2009 was a wretched year. On a personal level, it was full of injury, emotional rollercoasters of human interaction, far too much time spent on academics, and the deaths of some very special people to me.

And for the world, 2009 saw the entrenchment of superficially humanized global American military domination with the coronation of Emperor Obama. Obama was not only awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while continuing the Bush doctrine of American foreign policy, but also opened new “fronts” in the so-called “War on Terrorism,” whose connection to September 11 is even more nebulous than Bush’s oft-ridiculed “Axis of Evil.”

It was the year of the inevitable collapse of credit-capitalism and the gutting of working Americans’ pockets and wages to rebuild the tottering slum known as the US economy. Obama, far from re-working the bailouts to the benefit of average Americans, continued to hand over billions of dollars from US citizens to the wealthiest and most powerful segments of American industry in what has been called the single largest act of class warfare in contemporary American history.

Here at home, 2009 saw Canadian policy take a radical swing to the racist right, beyond what any “Tory/Liberal-All-The-Same” naysayers like myself could ever have imagined. Our government declared all-out war not only on public services and government social programs, but also on Canada’s nebulously “neutral” position in the Huntingtonian self-fulfilling prophecy of civilizational clash. Oh yes, and there were the two complete seizures of government power by the executive wing of our government against the one elected portion of our government, the legislature.

Here in Montreal, we saw the re-election of our profoundly corrupt municipal regime whose win makes Ahmadinejad’s election look clean and straightforward – though of course we polite North Americans won’t be pouring into the streets to protest. We also lost one of the greatest defenders of the poor, lawyer Natacha Binsse-Masse, to lung cancer at far too young an age. Binsse-Masse spent most of her career fighting police and state abuse of the marginalized and we citizens of Montreal are far worse off without her.

And finally, here at McGill, we saw the administration’s attack on student life and the campus community reach new heights. At the same time, our administration declared its commitment to sustainability while our principal was one of a handful of delegates advising the prime minister during his shameful and tragic performance at the Copenhagen conference, where Canada outperformed even the United States in the West’s race to the bottom rung of action on climate change.

But there is small sliver of hope for humanity that emerged in 2009. While not immediately impressive, I’ll take whatever I can get at this point.

That sliver was the release of a brilliant year of television shows the likes of which we haven’t experienced since the heyday of Seinfeld and the Simpsons. Of course, the world of pop culture was brought down by the untimely deaths of Michael Jackson, Brittany Murphy, Patrick Swayze, and Farah Fawcett. And the world is far worse off without the class and elegance of the one and only Bea Arthur.

But my internet TV watching – for better or for worse – hit an all-time high in 2009 with the release of groundbreaking shows like The United States of Tara and Modern Family. Beyond the new series, on-the-rise shows like True Blood and the Canadian-produced Flashpoint hit new levels of genius in 2009. Hell, there was even a new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm that reversed the downward trend of the past few years.

Now, the release of some great new shows does not make up for the tragic state of the world. It arguably compounds the brutal inequality that underlines global military and economic relations. But, in the spirit of the New Year and to avoid the calls of “cynic!” that follow me in life, I’ll take what I can get. So bring it on, 2010. With my arsenal of sitcoms, I’ll take what you can throw at me.

Dear Diary,

Love ya!Zoe

Okay, I lied – Joey totally meant it when he asked me out. But the hipster accusation actually happened. I didn’t think I’d be subjected to such arbitrary labeling and finger pointing this far into my academic career, unless it was about my sexuality (accusations of sluttery and faux lesbianism follow most women in their early twenties, much to the dismay of feminism in all its forms). But, alas, here I am. I’m sure my newfound hipster status is an affront to some – who would find me too sober and too into Taylor Swift – but seems all too obvious to others – thanks to my glasses and affinity for the French New Wave. Either way, it’s not really important, because the word “hipster” as a descriptor has become so overused that it’s meaningless. It’s “douche” for a new decade.

When the term was coined in the 1940s, “hipster” connoted music and musicianship, as well as members of the contemporary subculture. Now, thanks to its resurgence in the popular media (supplanting the only slightly less annoying “emo” label), it has become a comfortable crutch for those lazy judges who see a single pair of plastic-framed glasses as an unbridgeable ideological gap. It is wantonly applied to every fashionable twentysomething on St. Catherine Street, every undergraduate Concordia student, and every person in a compositionally interesting photo on Facebook. And it’s not just unhip adults and L.L. Bean-clad hikers who point and snicker at perceived hipsters. Droopy-hatted, Wavves-loving intellectuals are just as likely to label their hipster brethren. One of the main reasons that the “hipster” label grates my nerves is because it’s so often hipsters themselves doing the name-calling.

