by SWANS
Infamous Predictions™
"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
—Niels Bohr (1885-1962)"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.""Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it."
—Paul Valéry (1871-1945)
—Jules Renard (1864-1910)
(Swans - December 31, 2007 - January 1, 2008) "You know what," avers our master of ceremony, "it's becoming increasingly difficult to come up with obnoxious irreverences -- almost a hardship." Why so, he is asked. "Dunno," he responds. "Maybe it's the triteness, the hackneyed boredom of our 21st century culture, filled with clichés and doohickeys, or the navel-centered, materialistic, arrogant strand of our elites, who "decide" what's good for the world...as they keep destroying it. I don't know for sure. I am not an anthropologist. But, I can assure you those fuckers will carry on with no end in sight." Hmm, send the hangman crowd. The man ought to be tarred, feathered, and railroaded through a hanging noose on the local tree limb. "I think we are ensnared by rigidity," he continues, "as though our left lobe has atrophied to the point it cannot react to the sheer evidence of our right-lobe-provoked follies, and people are much too afraid to rock the boat... What will the neighbors say, what will the FBI do? We have become such a fearful, petrified nation, that no creativity of the senses can overcome the gores of our technological prowess. We've turned into gadget-aggregated zombies. Does an iPod have a sense of humor? Can Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert be funny on their own, without the hidden hand of underpaid creative writers?"
So, what would you want to communicate to our readers? "Tell them we are all FUBAR and that, along with André Breton and company, I send them le mot de Cambronne."
With that enlightening statement in mind, here is our crop of malarkey gibberish gabble twaddle claptrap idiocies that once a year is brought to whoever reads our excommunicated publication, which thankfully is widely ignored by the ever enlarging community of faith seekers and the sanctimonious frozen-left-lobe crowd. Welcome to our Infamous Predictions™, courtesy of a bevy of Swans.
Laughter to the rescue!
• Joe Lieberman will convert to Christianity but will be banned from attending church services because of his refusal to remove his yarmulke.
• Caught red-handed copulating with his dog Barney, the future ex-resident, George W. Bush, will announce that like his favorite lap dog, he'll convert to Catholicism and thus be forgiven for his sins. Tony Blair cannot wait to be a bottom to Georgie.
• Once sated, gorged, filled, and bodily satisfied, the couple journeys to Tehran where, with the benediction of Poppy, the twosome proselytize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who eventually converts to the greater cause and becomes the very first "officially" gay Iranian, thus contradicting his former declamations about the non-existence of homosexuals in his country. It is reported that Ehud Olmert is next in line.
• The Office of Faith-Based Initiatives receives a $2.5 billion grant to solve the subprime mortgage crisis. The money will be earmarked to offer prayers for those who lost their homes to foreclosure, welcoming them into the Lord's house.
• John McCain, demonstrating the act of waterboarding to a group of Republican skeptics, will accidentally drown himself. Bush, denying that waterboarding is torture, will claim it was all a campaign publicity stunt and refuse to attend the funeral. Support for McCain's presidential run finally soars.
• Poppy Benedict XVI directs the Vatican's bureaucrats to annul the first two marriages of Nicolas Sarkozy, the diminutive president of France and honorific canon of San Giovanni in Laterano, the mother of all churches in the world, so that the French gaucho (or is it Groucho?) may wed Carla Bruni, the 39-year-old polyandrous Italo-French singer, in a ceremony at Notre Dame.
• Sarkozy in turn announces that the Catholic faith is once again, at long last, the official religion of France and that the country recovers the long coveted designation of the "eldest daughter of the Church."
• Both Poppy and Sarko strongly deny any quid pro quo and put the accent on "positive secularism." Religion is back in full force. Aristide Briand rises back from the dead to launch a new December 9, 1905, movement to rekindle the wall of separation between church and state. He is immediately assassinated.
• Like his predecessor, Poppy will require the help of his favorite altar boy to make his prick stick. Sarkozy will apply for the position, though he'll be beaten to the wire by Tony Blair, the latest convert to "Devilism." Poppy gets a second life. The choir intones Alleluias.
• Poppy, a good German, will get fed-up with Italians all speaking at the same time and sometimes interrupting him. He'll be heard murmuring: "Christ Almighty, is it only the Mafia that shuts up in this country?" Before issuing his Encyclical against Repartee, he'll send emissaries to England where he's been told people actually listen. But his spies in purple will report back, "They're not listening; they're sleeping."
