winter Olympics happened in Korea, where there were Tongan skiers and a Nigerian bobsled team, and North Korea showed more diplomacy than America
- The rise of Becky Lynch began in the WWE
- Random news and occurrences
- Teenagers were eating Tide pods because they’re attention-starved idiots
- White supremacists attempted to rally in Newnan, Georgia, but were drowned out by counter protestors
- Black people had cops called on them all over the place for no real reasons other than they were black, starting the explosion of Karen and Karl culture
- White people all lost their shit over the impending royal wedding between Prince Harry and Megan Markle
- Roseanne was rebooted, but lasted two months before Roseanne herself made racist remarks on Twitter and got the show shitcnaned
- Crazy Rich Asians releaed in theaters, creating an explosion of white guilt and fake Asian support for two seconds
- Bill Cosby was actually found guilty for drugging and raping a bunch of women throughout his career, and actually went to prison
- Amazon led the nation on a wild goose chase of a contest over what city got to be the future home to HQ2, with Atlanta being among the leading favorites, but it turned out to be a ruse when they picked two cities in the end in Virginia and New York
- Stan Lee passed away 😢
- THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS
- Mass shooting in a Florida high school, 17 dead
- Shooting incident in Florida, but nobody died thankfully
- Shooting incident in Tennessee Waffle House by naked man with assault rifle, nobody dead thankfully
- Mass shooting in Texas high school, 8 dead
- Mass shooting in Maryland newspaper office, 5 dead
- Mass shooting in Toronto, 3 dead
- Mass shooting in Jacksonville Madden tournament, 3 dead
- Mass shooting in Pittsburgh synagogue, 11 dead
- Mass shooting in California festival, 12 dead
2019
- Personal
- Ran in my first ever official half marathon, the Star Wars half at Disney World
- My brother’s brother passed away, and we had to cancel my bachelor party 😢
- Mythical fianceé’s grandmother passed away 😢
- An uncle of mine passed away the week before the wedding 😢
- Got married! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
- Went on Disney/Disney cruise for honeymoon
- And experienced the magic a little too hard, mythical now-wife pregnant
- Found out it was going to be a girl
- Got a new car
- Political
- The democratic party took control of the House, to try their best to cockblock too much potato bullshit
- Aforementioned government shutdown exceeded a month, turned into modern day slavery, cost workers nearly $11B in lost wages
- The baked potato declares national emergency so he can try to build his stupid fucking wall
- The baked potato told four female minority House representatives to “go back to their countries”
- The baked potato was impeached by the House in December, but naturally nothing actually came from it
- Oh, Georgia
- Gwinnett country tried to vote in MARTA expansion, but was handily shot down by voters in predominantly white segments of the county who wouldn’t have any exposure to MARTA in the first place
- Georgia passed the heartbeat bill, making it illegal to have an abortion after six weeks, sending the state back to the stone ages of women’s rights
- A money truck accidentally dropped a parcel of $175,000 cash onto I-285, resulting in massive chaos and pandemonium
- Sports
- Clemson beat Alabama for another college football national championship 🤮
- The Patriots defeated the Rams in an amusing punting exhibition of a Super Bowl
- Bryce Harper and Manny Machado both sign $300M+ mega contracts with new teams, the Washington Nationals promptly turn the former into Patrick Ewing and win the World Series without him
- Which means the Braves won the division, but jobbed in the playoffs; again
- Ichiro returns to the Mariners only long enough to formally declare retirement during an overseas series in Japan
- Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey become the first women to main event Wrestlemania, with Becky winning both red and blue championships
- UVA completes the ultimate redemption story and wins the college men’s basketball national championship
- Tiger Woods wins the Masters, and everyone forgives and forgets that he was a sexual deviant
- US Women’s National Futbol Team wins the World Cup, equal pay becomes a massive hotbed topic
- The Houston Astros’ sign-stealing racket has a whistle blown against them, are branded cheaters, but no real punishment actually occurs
- After 15 straight years of losses, UVA finally beats Virginia Tech in football for the Commonwealth Cup
- Random news and occurrences
- Bird Box on Netflix inspires people to do shit blindfolded, like drive automobiles
- Amazon HQ2.5 is chased out of New York in spite of the wild goose chase the year prior
- Jobber actor Jussie Smollett stages an attack on himself to garner sympathy and not get written out of Empire, but is found out to be hoaxing and is instead owned and prosecuted
- Surviving R. Kelly docuseries sets the world on fire, outing him as the pedophile most people already knew he was
