The Corpuscle

Late in the year, an election will be held somewhere in western Nebraska and the winner will be a write-in candidate no one has every heard of, much less voted for. The Air Force will cordon off the area.

On Arbor Day, people will notice their refrigerator magnets drifting to the West. Small dogs will stare ceaselessly at the backs of phone books.

On Christmas Day, people will exchange pleasantries instead of gifts. A new feeling of public-spiritedness will sweep the land. People will forget how to download to their I-Pods. The average height of American males will go up to something over six and a half feet.

Americans will understand the Alternative Minimum Tax. The Death Tax will be renamed the Estate Tax. A strange mossy growth will spread throughout the Mojave.

In July, ten to twelve major American cities will be rendered uninhabitable by terrorist attack. The American people will demand the Constitution be suspended and that democratic government be replaced by a Republican military dictatorship. Soon a small internet radio station will spring up. Liberty will become the new black. George W. Bush will be spirited out of the country on a military transport, retiring to Uzbekistan. The Second American Republic will rise from the ashes.

Fox News will become a small, 5,000 watt station outside Ottumwa, Iowa, specializing in religious broadcasts by a mysterious Swami who hails from Sao Paolo, Brazil. By November, the regular hosts will be speaking in incomprehensible tongues. Their cinder block building out there to State Route 17 will burn to the ground. Arson by the radio personalities themselves will be suspected. The Smithsonian will be renamed a name nobody can pronounce. Most folks will take to calling it Natalie May.

The Moon will lose patience with us and go off seeking greener pastures. An obscure Republican think-tank will blame it on the recently discovered Gay Gene, but most Americans will sleep better at night, no longer fretting over the comings and goings of the tides.

New Orleans will cease appearing on maps of the United States.

People will remember there used to be a city called New Orleans. Its putative existence will become legend, a modern-day El Dorado. Parties of explorers will set out, but none will ever return.

People, inexplicably, will stop drinking Merlot.

Cats will take to walking backwards and bumping into things with their butts.

All in all, an eventful year, I should think. Try to have a good one.