Early in the New Year, newspaper editors and columnists often make political, economic, and cultural predictions for the year. It’s a tradition of sorts. After all, the New Year finds many of us looking forward to new beginnings.
However, predicting the future has never been one of my strong suits, as evidenced by my haphazard life-style and my stock market record. Nevertheless, I’m going to push the outer limits of absurdity and give it a shot. Don’t expect much.
• I predict the last square foot of naked earth between Black Diamond and Four Corners will be paved over.
• Four more breweries will open in Enumclaw.
• Texas will vote to secede from the United States.
• Bezos will buy the entire state of Wyoming.
• Trump’s son-in-law will start serving four years in a federal prison, but after three days the president pardons him. Shortly thereafter, Trump will admit he has absolutely no idea what-the-hell is going on in North Korea, the Middle East, or the White House and he resigns the presidency, turning the reins over to Pence.
• A 9.6 scale earthquake will rattle our region and the whole of downtown Seattle, from Denny Way through Pioneer Square, will slide into Puget Sound. Enumclaw will survive the catastrophe relatively unscathed and will become the fastest growing community on the West Coast.
• Enumclaw’s first legal pot shop will open on Cole Street, where the kitchen restaurant used to be. Thereafter, half the downtown businesses will cease having regular business hours; that is, they’ll simply open whenever the owners get around to it.
• It will become increasingly difficult to distinguish between NBC Nightly News and Sponge Bob Squarepants.
• Harvard researchers reveal that 98 percent of all the wealth in the entire world is controlled by four extended families. Upon learning this, newly installed President Pence will declare that the “trickle down” theory of economics doesn’t seem to work. That will be the first thing he says as President — and it will also be the last thing he says for the rest of his term.
• And meanwhile, the Presidential Campaign will be in full swing. The Democrats will field 83 candidates.
• Flu will give up her job on Progressive Insurance commercials and become a major star in porn films.
• The oldest man in King County dies on his 106th birthday. Shortly thereafter, it’s revealed that he’s been drunk every single day for the last ninety years. Reportedly, his last words were: “Ya may as well be drunk as be the way you are!”
And that’s the way it looks to me. Cheers!
