NOSTRADAMUS 'R' US: a look at the future from the gap

The old crystal ball ain’t what it used to be, but…let me see…maybe… ah, it's starting to come in...in 2008:

Barack Obama has his family tree recharted and finds out that he and Michael Richards are related through a common descendancy from a paternal great-great-great-great uncle of Alice B. Toklas. Dick Cheney is heard to say, ”Does that make me Jewish?” to which Mary replies, “No. But it doesn’t make me Gertrude Stein either.”

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is shot accidentally, while cleaning up cow chips at the President’s ranch in Texas as a part of his community service, by Dick Cheney who is hunting quail with a .357 magnum. The bullet lodges just above Scooter’s third left side rib. Cheney is saved from an unmerited charge of attempted manslaughter when the emergency medical team arrives quickly and hears Cheney say, “Trust me. I’m an expert on open heart surgery,” before he attempts to extract the bullet with an Arkansas toothpick and a pair of channel locks.

Clem Rampart, while hunting up some food chases a rabbit onto the back yard of Graceland and his errant bullet bubbles up some of what turns out to be an 89 billion barrel reserve of sweet crude. Immediately, Elvis goes to the top of the list of the richest men in the whole world. As a series of consequences, Detroit unveils plans to turn out a new line of 16 cylinder pick-up trucks and 5 ton SUV’s; Al Gore is stripped of his Nobel Prize and declared insane and transported by boat to a health clinic on an island that used to be the state of Vermont; Mr. Rampart receives a 1959 Cadillac as a reward.

Mel Gibson finishes filming his ten hour epic “Bandstandopolis” in the original Pig Latin with subtitles. He lists Dick Clark as technical advisor. The stress of the project makes Mel turn to drink and he has himself driven in a limousine through New York City shouting from the open top, “___fay isthay owntay! And that ______ingfay ___Jay, oombleBlayergay!”

Dan Brown publishes his new book, The Da Bortioni Code in which he submits that the secret of the descendancy of the Whore of Babylon is encrypted in the works of Mary Shelley, the Brontes, Louisa May Alcott, and Oscar Wilde on through to Emily Dickenson and Judith Rossner and is guarded zealously by an occult sect of the Daughters of the American Revoulution and the Sisters of Mercy, because if the identity of the last descendant, who works in front of a tattoo parlour off Hollywood and Vine, were revealed, the price of street sex would plummet to a low that would threaten the economy of the major cities of the world—and some minor ones.

Rush Limbaugh writes a book, My Life On Oxycodone and Viagra, in which he reveals a secret obsession with Nancy Pelosi and Asian porn, and for which he tearfully appears on “Oprah” wearing a splint on his crotch, whereby Oprah has her own doctor examine it for authenticity and finds no more than a severe case of prolapsis ani, whereupon Oprah says, “What we have here is a genuine cry for help.”

Ann Coulter is interviewed by E. D. Hill on Fox News Live and reveals herself to be Howard Stern in drag.

Mitt Romney, citing the vast expenditure by candidates (including his own money) on their campaigns, vows that his first act in office if elected will be to shorten presidential terms to 2 years and Congressional terms to 1 in order to use that cash flow to pull the economy out of the funk that administrative policies have put it in, and to show off his best strength to the nation, which is campaigning. The yawn that erupts throughout the land is so tremendous, it frightens the Pentagon into DEFCON 4.

A semi trailer carrying a full load of toys made in China overturns inside the Lincoln Tunnel and FEMA responds immediately and seals it off indefinitely while it sweeps up the toxins, and evacuates a three mile perimeter around the Tunnel, sending the White people to temporary quarters in the Warwick New York Hotel and all others to a migrant camp in South Carolina.

New Orleans passes an ordinance that all refuges from Katrina that wish to resettle in the city must each have either his own recipe for gumbo or be able to play a reed instrument. And have money for a new house.

