We watched a very stupid movie on Sunday night, and it contained, amongst a lot of other very stupid stuff, a particularly stupid joke. Jane was seen to chuckle for a moment, while Justin rolled around on the floor cackling like a helium-filled three-armed monkey with a pimple on its back. At some point in this Editors’ Rant, that stupid joke will appear. You have been warned.

It’s been quite a year, all 2009 of it, and quite frankly folks, we’re pretty much over it and getting ready for the feel-good explosion that will no doubt be 2010. We’ve friggin’ well earned it, or at least we’ve put up with enough shit this year, personally, professionally and simply as members of the human race to have expended our share of shit for the next twelve months.

Anyway, you don’t really need us whining at you about all the annoying shit that’s happened to us this year (can we say “shit” more times in one editorial?). No doubt you’ve had a lot of your own rare diseases, tired and emotional moments in public, and billion-dollar corporate collapses. All you need to know is that one of the few things (other than the obvious fact that we are cool and good-looking and enormously talented and everybody loves us) keeping body and soul together has been this, our and your, beloved Tribune.

Cor, that was all a bit miserable, wasn’t it? Now, what were we actually trying to say…. Um, yeah, 2009 has presented us with challenges, and we’re looking forward to 2010 which will, hopefully, present us with those nice kind of challenges, like, Honey, where are we going to put all this cash that the Tribune’s earning? We’re paying our writers and artists heaps now, and the Golf Turbo looks sooo cute sitting next to the Aston Martin DB9 in the garage next to our six-bedroom Federation house in Elwood, and there’s still all this money left over!

Those are the kind of challenges we want, folks, and we’re working on making sure that 2010 presents them.

Of course, next year also brings us The World Cup, which will ensure two weeks of couch for Juzzy while Jane reads in the bedroom and tries to sleep through all the “GOOOOOAAAALLLLL!!!!” and “Aaaaaah, BULLshit!!!”.

Anyway, that’s next year, let’s dwell on the year that’s about to drop off this mortal coil, just like we all thought Hey Hey It’s Saturday had.

We’ve had some cracking Tribunes this year, and as always (well, since last year, anyway) the December Issue is our retrospective, which means a chance to re-visit some of the topics that just won’t go away, like Body Image and the Olympics, and to throw in those articles that didn’t quite fit the topic of the month, or came in too late, or just came to us in the dead of night like Tony Abbott. (WTF are you drinking before you go to bed?)

Without going into what awaits you in the following pages (that’s what we have a Contents page for), let’s have a quick gander over 2009. Geelong won the best Grand Final in recent times over a St Kilda who will (oh, God, please) have grown and strengthened immeasurably from the loss and be even better next year. Kyle Sandilands proved once and for all that there is no Jungian collective unconscious with the ability to change the world, by not catching fire and choking to death on his own bile. Some refugees and Climate Change proved to us, conclusively and finally, that our politicians are a bunch of venal, petty parasites who are not actually there to do anything worthwhile and don’t give a fuck about anything other than scoring cheap points against each other, while the rest of the world alternate between suffering the consequences and loathing them.

On the subject of politicians, we can’t go on without mentioning Senator Steve Fielding. He’s dressed up in a bottle suit to attract attention to what he was told to think about alcopops; he’s claimed to be disabled because he can’t spell; he went to the US to talk to Al Gore about climate change, armed with a sheaf of made-up stuff from every CC-denier and conspiracy nut he could find, only to discover that there are enough clowns in the US already and Gore just didn’t have time to meet with another one. Oh yeah, and there was that moment when the Dear Leader was apologising to all those kids who suffered as Wards of the State, and Little Steve just had to try and make it All About Fielding by revealing what happened to him as a boy. Not to disrespect what he’s been through, but, well, Ick. Steve, there is a little more to being an Australian Senator than just prancing around like the kid that nobody likes (although that’s probably difficult, since you actually are the kid that nobody likes) clamouring for attention.

We don’t mind that Fielding has some nutty ideas, and we only mind a little bit that very few people actually voted for him and he’s only there because the ALP did a stupid preference deal to keep the Greens out. Australian democracy has always thrown us ointment flies like Brian Harradine and Bob Katter. Those guys, though, knew how to play the game, everybody knew where they stood, and they had the intellect at least to negotiate, not just grandstand and have “look at me” moments, and fuck a system that’s already pretty fucked up. Feilding has to go. He’s as much use as a cock-flavoured lollipop.

And, pause, while Justin falls to the floor laughing like a loon, and Jane stares bemusedly, wondering what on Earth it was in him that she ever found attractive.

Enjoy this Tribune. Love to those who love us, and a week in Dublin wearing an “I Am French” T-shirt to those who don’t.

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