2016 has been a year of downs, and the potential for more of the same for the foreseeable future. 2017 isn't likely to bring much in the way of relief, and I've already pretty-much written off the entire remaining noughtie-tens.

In no particular order:

• The divide between rich and poor will increase as both Brexit's and Trump's insular influences affect the world's economies, and that's just 2 issues,
• Melting polar ice caps will have a major impact on climate, climate control being something reduced in importance as governments prioritise other programmes,
• Peace across the world isn't here YET, and looks increasingly unlikely to be achieved for at least my lifetime,
• A cure for cancer REMAINS 10-20 years away,
• Famine, the eradication of poverty: both are still with us and, though arenas with a glimmer of hope, both aren't under control,
• Nuclear arms are set to increase as Trump's insistence that his brand of populist nationalism is best for the USA. It's only a matter of time before nuclear terrorism is a thing,
• The golden age of computers, a future that I'd imagined ever since I got my first has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. I'd imagined that the instant availability of information would be a thing to advance 'society'. It turns out people don't NEED facts, believe anyone who voices what they THINK should happen,
• Racism is acceptable already, not simply casual racism, but the overt 'I'll get away with this, what are you going to do about it?' variety…

(breathes…)

• 'Big' Sam Allardyce has been employed as a football manager AGAIN, despite his prior and very recent and embarrassing history of corruption allegations,
• Carrie Fisher suffered a major heart attack yesterday and was hospitalised in critical condition, the most recent figure I know of to be affected by thr curse of 2016. Take care Princess Leia, get well,
• Though inevitable, the death of popular figures has been a fixture of the year. I'm not sure I want to know if it's a statistical aberration or just normal.

(sighs…)

That'll do.

I'd like to imagine my family and I have a secure existence, to enable me to revel in Schadenfreude. But no, it's never going to happen, I've one-too-many spare brain cells. Just the one. Give it four more years and check back in with me?

Dark? Of COURSE it's dark! Don't expect ignoring what's ahead will remove it from your life; as-ever, understanding a situation is the key to dealing with it.

So, my word of the year is 'Normalised'. It, along with the 366 days of 2016, most emphatically does NOT get Baz's seal of approval.

At the beginning of February 2016 I decided to use a goal tracker app to create and to keep in touch with blogging and other streaks. I was pretty conservative with my targets, not wishing to place undue pressure on myself.

Five posts a week? It SEEMED easy.

I checked just now; such is my lackadaisical approach to the discipline, as of today I must create 22 blog posts a week to hit my target.

Can I fix it?

It's fair to say that 2016 started badly, reached a crescendo of awfulness during the early-middle part of the year, and peaked in misery again towards the back end.

With only a few days from the 366 remaining it's anyone's guess whether the fates will throw anything else at us.

Now I use the term 'us' to indicate that I belong to and share the wishes of the class of beings we refer to as humanity.

In reality though I'm a part of the privileged class of folks who are comfortable but nevertheless find things about which to be appalled and disgusted, especially with respect to the impact on my life. And my family's.

But unlike so many people I'm not thinking of the impact NOW, no. It's what's coming up.

Before marriage and starting the family I led a life of mindless optimism. That eventually changed to Hopeful Pessimism them Realism.*

Some months ago though, prior to the final phase of the somewhat calamitous US Presidential elections and prior to that small percentage of the UK voting to leave Europe, I wrote that I was scared of the future.

Guess what.

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*Thanks Tyson, very useful.

I posted an image yesterday, to Twitter and to Facebook: ironic, sarcastic, call it what you will – a take on the trend to post words designed to both highlight injustice and put it right at the same time. Or expressing one's individuality by choosing something funny from a preprepared list of names. And all without needing to exercise one's scrolling digit. Instant gratification.

The words from MY image:

"Get your porn name by changing your name to that of your favourite porn star."

And later, on Twitter, I was asked a simple question:

"What would yours be?"

