The author is reporting from a fantastically futuristic place known as "Twenty-Eleven."
2011 will be so sparkly you'll be sneezing pixy dust.
Yes, this columnist has made poor predictions before, including this one from 8/30/10: "Donovan McNabb and/or Brett Favre will die by midseason." McNabb merely lost his dignity and $70-plus million, thanks to being benched, and Favre his spine and cerebellum courtesy of my dreadful Buffalo Bills. Still, the Huskies of UConn remain the hottest chicks with balls in the country, my Syracuse Orangemen will make March even madder, and Oregon will shock the world by beating Auburn for the BCS Championship - Only because Heisman QB Cam Newton and his dad bet against themselves and really like ducks, not the fowl, but avoiding questions about cash-money recruitment schemes.2011 promises to keep my Mayan prophecy totally on schedule...The White House's value has fallen from $330 million to $252 million (don't dare blame the African-American inhabitants) according to some stupid real estate service; Brazil has sworn in its first female president, and nearly a million illegal immigrants fled America in 2010 for gainful employment clipping coca leaves and building Fords down south. Related?
Reminiscent of Rome, our military is helping overthrow our republic from within, as if $700 billion isn't enough annual damage. Captain Owen "Dis-" Honors is temporarily relieved of command of the USS Enterprise after making videos featuring simulated sex acts, himself swearing like, well, a sailor, and "that gay guy over there" remarks when we were supposedly at war four years ago - rather juvenile behavior from the then-second-in-command aboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier capable of destroying Syria or San Francisco. A Navy spokesman called the videos "inappropriate" (no blaming "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" for this one) but that's not enough after saluting while spending $1 trillion on Afghanistan and Iraq - so far.
Speaking of Iraq (forget about that fiasco yet?), Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is insisting that all American troops get the f*ck out of his suddenly sovereign country by the end of this year, 2011. Good riddance! He then emphasized his nation's need for oil revenue, forgetting that was supposed to pay for our invasion and expense (soldiers' lives and security). You're very welcome, Halliburton and Exxon-Mobil, enjoy our corrupt version of capitalism.
May sanity be restored to Pentagon budgets (the bipartisan federal debt commission recommended an immediate $100 billion buzz-cut) but Republican leaders are instead focusing on term limits (kidding!) and soapboxes, reading aloud the Constitution while opening the 112th Congress. Republicans are also suggesting $25 million cuts to Congressional operating budgets - not even a spit into our $3 trillion ocean of debt. What about members' earmarks and "Star Wars" missile shield spending? Shhh! Patriots never question their leaders.
Just for fun, count how often the term "death panels" (copyright Sarah "Miss Me?" Palin) is mentioned as Republicans muster hot air to overturn ObamaCare. Good luck stripping health care from students, forsaking infants and elders. Baby boomers surely won't go quietly; androids on Viagra will soon be the norm, stealing livers and lungs from those who forgot to save for retirement. Forget death panels, we need euthanasia picnics.
A brief beam of hope is Independent Lisa Murkowski finally being certified as the winner in Alaska's Senate race for her own seat, and undefeatable Tea Party challenger Joe Miller blathering, "Thus, we are evaluating the ruling and determining what our next step should be." Give up, Joe, you sound like a serial date-rapist - take "no!" for an answer. The paradox of Murkowski's victory is that she is the first write-in winner since Strom "Depends" Thurmond in 1954, or maybe it was 1854.
Forget the fakes and pity the governors taking oaths of office this week. California's Jerry Brown inherits nearly $30 billion in IOUs from The Terminator, and Andrew Cuomo's ceremony in New York resembled a soup kitchen. Give special thanks you aren't in Arkansas, whose only economy is Wal-Mart heirs, with birds and fish dying suddenly and spectacularly: 100,000 dead drum fish were found floating along the Arkansas River, and 5,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings fell from the sky just before midnight New Year's Eve, north of Little Rock. Clean coal, new chemical plant, or the lethal result of a million Razorbacks raising their arms in unison?
Nearly as lethal news: Zsa Zsa Gabor is having half of her cancerous leg with lesions amputated; she is 95 and still has that strange accent. Related news: Lindsay Lohan is out of rehab, again. Related-related news: In Puerto Rico this weekend, a family meeting was called by Justino Sanchez Diaz, who then turned a flamethrower on his kin, burning nine severely.
Sounds like the work of Keyser Soze, the unforgettable yet maybe nonexistent criminal mastermind behind The Usual Suspects. We'll never know now, with the death of Pete Postlethwaite, who played Soze's slick assistant, Kobayashi, in the movie, among many memorable roles, lost at 64 from cancer. Kayser's still alive, though, or is he?
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
