2008 A.D. vs 8 A.D.

Which year will go down as the best, or at least not the worst?

SHAWN:  Let’s flashback shall we. To a simpler time. A time when war was “happening” and the economy was “unstable” and the Presidential election was still “up in the air” due to “racism”. And, most importantly, a time before Hotel for Dogs. Yes, friends, I am talking about 2008. The year gave us so many great things—Joe the Plumber, the deadliest natural disaster since 2004 (Sarah Palin), abounding bankruptcies, and a school collapsing in Haiti. However, through it all, and through our President’s wisely quivering lower lip, we consistently remembered, “Hey, at least it’s we’re not dying of leprosy.” Which, simply, is why it was way better than 8.

RYAN: I disrespectfully disagree. 8 A.D. may have had its problems with leprosy, but let’s not pretend that 2008 was some walk in the park. Fifty years from now, historians will look back on 2008 and wonder “what the hell happened?” Too many problems, too many pirates, too many lives ruined. I admit, there may have been a few sprinkles of good (most notably Not Another Disaster Movie), but those sprinkles aren’t enough to cover up the shitty taste 2008 left in my mouth. Now you’re probably asking, “Okay, well, what happened in 8 that makes it so much better?” That’s precisely my point. No one knows about the year 8 because nothing memorable happened, good or bad. That automatically makes it better than 2008, right?

SHAWN: Someone (you) needs to realize (I’m talking about you) that (listen, you) our intern Stewart can be good for more than missing errors while fact-checking, but we can make him do a little googling here and there (not that our information usually comes from a random third-party source like Encyclopedia Brittanica). So don’t go around saying nobody knows about the horrors of year 8. We may have banished 7% of jobs in 2008, but year 8 saw Ovid banished from Rome! I guess you don’t care much for classic poetry. And in 8, the Roman general Tiberius defeated the Dalmations! We may have killed innocent Iraqis in 2008, but you would never see us waterboarding puppies. Yeah, and let’s not forget how fabulous 2008 saw Barack Obama elected President of the United States. Year 8 welcomed Vonones I as King of Parthia! And they HATED him! Yeah, the same Parthians who petitioned to bring Rosie Live back.

The Statue of Liberty wearing a snorkel? Hilarious! You can't write that kind of stuff.

 

RYAN: Yeah, I can look up things on Wikipedia just fine, thank you very much. I guess the difference between me and you (besides that 1/8″ in height) is I didn’t want to come across like an arrogant douche listing off people and places that no one has even heard of, let alone cared about. Ovid? Tiberius? Vonones I, King of Parthia? Please. Maybe if Vonones I had been a little more like Phrates IV, Parthia would still be around today. In all your copying and pasting from the Wikipedia entry for 8 A.D., did you bother to notice how there was nothing mentioned of natural disasters, suicide bombers, economic turmoil or Heath Ledger dying? Call me crazy, but I propose a year Heath Ledger didn’t die is exponentially better than a year he did die. Disagreeing with that is akin to spitting in the face of all those who are still in mourning. You wouldn’t want to spit in Mary Kate’s face, would you? …okay, bad example.

SHAWN: First of all, you assume Mary Kate has some kind of aversion to bodily fluids on her face, which I can assure you is not true. And, secondly, how dare you accuse me of spelunking Wikipedia for ubiquitous facts about 8 A.D. like that it was the start of the Chinese Han Dynasty (aka The Lame-Ass Dynasty)? Granted, sad things happened in 2008, especially the death of screen legend Michael Pate, but democracy prevailed. Unlike year 8, when Caesar Augustus canceled the senatorial election and appointed all new positions himself in his empire. Oh, and then threw the Christians to lions and called them “gladiators” while everyone paid money to WATCH PEOPLE DIE. Yeah, things were way better then. Now when we pay to watch people die, it’s just a horror movie where the blood is mostly fake. So we fucked up a little in 2008, but we still weren’t exiling people for shits and giggles…unless we could falsely accuse them of terrorism.

Not in the face?

 

RYAN: Ok, fine. You’re clearly not just copying and pasting from the Wikipedia entry. If you were, you’d at least be getting the facts right. The Chinese Han Dynasty didn’t start in 8 A.D., as you wrongly suggested. 8 A.D. was merely the beginning of the Chushi era of the long-lived, prosperous Han Dynasty. A dynasty that people look back on with admiration and respect. In 50 years, will anybody say the same about anything in 2008? Sure, maybe Obama will fix the country and right everything that’s wrong, but last I checked, he doesn’t step into office until 2009. Don’t forget (as much as we’d all like to) who was in office for the entire calendar year of 2008 and everything he did, regardless of popular opinion and the Constitution.

Next on Danger Queue: Danny Glover vs. Lunchables—The Epitome of Temporal Greatness