With the New Year's hangover finally passing, it's an opportunity to try new things and look to the future.
It's also an ideal time to reevaluate our lives and conduct, and leave some undesirable habits in the past. Or, put more bluntly, it's as good a time as any to smarten the heck up.
Here's this year's list of 10 things – from the serious to silly – that just need to stop already:
10) Top 10 lists
Top 10 lists are everywhere, especially online:
Top 10 Terrible Hockey Sweaters
Top 10 Ways to Tell Your BFF You Don't Like What They Named Their Cat
Top 10 Celebrities That Look Like Mattresses
Top 10 Creepiest Easter Rabbits
What's sad is I only made one of those up. Why the need to categorize things into trite, banal lists?
And why does it always have to be 10? Why not seven, or 12 or 32?
Maybe there are more things that should included. Or perhaps there aren't enough things, and the Top 10 list has to be bulked up with filler like a last-day-before-payday meat loaf...
9) Tired retreads, reboots and sequels
While complaining about the lack of originality in Hollywood is hardly new, it seemed like 2015 was the year of recycled movie ideas.
While I was just as pumped about Mad Max: Fury Road, Spectre and Star Wars: The Force Awakens as anyone, the glut of franchise films is like a carpet of weeds choking out all but the hardiest original movies.
Why on Earth are there seven Fast and Furious movies? Even Vin Diesel's mom is getting sick of watching them.
And how many times can people watch the same boring superheroes follow the same predictable plots from one yawn-inducing, CGI-laden set piece to another?
If Marvel and DC are intent on cashing in on their comic book properties, they should at least introduce some new and different ones. Instead we're getting Batman vs. Superman, a movie that should last about 10 seconds: Superman punches Batman into low Earth orbit. Roll credits, the end.
8) Manbuns
Manbuns, bro buns, topknots or whatever you want to call them, they just look silly.
It's not that men can't wear their hair long, but tying it in a bun on top of your head is a pretentious, hipsterish look.
There is one caveat to that rule: if you are an Edo-era samurai or a sumo wrestler, you have earned the right to rock your chonmage – a traditional Japanese topknot haircut associated with the feudal warrior elite.
Otherwise, it's time for this hairstyle to commit seppuku.
7) Pajamas in public
Wearing pajamas in public is the International Sign language symbol for "I have lost all self respect and have given up."
I can already hear someone whining "but they're comfortable!"
Nobody cares. We don't feel comfortable having to look at your Disney-character-clad posterior in the Walmart check-out line.
Have some pride and put on pants or an acceptable pant substitute.
Here is a list of things that are acceptable lower-body coverings: trousers, jeans, khakis, shorts, skirts, dresses or traditional cultural attire like Scottish kilts, Indian saris, etc.
That is all.
6) Grown-up colouring books
Really? If your age is in single digits, colouring in colouring books is a suitable pastime.
But if you're old enough to remember the pre-Facebook age, it's time to grow up.
It's part of a larger trend of the infantilization of society. These colouring books fall in the same category as adult-sized onesie pajamas with feet and North America's creepy Disney obsession.
Advocates of adult colouring say it is a soothing, relaxing, totally-non-childish way to give yourself carpal tunnel syndrome.
If you enjoy drawing and colouring, that's great. Take a class and teach yourself how to draw, paint, watercolour, pastel or whatever and create your own pictures.
That's called art, and it is one of the greatest human pursuits.
Unlike mindlessly colouring in someone else's drawings, creating your own art is a deeply satisfying process. You may never be a van Gogh or Picasso, but making something uniquely your own is a worthwhile accomplishment.
5) Selfie mania
On the other end of the spectrum from the pajama-wearing rejects are the self-obsessed, narcissist, selfie takers. The introduction of "selfie sticks" – devices that allow people to hold the camera further from their face than their unassisted arms would allow – signals just how far this silliness has gone.
How many poorly framed, out-of-focus pictures of your face (with or without optional duck lips) do you need? What possible purpose could they serve?
Years from now will people will look back at their digital photo albums with fond memories of how their face looked at different times and places?
"Look at this one, Suzie. That's grandma's badly framed face in front of the Acropolis on me and grandpappy's honeymoon – I think. Or maybe that's the Arc de Triomphe," they might say.
