The satirist is in fine form as he gives us his take on the year past as well as peek over the horizon to see what 2014 might be like.

Essentially, 2013 was the "Year of the Zombie." Barry explains:

Not in the sense of most of humanity dying from a horrible plague and then reanimating as mindless flesh-eating ghouls. No, it was much worse than that.

It was the resurrection of themes and personalities from years past that made 2013 zombie-like.

It wasn't just people who came back alarmingly in 2013. The Cold War with Russia came back. Al-Qaeda came back. Turmoil in the Middle East came back. The debt ceiling came back. The major league baseball drug scandal came back. Dennis Rodman came back and went on humanitarian missions to North Korea (or maybe we just hallucinated that). The Endlessly Looming Government Shutdown came back. People lining up to buy iPhones to replace iPhones that they bought only minutes earlier came back. And for approximately the 250th time, the Obama administration pivoted back to the economy, which has somehow been recovering for years now without actually getting any better. Unfortunately, before they could get the darned thing fixed, the administration had to pivot back to yet another zombie issue, health care, because it turned out that Obamacare, despite all the massive brainpower behind it, had some "glitches," in the same sense that the universe has some "atoms."

Were there any new trends in 2013? Yes, but they were not good. Kale, for example. Suddenly this year restaurants started putting kale into everything, despite the fact that it is an unappetizing form of plant life that until recently was used primarily for insulation. Even goats will not eat it. Goats, when presented with kale, are like, "No, thanks, we'll just chew on used seat cushions."

Another annoying 2013 trend was people who think it is clever to say "hashtag" in front of everything. Listen carefully, people who think this is clever: Hashtag shut up.

Did anything good happen in 2013? Yes! There was one shining ray of hope in the person of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford , who admitted that, while in office, he smoked crack cocaine, but noted, by way of explanation, that this happened "probably in one of my drunken stupors." This was probably the most honest statement emitted by any elected official this year, and we can only hope that more of our leaders follow Mayor Ford's lead in 2014. (We mean being honest, not smoking crack in a drunken stupor.) (Although really, how much worse would that be?)

You'll be nodding your head in agreement as you laugh out loud at Barry's penetrating and incisive wit. Pay particular attention to his take on Miley Cyrus.

That one's a keeper.

H/T: Rich Baehr