Goodbye, 2016 — you 12 month, piece of junk.  You were a year written by George R.R. Martin and I, for one, won’t be missin’ ya.  Unfortunately, among all the “Happy New Years,” there are a bunch of people predicting that it’s only going to get worse in 2017.  If climate change doesn’t kill us all, ISIS, immigrants or Donald Trump will.  Yeah, yeah, yeah!  Personally, I’ve lived through more than one Earth- Ending Event — including Margaret Thatcher, George Bush (both of them) Y2K, the Mayan calendar and whatever Nostradamus has been babbling about for years.  Predicting the future is like raising children — you never know whether you’re right or wrong until it’s too late.  So rather than trying to look over the horizon at 2017, here are just a few things I would really like to see next year.

1 — We all finally realize that nothing actually happens when some asshole gets offended on Social Media — nothing!

2 — The Kardashians go back to whatever planet they came from — and they take Blac Chyna, Tyga and Kanye with them.

3 — We remember that Reality TV is, in reality, an oxymoron.

4 — Telling the truth is no longer one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

5 — Somebody, please, take the jihadists seriously.  These homicidal maniacs have a grudge against the 21st century and it’s not as if anybody can talk them out of it.  A lot of people are getting killed.  We need a better strategy than candles and teddy bears — after the fact.

6 — Game of Thrones quits going sideways.

7 — The end of the mannequin challenge.

8 — There’s at least one decent movie produced in 2017 that isn’t a sequel, a prequel, part of a franchise, a remake or a reboot.  There has to be an original idea out there — somewhere.

9 — We permanently abandon Uggs and yoga pants.

10 — Hey, Minions!  You’re 15 minutes is over.

And finally:

11 — Somebody looks at me the way women look at yogurt in the television commercials.