There have been some astonishing, life-affirming occurrences over the last ten time. But you don’t want to be conscious of about those, do you?

Thought not. Here’s the most crushing letdowns of the decade…

10. The Y2K Bug: Crappest techno-adversity ever (1st January 2000)
The disappointments started early this decade. For years there had been rumblings about an impending IT meltdown due to the widespread (plus rather short-sighted) abbreviation of years into two digits.

As media scaremongers counted down to the apocalyptic ’00 switchover, the Millenium Bug hype ramped up considerably and, as I remember it, people began stockpiling tins of analogue nutrition and steam-powered hair straighteners in a desperate bid to stave off the annihilation of civilisation.

At this time, I’m no apocalypse-seeking Luddite, but I was looking forward to a tiny post-millennial enthusiasm – maybe some light looting, or the eradication of global credit card data. Plus I had a large stack of unread books to catch up on.

Alas, the year 2000 got wind of here and what did we get? Problems issuing bus tickets Australia. Rubbish.

9. Firefly gets annulled: What a gorram disappointment (December 2002)
Joss Whedon’s quietly awesome sci-fi parts was doomed from the start when Fox TV’s executive idiots decided to air the initial episodes in the wide of the mark order before unceremoniously cancelling it.

It wasn’t necessarily up there with the best shows of the decade, but many lesser products labor under inexplicably clogged up our TVs season after season, year after year (*cough* Lost, *cough* Prison Break).

But not poor older Firefly, which ran for less than one of its intended seven years. That’s nearly three abode of a decade of Cap’n Reynolds in addition to crew’s wisecracks, bar brawls plus bank robberies we lost out on. Instead we got the useless Dollhouse.

8. Indiana Jones 4: Further proof that George Lucas hates human race (22nd May 2008)
George Lucas, the bearded Dark Lord of Disappointment, spent his too soon line of business lovingly crafting wonderful escapist fantasies that defined our childhood years and captured the budding imagination of an entire generation.

During the 1990s, though, he completed his journey to the Dark Side by single-handedly engineering 20th century cinema’s most gut-wrenching disappointment: The Phantom Menace.

This decade, beyond further defecating over our childhood dreams with two supplementary intergalactic kicks to the scrotum, he turned his Mephistophelian hand to overseeing the destruction of his other a good deal of-loved creation: Indiana Jones.

Nuclear blast-proof fridges, long-lasting-lost son clichés and alien conspiracies: this was not the joyous, whip-cracking Indy of old, nevertheless a cynical, hackneyed, CGI-spattered sham. Why do you hate us so much George?

7. Windows Vista: Bill Gates validates Mac owners’ smug faces (30th January 2007)
The monolithic Microsoft Corporation has accepted plenty of criticism over the years. All of which seemed fully justified after the release of their latest operating system which managed to be even crapper than the previous one. Security flaws, hardware compatibility problems, draconian digital rights management – the list goes on and on (and it realizes, at length, on the Wikipedia page entitled “Criticisms of Windows Vista”.)

However, the most grueling thing close to Windows Vista was that it justified the annoying self-fulfillment of Apple Mac owners, making them immensely more irritating and punchable.

6. Duke Nukem Forever: Duke Nukem Never (2000 onwards)
13 life. That’s how protracted we’ve been waiting given that the triumphant return of the wise-cracking, decidedly non-PC video competition conduct hero. After announcing the game way back inside 1997, the developer, 3DRealms, subjected long-suffering fans to a hilariously protracted trickle of screenshots, rumours and bold proclamations of revolutionary content, with the odd teaser trailer thrown in to keep their progressively tenuous hopes existing.

You may wonder what on earth they were using to develop this game. The Antikythera mechanism ? Windows Vista? However, such ponderings – amusing though they are – were rendered irrelevant in May of this each year whilst 3DRealms announced they were shutting down and that civilization on the eight-time winner of Wired.com’s annual vapourware awards had finally ceased.