Case in point: I was recently at a student art show with a friend of mine. He looked around and scoffed at “all these stupid little pseudo-artistic hipsters.” Notwithstanding the fact that I had had to explain the pronunciation of “pseudo” to him four years prior (he was calling things “swee-do-intellectual”), he was making an absolute fool of himself. While he pronounced his judgement, he was sporting a septum piercing, browline glasses, and a shirt featuring (he went out of his way to tell me) an authentic drawing by Robert Crumb (something of an enfant terrible in the world of underground comix). Calling someone else a hipster shows an embarrassing lack of self-awareness for a group that is so intensely narcissistic. Paradox? Yes. Unfixable? No.

My solution is to abolish the word “hipster” from our collective vocabulary. In its place I propose these more nuanced epithets:

Esoterophile: denoting someone obsessed with things he or she thinks no one else knows about.

Style monkey: from “monkey see, monkey do,” for someone whose dress sense too closely echoes that of an American Apparel or Urban Outfitters mannequin.

Fauxr-eyes: for those afflicted with visual handicaps corrected by lenses, and those who wish they were.

Person I semi-irrationally hate and/or fear: because when judging others, what are we doing but seeing the worst in ourselves? [note: insert NBC “The More You Know” music.]

Additionally, I advocate the resurrection of the words poseur, square, and narc on the grounds that they’re fun to say and easy to rhyme with.

Contrary to what some of you may believe, proroguing parliament is not the “democratic travesty” that many are making it out to be.

Canada is supposedly stirring with “grassroots fury,” according to the Toronto Star. More than 100,000 people have now joined a Facebook group in opposition to Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament, united by their hatred of our prime minister.

And they really do seem to hate him. The group’s now defunct photos section was filled with wonderful images of Harper wearing a Nazi uniform and doing terrible things to a kitten with a kitchen knife.

The comments section rages with the passion of a people in revolt:

“Harper is Bush Junior!”

“What if society prorogued society?!?”

Oh, and my personal favourite: “A good old-fashioned public stoning of Harper may be in order.” Those are all real quotes, too – this group is a hoot.

By now I hope you can detect my disdain. I wouldn’t call the reaction to the prorogation a “grassroots fury:” this is more like a case of overblown rhetoric from people jumping on a political bandwagon. Facebook has made it easy to be a political “activist.”

This is not the end of the world. Prorogation is a regular and constitutional occurrence, offering the government an opportunity to “re-calibrate their agenda.”

In a CTV interview, Conservative strategist Tim Powers noted that Parliament has been prorogued more than 105 times in its history. The move was used four times by Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government. As can be seen, it is a common occurrence.

But why prorogue? Most importantly, prorogations need to happen in order to end the business of a particular Parliament along with its budget and legislative agenda. In turn, a new set of priorities is established along with a new budget to match those priorities.

In two months the Conservatives will likely table a budget that will continue stimulus spending, but will begin the necessary government cutbacks to restore fiscal stability.

We all know better than to trust political promises. Still, to any conservative, the idea of trimming the bloated and interventionist Canadian state is something to look forward to.

It’s also important to remember that prorogation doesn’t only affect the House of Commons – there is also the Senate.

The problem with this Senate is that it does not represent the current electoral makeup of the Commons. It is controlled by the Liberals – a party rejected by Canadians in the last election. The Liberal senators of this body have consistently blocked or altered Conservative legislation, particularly “tough on crime” bills that have been a cornerstone of this government. One example: Liberal senators voted down a requirement that marijuana growers with less than five plants serve a mandatory six months in prison.

Is it particularly democratic that an opposition party controls the appointed house of our Parliament? I don’t think so. That seems like more of a democratic “travesty” to me than the prorogation. This is one reason why proroguing is an excellent political move: the Tories can now fill the five vacant Senate seats they need to secure a larger caucus than the Liberals, and thus regain control of their legislation.

Even better, these five new senators promise to be amicable to Senate reform. Senate reform has been a goal of this government since it came into power, and because of the Liberal Senate it has never gotten anywhere. The irony here is that the same liberals now screaming about the “dictatorial” proroguing of Parliament made an elected Senate near impossible. Senate reform has been an important value of Harper’s conservative base, and to me, stands as the next great challenge for our democracy.

So all you opponents of proroguing out there: please relax. Really. If the opposition parties are that outraged about the whole business, they can make a vote of non-confidence when they return. This isn’t suddenly a dictatorship. And remember, at the end of the day, it’s only two months.