Thanks Neil! A very good question, very good indeed. A question to expose one's interests, proclivities, inadequacies, you know, those private things one simply doesn't talk about except with close friends. Very close friends.

So, a dilemma. Do I write any further?

Of course I do!

At this point I could be forgiven for writing about:

• gadget porn,
• house porn,
• car porn,
• gardening porn,
• gun porn,
• etc.

Innocuous stuff, you'd think, but nonetheless addictive if one allows it. But no, I'm not going to write about those.

I'm about to launch into an in-depth treatise at times exploring the deepest darkest reaches of the human psyche. Those of a nervous disposition, please look away now.

…

Are you ready?

…

Just kidding. I've got my reputation as an intellectual lightweight to uphold. Besides, the UK government probably already knows what I'm into; give it a few years and I'll be leaking all OVER the place!

A question: How patient are you?

Heading into the festive season most people would assume the worst of 2016 would be over by now.

It just got worse.*

It's been getting worse for some time, but…

There's one thing** that would lead me to believe there is hope for a brighter future: that the US President would attend Fidel Castro's funeral. Officially. Sure it'd upset a metric shedload of closed-minded morons, but for the rest of us…

I'm not talking here about an indicator or a signal, I'm not inclined to use the weasel words politicians use when they cannot bring themselves to explicitly state a POSITION. I'd like Barack Obama simply to state he's going to pay respects to another head of state.

We've been given only hope that lots of things will be brighter soon, we'll be more prosperous soon, enjoy greater safety in SO many areas… soon. Or eventually. And yet the political classes simply cannot state HOW.

So let's have the classy, though outgoing, President of the greatest country on the planet*** send an actual message to the future. No, he'd be better sending it to the present.

The message is a simple one: it's not about them and us, it's about us.

I for one want something rational, easily-explained, to be included in a process (even if it's to be spoon-fed an outline of the plans affecting my future) and something that can't be taken back, something that isn't vague promises or populist soundbites.

It seems though that 2017 isn't going to bring us stability, to benefit 'normal' people.

So, @POTUS, how's about a trip to Cuba?

What other indicators do we have that this modern age of enlightenment is NOT about to end?

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*And, do you know, the year is not over yet, not by a long way.

**If you're interested I do have more than one thing.

***Hmmm… even self-proclaimed isn't right any more, the current message is about making it great AGAIN, implying it isn't now. What a sad admission.

The Sex Pistols accompanied me to work this morning; MOST unusual, as I usually rely on the calming sounds of the car's ventilation fan to insulate me from the dullards queuing around me or indulging their moronic desires to occupy the bit of road my sensible car wishes to continue to exist unscathed in.

Oh yes, dullards.

Stuck behind drivers without the knowledge of how tiny their insignificantly-wide city car happens to be as they sit immobile before a gap through which my leviathan of a sensible family car fits with ease, I often ponder the meaning of life. Or wish carnage on the individuals around me. And their families.

So in my next life I should like to be a Time Lord; omnipotent, free of the petty restrictions polite society imposes, and with the ability to rearrange, er… things. (I'm assuming I'd work out the detail at the time.)

Every time someone intrudes, does something that bends, or breaks, the laws of British roads, I lose something.

Reasonable-ness? Benevolence? After this morning's commute am I the same as I was yesterday? I don't effing think so!

(sighs…) It wasn't BAD per se, but the stupid WAS strong today. Maybe The Sex Pistols helped me make sense of it. Not bad for a near-forty-year-old band.

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message

If you're a certain age, grew up and entered your teens in a pre-Internet era, you'll have had a limited choice of music. Ok, I don't mean a limited choice, I mean it wasn't instantaneously there, at your fingertips.

Take your favourite streaming service, look at the breadth and depth of music; from classical to the latest ephemeral nonsense. Er… no, let's not let prejudice intrude here eh. Simply put, aren't we lucky? If there's nothing on a self-produced play list, pick a 'station' thrown together by someone else, find inspiration from RANDOMNESS – something not available even at the height of the anarchically-sited radio stations of the golden age of radio!