"Oh, here is an out-of-focus picture of my face on the bus for no reason whatsoever..."
If you really do need a picture of your own face, at least get someone else to hold the camera so they can properly frame and focus the picture.
Or better yet, just buy a mirror.
4) The rising tide of stupid
Mike Judge's 2006 cult classic film Idiocracy, staring Luke Wilson, predicted a dystopian future in which years of stupid people breeding faster than intelligent people has resulted in humanity devolving into race of trashy, unthinking, consumeristic buffoons.
Sadly, Judge didn't know his disturbing vision would only take 10 years – not the 500 predicted in the film – to come true.
Sadly, Idiocracy's machine gun toting, wrestler/porn star-turned president Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (superbly played by Terry Crews) is still a better choice for the White House than Donald Trump. But more on him later.
Part of the problem is that the generations since the baby boomers have been taught that everyone is entitled to have an opinion, and everyone's opinion is valid.
But not everyone's opinion is valid. Some are just factually wrong.
Do you think vaccines give your kids autism? No, they don't. And there's a ton of peer-reviewed research to prove it.
Climate change a hoax? Nope.
Evolution a myth? Not a chance.
Gun control doesn't reduce crime? Wrong.
The city was poisoning you with fluoride in the water? Not remotely true.
It's time to stop tolerating stupid, factually wrong ideas and treating them like they are valid viewpoints.
3) Celebrity rapists
It seems 2015 was full of celebrities being held to account for, or being accused of, sex crimes.
On Oct. 1 former CBC radio personality and Moxy Frvous member Jian Ghomeshi pled not guilty to one count of choking and four counts of sexual assault.
On Nov. 19 Jared Fogle – known for his role as a Subway spokesman – was sentenced to 15 years and eight months in jail for possessing child pornography and traveling to pay for sex with minors.
'America's Dad,' comedian Bill Cosby, was charged on Dec. 29 with aggravated indecent assault against a Canadian woman, and other women have come forward claiming Cosby assaulted them.
Last year allegations finally came out about reality TV star Josh Duggar, the eldest son of the family featured in the TLC series 19 Kids and Counting.
Duggar confessed to fondling five young girls while he was a teenager.
Such acts are despicable at any time by anyone, but especially when committed by celebrities who have the wealth, power and fame to silence powerless victims.
2) The return of fascism
In Europe, North America and elsewhere, neo-fascist and post-fascist parties and leaders are on the rise. These xenophobic, populist, anti-immigration, ultra-nationalist, racist, authoritarian views seem to be gaining traction across the developed world.
In France, the far-right National Front took an early lead in regional elections last month, only to be defeated by the more mainstream conservatives. In 1945, the French celebrated their liberation from fascist overlords, but 70 years later they almost elected them into power.
In Greece, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party holds 18 of 300 seats in the national parliament and three of the country's seats in the European Parliament.
In Ukraine, it's the Svoboda Party, in Denmark its the Danish People's Party, in the Netherlands its the Party for Freedom, in Austria, it's the Freedom Party and, perhaps most frighteningly, in the U.S. it's the 41 per cent of Republican voters who back presidential nominee Donald Trump. Trump's popularity is on the rise after he called for an outright ban on Muslims entering the country.
When has fascism ever worked out well for a country?
Never, that's when.
1) Religious extremism
Last I checked, we're living in the 21st century.
And yet it seems like some people want to bring back the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition for another go around.
The Islamic State – also known as ISIS or ISIL – Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab and other groups having been waging a jihad to exterminate everyone who isn't a Muslim, or is the wrong kind of Muslim, or is the right kind of Muslim, but isn't a bloodthirsty wingnut like they are, or just anybody else they don't like.
In North America, groups like the Westboro Baptist Church promote hatred against homosexuals and other groups, and people like Robert Lewis Dear – who attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado on Nov. 27, killing three people and wounding nine others – believe their personal religious views justify persecuting and killing other people.
Even here in Prince George, letter to the editor writers have called for Canada to only take Christian refugees from Syria.
These heartless people would abandon women, children and the elderly to their fate because they don't share the same religious outlook.
Religious belief is not a license to be a jerk.
Just stop it.