After a morale-boosting visit in the field from Pat Robertson, a new sect practicing neo-fundamentalist Christianity forms out of the numbers of civilian volunteer watchdogs along the U.S.-Mexican border who will now crucify illegal aliens to saguaros in the firm conviction that they will be resurrected in New Hampshire as staunch Republicans. Democrats, foreseeing the dwindling of their constituency, push to outlaw the sale of vinegar along the border states.

Representatives of The Guiness Book Of World Records are invited by the Administration to sit in on the debriefing of detainees in Guantanamo. Responding to public outcries against waterboarding during interrogation, Michael Mulkasey says, “It isn’t torture if they’re willing to resist and go for the record!”

Iran accidentally detonates its first nuclear device with plutonium provided by Russia. In the absence of Iran’s top nuclear physicist, Ardeshire Hassanpour, who was assassinated (some believe by Israel) last year, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says, “How tough can it be to work one of these things?” and has one of the technicians jiggle some wires, making it go off close enough to Tehran to scare it into suspending all further testing. The technician loses three fingers, but Ahmadinejad has to move out of the palace. He glows in the dark and keeps everybody awake.

Rudy Giuliani asks Mitt Romney, “Is it true what they say about Mormons?”

Senator Hillary Clinton, answering a queston from the League of Women Voters, says, “I’ve been through all that before. Sex is not a four letter word, and adultery isn't either, unless of course, judgmentally, presupposing a situation in which the sum of those two words can be divided equally to signify a context heretofore containing other than plausibility and material probity, they can be utilized as an indictment warranting no more significant a penalty than offhand sardonicism.”

Happy New Year, Everybody!

Noe.

It's your deal, Mr. Matheson...

When the nights are clear, starlit and deep, and quiet, they remind you of Destry for some reason. He had never been out of the state, rarely out of the county, before he got a ground floor job with an electronics firm and moved away. The friends that he hasn’t seen in at least 20 years say that he’s become a millionaire and travels all over the world. In other words, Destry gave up everything.

By the night of the stag party, he hadn’t had much left to lose. His high school sweetheart/wife, had just left him. His best friend was getting married. The three that made it to the wee hours of the morning with him engaged Destry in a game of penny ante dealer’s choice so quiet and tense it could have been a match between Wyatt Earp and the Clantons.

The guy who was in charge of the entertainment had brought in a battered, untrackable copy of “Deepthroat” and it was unwatchable; everybody settled—maybe gratefully—for a late night showing of “Forbidden Planet” on the tube. The honoree had already gone home. It didn’t help that the bride to be could have been the twin of Anne Francis.

Destry threw his cards down in a way that said the game was over. Nobody argued. These events contain an underlying sadness that has a general kinship with the humor at a wake.

He said, “What makes a beautiful girl who could have done something valuable with her life settle for next to nothing?”

His friends didn’t dare say, “Like who?” It had become Destry’s party.

On the chance that he was talking about Anne Francis, you say, “’Forbidden Planet’ is a classic of its kind. Its story line is based on one of Shakespeare’s plays.”

When you’ve stayed sober all night by being totally out of the mood to get drunk, you get into a weird kind of momentum, and you either dispute everything or accept everything. The guys look wearily to Destry, but he just smiles. He says, “You know that girl that works in photo? The blonde?”

“Sure.”

‘What do you think? Beautiful, huh?”

“Gorgeous.”

“She was a year behind me in school. She started to hang out with my sister after I graduated. Sis used to pass me notes from her. Now she’s pregnant. The guy plays guitar for a bar band.”

“There’s something about musicians.”

“She could’ve been anything: a model—maybe even a movie star.”

“Not everybody’s raised to value those things, Destry. But everybody counts.”

“You write, don’t you? Don’t you want to be famous?”

“No. But I want people to read what I write.”

“I look at people, what they’re capable of, and I always expect that their ablities will take them places, but they never seem to. Like I’m in competition with everybody else, you know. I want to succeed before you do. Nobody’s ever said I’m any great shakes, but I expect things of myself.”

