The new year has arrived and it is awful, what with bird/fish/crab death, floods, freezing temperatures, and zombie ex-Vice Presidents. So let's just put it all out there and list the reasons why this is already the worst year ever.

Birds have been dying off all week. There were the original gangsters in Arkansas, then their copycats in Louisiana. And now there's a threepeat in East Texas and a fourpeat in Kentucky.

Not to be outdone by their mortal enemies, fish have decided to die in vast numbers just like the birds. In God-cursed Arkansas and Satan-blessed Florida. I know this is a common occurrence or whatever, but still.

And what's with the more than 40,000 crabs that have washed up on English beaches in recent days? They died of hypothermia, so it's probably a sign that all the ice caps are still melting, making the water colder, and soon we'll be battling computerwolves alongside Jake Gyllenhaal. (Doesn't sound too bad, actually.)

The terrible flood waters in Australia apparently contain lots of poisonous snakes and crocodiles. But not dead ones. Living, biting ones. So that's great for everyone.

Rivers are turning green for no reason. (Update: Oh, phew. It looks like this was just a prank. Maybe everything else is too??)

The bumblebees are pretty much all gone at this point.

In non-animal related bad news, the 112th Congress starts school today, with a John Boehner-led Republican House that is hell-bent on taking away your health care and injecting you with yellow fever.

Oh, and speaking of evil Republicans, inhuman monster Dick Cheney has no pulse but is still trucking along, writing books and sporting a new lease on not-life. Meanwhile his underworld bride who will reign with him for a thousand years after the Great Fires, Michele Bachmann, might run for president. Terrific.

A guy in a wheelchair was shot by police in San Francisco.

It's really cold. There was snow in LA on Monday! And in Las Vegas, too!

Other awful, non-Congress things that are back this week? The Bachelor and radical Iraqi cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Coincidence? I think not.

Oh look. Lots and lots more dead fish.

Jim Carrey got old. That's not a huge tragedy, but, y'know. Time.

[Image via Shutterstock]