Here we are at the end of an old year and the start of a new one. Time for New Year’s predictions and resolutions because this show has a deadline, and my editor, Rosette “Don’t Let His Sweet Name Fool You” Royale, won’t give me the three extra days I’ve begged for even over the holidays!
I’ve just eaten all this food and watched six hours of vapid Christmas specials I can’t even remember. I think there were two hours of Seth Rogen wearing fake antlers and playing Jeff Dunham’s dummy saying, “I will kill you” almost nonstop, except for breaks for commercials about PlayStations (made in China, keep your Asian countries straight). By the way, you know you’re living in a world with lopsided values when you find out your Google spell-checker won’t let you misspell Seth Rogen. It knows the proper spelling of the names of everyone in the news who matters.
My first prediction is that, now that it looks like being hacked by North Korea is the best thing that can happen to a movie that should never have been made, being hacked by North Korea will become the standard practice. Anyone who is anybody will have to have had a project hacked by North Korea. This trend comes too late for Peter Pan Live!
Washington State’s Department of Transportation (WSDOT) just announced this week that the tunnel to replace the viaduct won’t be ready until August 2017. I predict that during 2015, WSDOT will announce that the tunnel won’t be completed until March 2018. Then, WSDOT will announce it won’t be done until June 2020, then, sometime in 2023. Around this time next year, WSDOT will promise to finish it as soon as Seattle pays them One Million Dollars.
When we do, WSDOT’ll take it and announce “Just kidding; we meant we’d finish as soon as we finish owning you.”
I predict that for 12 excruciatingly long months the United States will see a raging public debate between those who say torture is wrong and those who say if terrorists aren’t tortured the war on terrorism will never end. And besides, it’s better that an innocent terrorist suffers than that a guilty terrorist gets fed orally.
Kicking homeless people in Seattle parks will increase in the coming year as weather conditions improve, peak near June, then drop off dramatically again starting late September as the cold weather sets in, and as thugs choose to remain indoors.
Indictments for kicking homeless people will remain at the current level of zero.
Nationwide, I expect sporadic indictments of police officers for shooting or choking to death unarmed black men, perhaps as many as two or three indictments in the year, but there will be no resulting convictions.
Nevertheless, each indictment will prompt police associations to charge prosecutors and elected officials with betrayal and threaten strikes. But unfortunately they will never follow through.
Mitigating against those trends, 2015 will see more police departments across the country introducing the increasingly popular “Happy Detention,” in which police force you to stop, ask you if you know what you did wrong and then, just as you’re starting to cry, force you to accept gift certificates for Target.
For the longest time, no one will notice that they never stop drivers of beaters, or that pedestrians don’t rate, either. You have to be this respectable to be offered your inducement.
After years of resisting calls to curb carbon emissions, the Republicans will shift gears, when large numbers of their supporters decide that carbon-12 is the Beast of Revelations.
Talk of 666 naturally brings me to my New Year’s resolutions. My main goal this year will be to finish the year as the Beast of a Number no greater than 179.
I resolve to cut back on public whining. I will strive to whine less than once every 15 minutes, on average, counting time spent sleeping.
Private whining, cursing and punching of air will continue unabated until general conditions improve markedly.
Editor’s note: Dr. Wes will get three extra days to write his first column of 2015, which will probably contain 666 words.
Yours truly,
Rosette “Sourpuss” Royale