Paul Krassner :
Predictions for 2014

• Steve Jobs, the late founder and chief designer of the Apple Empire, will be honored posthumously by the Wall Street Journal for morphing the concept of planned obsolescence from a negative aspect of capitalism into a shrewd marketing virtue.
• Toddlers who can turn the pages of an electronic magazine on iPad with the swipe of a finger will get frustrated and have tantrums trying to turn the pages of a physical print magazine.
• Millennials will enjoy watching Avatar on their iPhones.
• Google’s chief executive, Larry Page, will retract his prognostication that “Eventually you’ll have an implant, where you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer.”
• Jeff Bezos, who is now the owner of both Amazon.com and the Washington Post, will arrange for subscribers to pay extra for having their copies of the Post delivered by drones.
• Chelsea Manning –- formerly Bradley Manning –- will escape from prison with the aid of wealthy supporters. She will be flown to Russia, staying with fellow whistle-blower Edward Snowden until she finds a place of her own. However, Vladimir Putin will interfere with Manning’s asylum, threatening to throw him out. But Manning’s attorneys will then convince President Putin that, since Manning is of the transgender persuasion, having intercourse with a male individual would legally be considered a heterosexual act.
• Dan Savage — the gay activist who successfully led a mass online prank, landing the word Santorum listed on Google as “1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum [infamous for homophobia]” –- will reveal potential presidential candidate Ted Cruz as a user of Viagra, and although Cruz will fail to obtain an erection, his right arm will stiffen and go straight up.

House Speaker John Boehner will copyright the phrase, “Are you kidding me?”

• House Speaker John Boehner will copyright the phrase, “Are you kidding me?”
• The square Hitler-style mustache will replace goatees as a fashion statement.
• Donald Trump will announce that he plans to make a run for the White House in the 2016 election, but inasmuch as he is an admitted germaphobic and therefore wouldn’t like to shake hands with countless strangers in the process, he will conduct his entire campaign wearing latex gloves.
• Campaign finance reform will finally become a reality as the result of a new law requiring all political contributors to remain anonymous.
• The electoral college will be replaced by a system where voters will choose the polling firm they trust the most.
• Governor Chris Christie will be recalled by the citizens of New Jersey, and a week later he will be hired as a commentator on Fox News.
• Mitt Romney will start smoking a pipe to help him portray the imaginary ultra-straight character Bob Dobbs in a movie about Dobbs’ infamously irreverent Church of the Subgenius.
• Cuban President Raul Castro will no longer accept $1 a year as rent for the United States’ prison in Guantanamo Bay. Rather, he will not only demand a million every month, but he will also insist that Barack Obama lift all sanctions. Castro will become angry with his brother Fidel, who ruled Cuba for almost 50 years, and yet he will end up leading a crusade for term limits.
• President Obama’s primary care physician will leave the White House and return to private practice, because he isn’t listed on Obama’s insurance policy network of doctors in his area.
• The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) will add a new rating for the film industry: PS, for Predictable Screenplay.
• It will be discovered that the first successful cloning of a human being took place 20 years ago, brought to public attention by his act of suing the scientific team that brought him into an unhappy life. The case will be dismissed as a frivolous lawsuit.
• In a moment of vulnerability, Pope Francis will blurt out from his balcony during a speech to a shocked crowd standing in Vatican Square, “After all, you know, I’m not infallible.”
• A horde of angry apes will ransack the Board of Education in Texas for not allowing evolution to be taught.
• Netflix and Hulu will merge, and along with the growth of binge viewers, a mysterious disease will become known as Netflu.
• Organized crime will attempt to produce counterfeit Bitcoins.
• Inspired by Milo Minderbinder, the entrepreneurial hustler in Joseph Heller’s novel, Catch-22, the Monsanto Company will market genetically engineered chocolate-covered cotton.

There will be an epidemic of genetically engineered crops being inundated with genetically engineered crop circles.

• There will be an epidemic of genetically engineered crops being inundated with genetically engineered crop circles.
• Show business celebrity vegetarian converts will include Lady Gaga, who will wear a dress made entirely of heirloom tomatoes, and Meatloaf, who will change his name to Tofuloaf.
• Paranoid hip-hop rapper fans will no longer trust Snopes.com because that website states that Kanye West did not say, “I am the next Nelson Mandela.”
• Louis Uccellini, director of the National Weather Service, will be charged with sexual harassment when he names a tornado Pussy.
• Adolescent boys will trigger a trend across the country with a ritual known as a circle twerk.
• Free online pornography will be allowed in public libraries, but moaning out loud will not be permitted.
• Fetal transplants from poor pregnant girls to wealthy anti-abortion women will become a controversial practice.
• Prescription drugs will serve as a new trend in children’s genderless names, with such examples as Lipitor and Cialis.
• A whistle-blower at the Department of Energy will leak a report concluding that so-called “clean coal” is actually “filthy dirty.”
• Hundred of thousands of jobs will be created as Unemployment Insurance clerks.
• In a surprising change of moral values, the Bank of America will stop doing phone business with the reactionary AT&T. Instead, they will switch to the progressive Credo.
• The Nobel Peace Prize will be secretly awarded to Anonymous.
• North Korea’s beloved young leader will permit 70 McDonald’s restaurants to open all over his dictatorial realm. But, following in his father’s footsteps, he will not allow them to sell any food.
• All around the U.S., Chinese restaurants will substitute the recently popularized word “takeaway” for “takeout” meals.
• A medical team –- the same researchers who concluded that pregnant women who eat peanuts are less likely to give birth to a baby that’s allergic to peanuts — will visit Mr. Peanut, the logo character of Planter’s Peanuts, wearing a top hat, monocle and holding his elegant cane, in a hospital room where he is severely ill. He will be diagnosed as being allergic to human beings.
• Sociologists and anthropologists will take out a full-page ad in The New York Times condemning the “knockout game” as “utterly barbarian,” just as Conrad Alvin Barrett will be going on trial for assaulting a defenseless African-American man at random for no reason except to capture himself on a selfie cellphone video saying, “The plan is to see if I were to hit a black person, would this be nationally televised?” His lawyers will argue that the charge of a “hate crime” is not “equal justice under the law” because the punishment is more than other attackers in the knockout game are sentenced to. The defense team will further claim that hate crimes are unconstitutional because the law discriminates against racists, that all such crimes are hate crimes, and that the only love crime is an assisted suicide.
• The War on Christmas will continue until Easter, because Jesus will come. He will have a tattoo on the bicep of his left arm. Inside a red heart there will be the letters WWID (What Would I Do). He will stop at a soup kitchen on Skid Row and with the soup he will be given a grilled cheese sandwich. He will be thrilled to see on that sandwich an image of himself as an infant, suckling on his mother’s breast. He will suddenly shout out with joy to his fellow homeless friends: “Happy Holidays!”
• There will be a global competition for the best rationalization by a cult leader when the world doesn’t come to an end on any of those days that they prophesized it would.
• Everybody except you will go viral for 15 minutes.