Yes, lucky.

Right now I'm not listening to my old stuff (late-seventies to early nineties), no. I'm instead listening to twenty one pilots' Blurryface album. Over and over again. Played loud on my rather nice Bluetooth headphones.*

A journey of discovery. So yeah, I'm 14 again and, do you know, it's not all bad.

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*Bluedio R+ Legend. Look them up. They're comfortable, well-suited to my ears, maybe they have a bit of a heavy low end, and leak a bit around the edges… but heck, so do I these days!

It's fair to say that 2016 has been a bit of a shocker for most, both in celebrity deaths and in the confounding of many's preconceived ideas of normality.

In the main I follow like-minded social media accounts. Ok, like-minded people. But there's a downside: my views are confirmed in by those from whom I take my barometric measurements.

I've decided that, to ensure I'm better-prepared for the nasty surprises (and those nasties I'm EXPECTING!) during 2017, I shall look outside my comfort zone. Proven psychic ability, especially in the arena of celebrity death precondition, I've an open mind about.

If you understand and you've any recommendations I'm all ears.

Equilibrium, please.

Earlier this year I wrote about my favourite film, 'Armageddon'. If you scroll back through the archive of my posts 'Patch' is easy to find. Now might be a good time to scroll; I think it is about time I explained why that ragged, singed, bit of cloth – the patch – means so much to me. And why I cried at the end of the film.

Vanishingly-small numbers of people have ventured into space, more have helped make their passage safe by testing, retesting, and doing it over and over again so the chance of failure is reduced.

One thing to remember though, the ability to send stuff off our planet isn't easy. In fact, though essentially we're still relying on explosives developed from Chinese firecrackers, to propel the aforementioned stuff out there is extraordinarily difficult!

Let's face facts; whether or not you believe the somewhat facetious comment made about a typical US spacecraft – amongst the most complex mechanical devices ever assembled and machines in which generations of astronauts have trusted their very lives – is built by the lowest bidder, the word 'difficult' doesn't even come close to how, er… difficult, remote, intransigent, space is.

Unless one sits and thinks about the unforgiving nature of the vacuum, cold, radiation, and sheer unpredictability of space, it's all a bit esoteric, remote, almost-science-fictionish isn't it. White-coared experts and gung-ho spacemen, right?

The thing is, I've been very lucky to travel to the USA, to both the Houston Space Center* and The New Mexico Museum of Space History. The Houston site is awesome, but an exhibit at the NM museum – one past which most will walk without paying much heed – grabbed my attention immediately. Mission patches.

I don't have a thing for patches, no.

One in particular stood out. Or didn't. The Challenger patch, there symbolising a small part from the rich history of human endeavour, but nevertheless an extraordinarily poignant moment within it. Failure doesn't come easily to those in space programmes the world over, and especially not from an overlooked, almost-insignificant part of a much larger whole. The tragedy of loss of life is deeply felt, especially when the hopes of mankind rest on the success of the many facets of space exploration and utilisation.

Now, the bottom line here is this: without the constant evolution** of the spacecraft, the dedication of those designing the hardware and systems, and those preserving the history of the… Ok, ok, there's something both symbolic and very real about the struggle to not kill people in space.

A typical space programme is at the pinnacle of human achievement. It's the culmination of hundreds of years of experimentation and research, layers of improvement built on top of each other and of records faithfully retained against the day someone should attempt the actually-impossible.

Remembering what others have tried though should be no bar to trying to make a better space widget. As the saying goes, the impossible sometimes takes a little longer.

You might have expected at this point that I'd inject something political here, referring to 2016's apparent forgetfulness in the area of human evolution… Yeah, down the snake towards the worst excesses of human against human we go. And to think I cry at mere films.

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*Intentional spelling.

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**This.