Predictions 31-40
- After years of selling the organs of executed political prisoners, Chinese hospitals run by
the People's Liberation Army will give foreign businessmen in need of transplants the option
of buying a whole prisoner, at a substantial discount over what the same pieces would cost
if purchased separately. This will save China the cost of butchering, and enable the wealthy
to use as many parts as they need -- and even share with fellow wealthy businessmen -- at a
fabulously low price. Prices will further discounted for prisoners who are practitioners of
Falun Gong or are Tibetan Buddhist.
- A high school student with no juvenile record, no history of violence, and a 4.0 average -- who
may also be the reincarnation of Feodor Dostoevski -- will be suspended from school on the
basis of a journal assignment for an English Honors class. The student's
stream-of-consciousness writing will alarm the teacher, who -- without discussing it with
the student -- will pass it on to the school psychologist. The psychologist and a school
social worker will decide -- on the basis of the journal alone -- that the student is
suicidal, homicidal, distressed, deviant, sociopathic, depressed, narcissistic and a threat
to teachers, students and the general population. A few years later, the student will
write an intensely deep, somewhat popular novel based on the same journal entries.
Meanwhile, the teacher, psychologist, social worker and the principal who agreed to expel
him or her will continue to consider creativity to be suspect, consider words to be
controlled substances, and will remain as complacent, unimaginative, sub-par and uninspiring
as a human being can manage.
- Valdosta, Georgia will become concerned over a decrease in player participation in high school
football program. When offering to do their students' homework for them and bump their grades in
exchange for sports enthusiasm doesn't bring seem to help,
the Lowndes County School Board will announce their willingness to "look the other way" when members
of the football team coerce younger girls into performing sexual favors.
- Across the world, sightings of Jerry Garcia piloting a German UFO in 2001 will triple from the
sightings in 2000.
- At a small dinner theater in Manistee, Michigan, actors will be arrested during a performance
of Shakespeare's Othello. In violation of a local ordinance that disallows "indecent, insulting,
immoral or obscene conduct", they will be sentenced to 45 days in jail for their use of racial slurs.
- A 27-year-old man, fired from his job as a dishwasher at a retirement home and on the
verge of moving back in with his parents, will establish another New Age religion
on the basis of a vision he received while reading the contents of a box of cheap,
store-brand granola. This new religion will flourish for several years, during which time its
founder will have no trouble getting laid on a regular basis.
- Moslems living in Jerusalem and its surroundings, in retaliation for multiple injustices suffered
at the hands of Israelis -- and curious about the taste of pork -- will begin
taking Jews hostage at random and eating them.
- The Reverend Doctor Jerry Falwell -- yielding to the sin of gluttony prior to his scheduled
sermon -- will consume four Twinkies and a Hostess fruit pie in under 90 seconds. The
resulting explosion will wipe out a quarter of the population of Lynchburg, Virginia and leave
a crater a half mile wide.
- In Provo, Utah, coeds at Brigham Young University will continue to be limited to
one pair of earrings. However male students -- previously asked to avoid piercings altogether --
will be allowed to sport earrings up to, but not exceeding, a number equal to the wives to
whom they intend to be married in the Resurrection.
- In St. Peter's Basilica, during a post-81st birthday mass discussion, the Roman Catholic
Pontiff will let slip that during the war, he strangled a Jew in Krakow, just to watch him
die.
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