2012: The Eventful Year Ahead
By Feliz Moreno
We are less than two weeks into 2012, and so far it's been a really great year. Not only have I stuck to my New Year's resolutions, but some of my NFL teams made the play-offs, Jay-Z and Beyoncé had their baby, MTV kicked off a new season of "Jersey Shore" and California passed a new law mandating that schools teach about the contributions of gays and lesbians in the United States. Definitely off to a good start.
Considering last year went pretty well with my resolution being not to make any resolutions, I decided to mix things up a little bit. I decided to actually make a few generic resolutions. And why not? 2012 is supposed to be a big year, with everything there is to look forward to.
It's a leap year, which means some of us will have a birthday for the first time in four years, but most of us will just carry on with our regular lives, wishing February were over so that spring could be closer.
Meanwhile, the city of London will be preparing to host its third Olympic Games (the only city yet to do so). From late July to early August the rest of the world will watch their favorite weightlifters, swimmers, divers, gymnasts and runners face-off in the worldwide sports event. And don't forget about the 2012 Olympic mascots: Wenlock and Mandenville, two rainbow obsessed drops of steel. I'm sure they will be a highlight.
Then in November the GOP versus Obama battle will finally come to a head. All the news channels will display maps of the United States with different regions shaded blue and red until a winner is revealed. Hopefully it will be a clean fight and may the best man win.
It will also be a good movie year, with the final movie in the Batman Trilogy looking to be released sometime in July. "The Avengers" will come out a month before that, and the original cast of "American Pie" will come together to produce "American Reunion," to be released in April.
Additions to "Men in Black," "Spiderman" and The Bourne series will all be released this year too, with all of them falling into the category of the most anticipated movies of the year.
This year, online bloggers and news providers seem to be particularly keen on their predictions. Time magazine predicts that the price of car rentals will go down and the cost of airfare and food will continue to rise. New York Times author Peter J. Henning foresees a continuing increase in white-collar crime. Gotickets.com and other ticket providers are predicting that the Beach Boys reunion tour along with Jay-Z and Kanye's "Watch the Throne" tour will be hot this year
But the one prediction that we are all concerned about is whether or not the world will end. There are entire websites dedicated to the subject, and they have all the theories pinned down and mapped out.
Whether it is the Mayan's or Nostradamus pointing towards a destructive fate on Dec. 21, what we all really care about is whether these predictions have any weight or not.
I may not be a terribly superstitious person, but I do have a great deal of respect for the Mayan's and Nostradamus, and I'll admit that the idea that they both came to the same conclusion scares me a little.
What scares me more is that my sister did a project on the Mayan calendar and she says that they believe the world will end in earthquakes — and when I say the world, I only mean civilization as we know it.
To be honest, I don't think any of this really matters. My very generic New Year's resolutions this year are: 1) to take advantage of each individual day and 2) to do something I am afraid of every day. So far I've been doing pretty well.
I try not to rationalize whether 2012 will be the end of the world, because if it's going to be I figure there really isn't much I (or we) can do to stop it. All I can really do is get the most out of every day for every year that I am blessed with. Sounds like a plan to me.
Feliz Moreno is a sophomore English major and editor of the Opinion section.