The period between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day (aka “Hangover Day” for amateur drinkers) tend to be pretty low-traffic periods for internet sites, and my experience is that my own readers drop in far less frequently until around January 2nd. Taking advantage of this, I can drop in a few low-effort posts to keep up appearances and get on with my usual holiday sloth with no-one the wiser. So … memes:
First, a tribute to yet another armpit of a year:
And on to the bright promise of the infant 2026:
Sorry, that was apparently a repeat post from every year since 2016, prompting this heartfelt apology from the powers-that-be:
Not so much a meme as an accurate recapitulation of our descent into the cultural cesspool we currently inhabit (h/t to Ted Gioia):
New Year’s resolutions? Here’s a suggestion:
Ian has the right idea:
It’s a fair question, isn’t it?
You can tell it’s not their first rodeo:
Not a meme, but in the general direction of memery — Dave Barry’s “Year in Review“. An excerpt:
The biggest story of 2025, to judge from the number of people who sent it to me, was this raccoon:
In case you somehow missed this story: In late November, this raccoon got into a state liquor store in Ashland, Va., by falling though the ceiling. Once inside, the raccoon ransacked the store, leaving a trail of broken bottles …
… and apparently consuming a large quantity of booze before passing out in the bathroom next to the toilet. That’s where the raccoon was found by a store employee, who called an animal-control officer, who took it to an animal shelter. When the raccoon finally sobered up, it was hired as director of security by the Louvre Museum.
No, seriously, it was released into the wild. But the photo went majorly viral, and the raccoon became a huge celebrity. We, the American people, LOVE this raccoon. And I think I know why: After the year we’ve been through, we can relate to it. We have had way too much of 2025; it has left us, as a nation, lying face-down on the floor of despair, between the wastebasket of stupidity and the commode of broken dreams.
