It is our fervent hope here at Durstco that all you loyal readers join us in welcoming the elixir of opportunity that is 2017 and pray that it goes down smoother than that most recently departed year whose name has been wiped from our memory banks. It might have had something to do with a one, a zero, a two and a six. Not necessarily in that order.

“The Year That Shall Not Be Named” sucked like an industrial strength vacuum cleaner designed to inhale rocks the size of Saskatchewan, leaving a stench in its wake like a twelve-month moored garbage scow with none of the attendant charm. It was a Mt. St. Helens, Jamestown Flood, Titanic, Hindenburg, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kind of a year.

On a major league suckage scale of one to 10, the previous annum would rate at about 4,937. It was to suck like sewage is to stink. The suckiest of the sucky. Suckalicious. Suckatosic. Suck- O- Rama. With a sucktosity able to strip the chrome off the back bumper of a ‘57 Thunderbird.

Maybe it was that extra leap day that tipped the balance from the merely sucktastic to the sucklandish. Turning ordinary ugly into grievously heinous. But those 366 days of death and destruction and disaster and desolation and disease and despair and diabolical and discombobulation was only tempered by the fact that we survived. Barely, and not all of us. But then, the most fiendish always leave a few alive to tell the tale.

Or could Star Trek’s James T. Kirk have gone back in time thoroughly messing things up again, causing a rift in the space-time continuum? That would certainly explain the Cubs winning the World Series, an orange clown becoming President, a third Kung Fu Panda film and Spam musubi on cauliflower rice.

The year that bridged 2015 and 2017 was to happy times what banana daiquiris are to reinforced concrete support beams. What barbed-wire wrapped bats are to panty hose. Inspector Clouseau and calm analytical judgment. Marbles and scissors.

Queen Elizabeth once referred to a particularly bad year, as an “annus horriblis” and the 31,622,400 seconds we recently escaped was exponentially that, with one of the “N’s” removed. The threat of another 52 weeks like the one we just endured makes you want to build a bunker in the back yard and fill it to the brim with Little Debbie Snack Cakes and bourbon. Not necessarily in that order.

Or perhaps the calendar most recently ripped off the wall was a plot by the Pharmaceutical Industry to sell more anti- depressants. Anyhow, whatever you want to call what recently sunk into blessed oblivion, almanac-wise, good riddance to bad rubbish. Don’t let the doorknob hit you in the butt on the way out. Get while the getting’s good. Even though it’s way too late.

And a big fat wet sloppy kiss on both cheeks to 2017. Come on in, take off your coat. Sit down a spell. Put your feet up. We’re counting on you to take the chill off the air. But, hey. No pressure.You have some awfully tiny shoes to fill. Star Wars 8 come this December already puts you halfway to the good.

Will Durst is an award-winning, nationally acclaimed columnist, comedian and former short haul truck diver of plaster molds.