Goodbye to all that

Are we done yet?

Not quite, but with just a little more than a week left to 2011, I’m ready to stick a fork in it already.

It’s not that 2011 was the worst of times—there are many things about the last year worth remembering in a good way.

Indeed, between the upstart activists of the Occupy movement and the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the selfless acts of the Fukishima 50 in the midst of Japan’s post-earthquake nuclear crisis and Gabrielle Gifford’s amazing recovery, 2011 was a year dominated by images of protest and revolution, courageous heroics and determined self-reliance. 2011 is defined by civic defiance, a collective push for change, hope and the promise of a better tomorrow.

But, of course, we endured the flip side, too. There were tawdry televised courtroom dramas with murderous tot moms and unethical doctors. There were cheating politicians, failed celebrity marriages and pepper-spraying cops—all things, people and ideas that I wish could be put in a time capsule and buried in the backyard forever.

So in the spirit of saying goodbye to all that, the following is a list of what I won’t miss when 2011 is out the door. If only we could really and truly keep some of them from ever, ever coming back. A girl can dream, right?

1. Cancer

2. The Gingrich Revolution

3. 72-day marriages

4. Reality TV shows set in New Jersey

5. “Winning!”

6. Major-league sport strikes

7. Hating on atheists

8. Hating on believers

9. Google Plus

10. Campus police and pepper spray

11. Shoppers and pepper spray

12. Black Friday

13. Criminally creepy college coaches

14. Overpriced mermaid-theme bars

15. The apocalypse

16. Tiger moms

17. “Corporations are people”

18. Bullying

19. Honey badger

20. \d Bands leaving Sacramento for bigger cities

21. Pajama jeans

22. Climate-change deniers

23. Tebowing

24. Endless Kings arena speculation

25. Cancer