- Numerous celebrities were busted bribing/paying for their kids to get into colleges, most notably Lori Laughlin AKA Aunt Becky from Full House
- James Gunn predictably quietly reinstated to direct Guardians of the Galaxy after the internet rage of his past homophobic remarks cooled off
- Chloe from Smallville busted for heavy involvement in some weird sex slavery cult
- Notre Dame cathedral in Paris caught fire and was damaged badly; the internet raged over the wealthy donating millions to help that, and not any of the other massive causes on the planet like
- The Amazon rainforest was basically burned down, as in gigantic swaths of it
- And California was basically on fire, seemingly feeling like all year long
- A live action Little Mermaid cast a black girl as Ariel, and civil war erupted
- Australia basically allowed human euthanization, and a woman suffering from breast cancer capitalizes on the get out of jail card almost immediately
- [SPOILER ALERT] Arya Stark kills the Night King
- Popeyes chicken sandwich sets the world on fire, causing pandemonium and shortages nationally
- [SPOILER ALERT] Game of Thrones ends, horribly
- Teenagers across the globe went on climate change protests and school walkouts
- “Jeopardy James” James Holzhauer captures the imagination of game show fans, winning millions in a short period, with aggressive and intense play
- #OKBoomer
- Disney launched Disney+ streaming service, the Mandalorian remains the only good thing on it so far
- The third Star Wars trilogy came to a conclusion
- THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS
- Mass shooting in Florida ScumTrust branch, 5 dead
- Mass shooting in Brazil school, 10 dead
- Bombing in Sri Lanka, 267 dead (happened right around my birthday, feeding the narrative that my birthday is a cursed time)
- Shooting in Columbine (yes, that one), 2 dead
- Mass shooting in two New Zealand mosques, 49 dead
- Mass shooting in Virginia Beach, 12 dead
- Arson in Kyoto, an anime studio is burned down and 30 killed
- Mass shooting in California garlic festival, 3 dead
- Shooting in Brooklyn park, 1 dead (a day after California)
- Mass shooting in El Paso Walmart, 23 dead
- Mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio bar, 10 dead
- Mass shooting in West Texas, 7 dead
- In Texas, an inebriated white female police officer shoots and kills a black man inside his own home due to going to the wrong apartment, and somehow only gets 10 years of prison time
- Oxon Hill, Maryland, a person is stabbed to death, over cutting in line for a Popeyes chicken sandwich
- Shooting in Santa Clarita, California, 2 dead
- Mass shooting at a Fresno, California football party, 4 dead
- Mass shooting at an Oklahoma Walmart, 3 dead
- Shooting incident in New Orleans, nobody died fortunately
- Shooting incident in Wisconsin school, nobody died fortunately
- Shooting incident in Wisconsin school, nobody died fortunately (this is not a mistake, consecutive shootings on consecutive days actually occurred)
- Mass shooting in Pensacola, Florida naval base, 3 dead
- Mass shooting in Jersey City, 5 dead
- Meanwhile, the baked potato blames gun violence on video games, as if it were 1998 all over again
- In memoriam 😢
- “Mean Gene” Okerlund
- King Kong Bundy
- Silver King
- Luke Perry of 90210
- Keith Flint of the Prodigy
- Katherine Helmond from Who’s the Boss?
- Peter Mayhew
2020
- Jeopardy GOAT tournament happens, Ken Jennings defeats James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter 3-1-0, but everyone was forced to play like Holzhauer now
- LSU defeats Clemson to win the college football national championship
- Kansas City Chiefs defeat the 49ers to win the Super Bowl
- Kobe Bryant dies in a helicopter crash
- Despite the impeachment by the House, the Senate unsurprisingly blocks the baked potato from being removed from office
- Korean-made Parasite wins Best Picture, becoming the first foreign film to ever take top honors
- My daughter was born 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
- And then coronavirus made its way to America and basically cancelled abso-fucking-lutely everything except for the 20-21 school year in the county that my wife teaches at
- Resulting in a metric fuckton of stupidity since March, on national, federal and local levels; can’t say global, because only America is the only country doing so much stupid shit about COVID-19
SO, in conclusion, a whole LOT of shit has certainly happened since April of 2016. Obviously, this is all just the shit that piqued my interest and/or even made it onto my radar, and there are myriads of other notable things that have certainly happened in addition to all of this. Probably way more shooting incidents and/or political bullshit events, and deaths of notable people that don’t quite make it into my gravitational pull.
Either way, with my brog back up and running, I can put this document to rest, but it was a little interesting myself to go back and see the things that have happened throughout the passage of the last four years alone.