Destry’s losses are uncountable, and irretrievable. He can’t afford to lose anymore. “Go for it, Destry.”

“It’s such a big world. It makes you feel small and weak. Like you gotta get some kind of power to hang on to the things in life that are yours.” He gets up and turns to the window and takes the two steps to it and stands looking out into the night. His friends sit immobile peering quietly into a dark universe of their own. Destry says, “Sometimes I feel like 'The (Incredible) Shrinking Man,' melting down to nothing in front of all those stars. But I can’t accept it like he can.”

He passes quietly past you on his way to bed. Everybody waves at nobody and nothing in particular, and the two sitting across from each other shuffle a deck and begin to play hearts without talking. You bring down a fist lightly on the table as a gesture of good night and get up and head for the front door.

Outside, the night is darker than usual and the canopy seems more vast but glittering like a layer of shale encrusted with diamonds. Not everyone was meant to be bigger than life, but the only shortcoming in this world is to think small…

“God’s silver tapestry spread across the night—and in that moment I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite: I had thought in terms of man’s own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature.

That existence begins and ends is man’s conception, not nature’s.

And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away, and in their place came…acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation .. it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too.

Yes! Smaller than the smallest…I meant something, too! To God there is no zero.

I still exist!”

Noe.

State of the Union

Colby came in to the station for a few dollars worth of gas on the way to his job today. He works the second shift. The car he drives is a vintage model that can’t possibly date from much past the year that they started to put emission controls on all vehicles. He keeps it running while he’s fueling because it might not start up again if he turns it off. In it’s day, the ride was a cherry, but that was before Colby’s time. He’s younger than the car.

Colby was gone for a few months when he went into the service, but he broke his leg in training, and it never set quite right, so they sent him home, and now he stands eight hours a day at an assembly line putting cardboard boxes together for minimum wage, the angle of his body growing steeper by the minute away from the leg that he favors. He carries a bottle of across-the-counter ibuprofin in his pocket.

“When’s the price coming down?”

“I don’t know, Colby. Whenever people don’t need to drive anymore, I guess.”

“They don’t need to drive at this price.”

People from the adjacent pumps keep looking over and making faces because Colby’s vehicle is belching smoke worse than O’Leary’s cow, and they wonder why he hasn’t been told to turn his ignition off.

“Have you started school yet, Colby?”

“Nah. I’m gonna have to wait a year or so. My girl friend’s got that ‘mersa’ and she can’t work or go to school either, and the hospital says she didn’t get it there.”

“You need some insurance, Colby.”

“I ain't even got insurance on this car.”

Making small talk with a guy who can't afford to bet a dollar on the state lottery isn’t the easiest thing in the world. “Got your Christmas tree up yet, Colby?”

“Nah. We’re all pooling some money to buy a computer so that we can talk to Mom this Christmas.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Where's she at?”

“Saudi.”

“Now wait a minute, Colby! Saudi Arabia? What’s she doing there?”

“Right now she’s lying in an Army hospital with pneumonia.”

A quick wit is essential for survival in this brave new world, but it’s as rare as cheap gasoline, too. That’s why most of us don’t exhibit true signs of life. “Is she going to be all right?”

Cody says, “Sure”, then, “Damn!” He over-ran his daily quota on a gas card that he doles out in $5 allotments through the week. He says, “I wish the price’d go down.”

“You know, Colby, gas sells for around 90 cents over where your mom is at.” Boy, are you on top of things!

“It was half that according to my mom the last time she wrote. I guess they're driving bigger camels now.”

“Now, Colby, be nice.” You can't help but laugh, but political correctness has pretty much shit-canned humor in this country.

“Those people never did nothing for me...but... well, yeah, I quess you’re right. My mom wouldn't risk her life if it wasn't worth it.”

Watching him rattle workward in his guzzler, you realize that except for Colby’s kinship with misfortune, he might have been able to see his mom this Christmas.

Then again, maybe breaking his leg was the biggest stroke of luck he ever had in his life.

Noe.