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10. Nightmarish Ironic Cheap Shot. A woman who is proficient with a banjo almost got elected to the state senate.

9. Irony. The same pukes who accused Democrats of playing politics with our nation’s security threw up petty barriers that endangered Bush-supported reforms to the nation’s intelligence-gathering institutions—simply because Democrats supported the legislation.

8. Nightmare. Schwarzenegger v. Clinton in 2008.

7. Nightmare. Bill Murray failed to win an Academy Award for his performance, but Renée Zellweger did.

6. Irony. A new county general plan is finally endorsed, with near unanimity, by a diverse planning commission, and is yanked out of circulation without a glance by the Board of Supervisors, which appoints the commissioners, because the right people whined. More Sex and the County in 2005!

5. Cheap shot. The price of oil is skyrocketing at the precise time every putz in town is driving a Hummer.

4. Nightmare. We lost Captain Kangaroo, Johnny Ramone, Marlon Brando, Rodney Dangerfield, Christopher Reeve, Rick James, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Ray Charles, Richard Avedon, Ronald Reagan and—to prove the inevitable—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.

3. Cheap shot. Did Barry Bonds know that the after-effects of “flax seed” usage would inflate his head to the size of a Half Moon Bay pumpkin?

2. Nightmare. Of all the gin joints in all the world where evil monsters conspire to destroy us, we blow our wad going after a guy holed up in a “spider hole.” Meanwhile, a civil war in Sudan that no one in the US seems to care about has already killed 2 million.

1. Irony. A man with a sterling war record is forced to defend said record against a guy who went AWOL with the Texas Air National Guard.

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