It's snowing outside.
I know this because yesterday I went outside for milk and some chocolate-covered peanuts and raisins and should have done so on skis.
New York City – and much of the East coast of the United States – is well and truly blanketed by a blizzard that's been tagged Snowmageddon 2010, Snowpocalypse, or my favourite, the Brrrrricane.
Sort of funny – two friends have had to reschedule their travel plans over the past few days.
They were planning to fly from New York to Iceland.
For vacation.
Which is as good an introduction as any for the 180 Degrees top stories of 2010 (in no particular order).
In January, a Hamas agent was killed in a Dubai hotel room. It is widely believed a team of Israeli agents was responsible for the hit, which resembled a Hollywood spy movie.
In April, an organisation called Wikileaks, mostly known only to online nerds, released a controversial video of Iraqis being killed by a US helicopter in Baghdad. By the end of the year, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange would be the scourge of governments around the world.
America's right wing fell in love with female talking heads, including failed Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The former Alaskan Governor quit mid-term as Alaska's governor to get rich publishing books and appearing in a reality TV series. Christine O'Donnell was a Republican Senate candidate, fearful of masturbation who also believed evolution to be a myth. She lost her election bid.
President Obama pushed through a version of healthcare reform, angering some Americans who bizarrely claimed he wanted to kill old people. On the other hand, a friend, author Ken Wohlrob (the same guy trying to get to Iceland) said: “It feels pretty good waking up in a socialist nightmare that just might be an affront to God.”
I went to South Africa and contrary to advice was neither mugged, robbed, raped, nor murdered by locals. South Africa was certainly not Europe and the disparity between rich and poor was often unsettling (as it should be). A Brazilian friend loved South Africa. “It's just like home!” she told me. Brazil will host the 2014 World Cup.
In April, an oil-drilling rig off the Louisiana coast blew up and sank. Eleven people were killed. For months, oil was pumped, unchallenged, into the sea.
Anna Chapman was one of 10 people arrested in the US in June and charged with “conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government before being deported to Russia. Chapman – whose original name was Anna Kushchenko – was straight out of a Bond film.
Football Federation Australia used millions of taxpayers dollars to hire what it thought were top “international consultants” in a flawed bid to bring the World Cup to Australia in 2022. Their efforts failed, dismally.
The US held “mid-term” elections in November. President Obama said his Democratic Party received a “shellacking”. The truth is the US is so evenly divided politically it's difficult to get anything done. Unless, that is, it's a few days before Christmas and politicians want to get home for the Holidays.
Someone told me TV chat show host Oprah Winfrey visited Australia. Sorry. I missed it.
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