Dave Barry's 2004 year in review

Abroad, Yasser Arafat collapses and is taken to a hospital, where his condition rapidly worsens and continues to worsen until nobody thinks it can get any worse, but somehow it does. "It's really bad," says a hospital spokesperson. "We've never seen anybody achieve this degree of worsening without kicking the actual bucket."

Osama bin Laden, who has not been seen or heard from in quite a while, releases a video in which he states that he is "willing to listen to offers from satellite radio."

In other international news, Afghanistan's historic first democratic elections go off without a hitch, except for an unexplained 27,500 votes from residents of Palm Beach County, Fla.

Speaking of elections, in . . .

November

. . . the 2004 U.S. presidential election campaign, which has been going on since the early stages of the Cher Farewell Tour, finally staggers to the finish line. John Kerry easily sweeps to a 53-state landslide victory in the exit polls and has pretty much picked out his new Cabinet when word begins to leak out that the actual, physical voters have elected George W. Bush. Democrats struggle to understand how this could have happened, and, after undergoing a harsh and unsparing self-examination, conclude that red-state residents are morons. Some Democrats threaten to move to Canada; Republicans, in a gracious gesture of reconciliation, offer to help them pack.

The post-election recriminations and name-calling continue for more than a week, until finally the public, realizing that there are still important issues that affect the entire nation, returns its attention to the Scott Peterson trial, which finally ends with the jury finding Peterson guilty of being just unbelievably irritating. The verdict means sudden unemployment for thousands of cable-news legal analysts, who return to their cave to hang upside down by day and suck cow blood by night until they are called for the next big TV trial.

Meanwhile there are big changes in the Bush Cabinet, the most notable involving Secretary of State Colin Powell, who announces his resignation after returning from a trip to find all his office furniture replaced by Condoleezza Rice's. Attorney General John Ashcroft also announces that he will leave the Cabinet to resume private life as a frozen haddock.

Dan Rather also resigns, on orders received via the secret radio in his teeth.

In other presidential news, thousands attend a festive dedication of the 70,000-square-foot William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., next door to the 90,000-square-foot William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Cafeteria.