Or maybe not? Rumour has it that DNF is still on the cards. Time to let it go people…
5. Large Hadron Collider gets switched on: Nothing happens (10th September 2008)
You can’t blame one another for the hype, I suppose, for the LHC is nothing if not utterly esoteric. Therefore, in order to give reason for the staggering costs, and to let us simple folk in on the whole thing, they cranked up the media buzz generator.

The popular press excitably proclaimed that human race was on the cusp of discovering the unifying theory of everything ever in the history of everything (ever), while doomsaying nutjobs predicted that we were about to engagement sucked into a black hole of our own making.

And dammit, it worked. It was an exciting instance: absolutely perplexing, yet pregnant with the wondrous possibilities of human endeavour. The LHC looked like a Bond villain’s lair for Christ’s sake. They had made particle physics sexy.

But then they switched it on. And there was no black hole, plus no instantaneous scientific epiphanies, and our MTV-addled, immediate-gratification-seeking brains just switched off.

And then it blew a fuse.

4. The Matrix sequels: The Wachoswkis disappear up their own rabbit holes (May/November 2003)
Thanks to the downpour of dire movie sequels, cinema historians will look back on the Noughties as “The Decade That Imagination Forgot”. But while most were pointless, cynical continuations of past-their-prime or previously-concluded franchises (see amount 8), the Matrix sequels were of a much more disappointing nature.

The original movie did the 90s in a hugely fulfilling synthesis of existential angst, visual flare, innovative act and clever depth that seemed to herald the audacious cinematic providence of the approaching millennium.

But in its locality of delivering on this commitment, the Wachowski’s blew it. Twice. The originally movie’s inventive action was put back with tired and overblown CGI exercises; the playful deconstruction of notions of actuality gave way to annoyingly oblique cod-philosophy and heavy-handed religious mysticism; and what did we get in place of the original’s effortless cool? That outrageous rave scene.

3. Bush’s re-election: Rest of the world slaps forehead (November 2004)
OK, vote-tampering aside, in some ways it almost made sense. I mean the Democratic candidate… umm… hold on… John Kerry (I just Wikipedia’d it), was hardly a memorable candidate. But from each other logical (and illogical) perspective it was utterly confounding. Bush? Again? WTF America?

There’s a saying where I come from: vote for a fool once, shame on… shame on you. Vote for a fool twice, umm… everyone… each personality will be really, really disappointed.

2. The financial crisis aftermath: Time for a adjust? Erm… no (2007 onwards)
While the financial crisis hit in the latter allotment of the decade, bombarded by grandstanding dogmatic bluster about economic reform, I found myself gripped by a fleeting moment of delusional optimism, during which I almost speculated that our perfidious, vote-pandering leaders were actually capable of instigating tangible, positive alter.

“Finally,” I thought, “the world has accepted that our global economy is a ridiculous mockery, our benevolent leaders will surely rip it down and indoor its place we shall build a progressive, sustainable furthermore just system ushering in an era of serenity and harmony that will last for aeons”. Embarrassment and disappointment soon followed.

To use Homer Simpson’s neologism, the economic crash was a quintessential “crisitunity”. It endowed a real opportunity as genuine change. We could have strike the smug glimpse from the bankers’ jowls as well as told them fasten their damned derivatives and reckless greed.

But with our hands greased by impotent political rhetoric, public apathy and the hegemonic influence of the banking sector, the chance slipped ended our fingers. Instead, we allowed the bankers to go near to their greedy business, risking global economic security in the ceaseless pursuit of growth and profits. This time, however, with us footing the bill.

As Homer would say: D’oh!

1. No contact with alien life forms: Seriously, this is getting boring (2000 onwards)
We grasp you’re out there you little green bastards. A simple “hello” would have sufficed. We’d spent the before decade with Mulder and Scully pretty much proving your existence, stamping the notion of your imminent arrival onto our collective consciousness on a weekly basis. And you don’t even have the decency to flip up.

Here’s an suggestion for you: give up the covert cavity probing, grow some balls – or the extra-terrestrial anatomical equivalents – and stop disappointing everyone.

You better show unsleeping next year with a good excuse and some sweet gadgets or you’ll make Arthur C. Clarke look cherish a right dick. And that’s not cool.