• Peace at long last in the Holy Land: Compared to cockroaches in Manhattan, Palestinians come to the realization that the cockroaches have a swell time -- they keep being crushed and still manage to multiply -- and decide to change their political strategy by becoming cooks in Israeli kitchens and sleeping in pantries. Happy with the culinary arrangement (no more violence, extremism, etc.) the Israeli parliament ratifies the new policy and thus an unequal bi-nationalism is born.
• In a trailblazing news conference reminding the audience of the birth pangs of the New Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserts that the US administration considers Pakistan a model of democracy and stability, which said administration wants to emulate in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and all other countries of that peaceful region (except Israel, the other model of democracy and stability).
• Barack Obama, as was long suspected, will be revealed to be Osama bin Laden. This will in no way hinder his candidacy for the highest office in the land since Americans adore politicians who pursue double lives. Furthermore, he follows in the steps of Michael Jackson and becomes a bleached white performer who calls for change so long as his bank account grows in tandem.
• Mike Huckabee will receive a visitation from Jesus Christ explaining that, in a private convocation, all the saints have begged him to withdraw his candidacy for president as he is giving Heaven a bad name.
• Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination after his Stormin' Mormon action figure sweeps the nation, but loses to Clinton after the toy, manufactured in China, is recalled due to high levels of lead and sanctimony.
• Rudy Giuliani will be mugged in Central Park by a violent female gang consisting of Regina Peruggi, Donna Hanover, and Judith Nathan. He will claim, however, he was attacked by a band of undocumented immigrants and two million Hispanics will be deported.
• Having in the end failed to become the Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney will solace himself by marrying three wives.
• Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nod after Gennifer Flowers resurfaces with video evidence of a three-way love affair with the Clintons, and American men are especially turned on by the lesbian scenes.
• After winning the nomination for Hillary, Bill Clinton will discreetly suggest the nominee sponsors a bill enabling a former president to run again, thus adding at least 16 additional years to the Bush/Clinton oligarchy.
• Congress will reinstitute the military draft, but the mainstream media will pay it less attention than either the NBA or NFL drafts.
• After calling up thousands of normal American youth in the draft, the military realizes that their skills beyond using Facebook and MySpace are inadequate, and the draft is extended to NFL teams.
• The New England Patriots, after refusing to serve overseas upon being called to duty, are reviled by NFL fans and the mainstream press for being unpatriotic. The Houston Texans, on the other hand, are quick to volunteer their services, and die tragically as their Blackhawk helicopter is shot down over Basra.
• The baseball steroid scandal will spread to international affairs when the Pentagon is forced to admit that US troops have been given steroids and human growth hormone to compensate for the declining enlistments. The Taliban will successfully petition for the US military victory in Afghanistan to be noted with an asterisk in history books. Americans will question whether a victory in Iraq, even if it could be achieved, would be worth the cost in blood and treasure if an asterisk was also attached to it.
• The United States prevails in Iraq after military engineers design a Facebook game that provides better intelligence than previously available, and the surge of young draftees outsmart the Iraqi insurgency.
• As a result of a tragic mishap, an absent-minded surgeon will accidentally insert an iPod into Cheney's artificial heart to replace a leaky valve. It will be discovered when, during a cabinet meeting, the marches of John Phillip Sousa begin to blare from the VP's chest. The final insult in this morbid misadventure will be that the Cheney family will be billed the full price for the iPod despite the fact that they listen only to country & western music.
• The US currency having collapsed, prices soar and bills higher than 100 dollars become necessary. A new 10,000-dollar note is issued with George Dubya Bush's picture. The motto "In God We Trust" is replaced by short axioms printed on the four corners: "In Bush We Trusted"; "Now We're Busted"; "Our Infrastructure's Rusted"; and "For An Empire He Lusted."
• Frustrated by the lack of support for his sanctions against Iran, George W. Bush sends his go-to gal Condoleezza Rice to Moscow to sway Vladimir Putin with her diplomatic skills. After a State-Dinner performance of her piano interpretation of Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil, the two engage in a private détente complete with vodka and caviar. Ms. Rice is not heard from for a week, then sends word that she is resigning to spend more time with her family. "Family? We're her family," Mr. Bush angrily retorts. Early reports indicate that Condi has moved to the Kremlin and is carrying Putin's love child.
• Lou Dobbs -- revealed to be Luis Sanchez Dobicente, an undocumented Mexican émigré who illegally gained admittance to the USA in the early 1960s and found work as a strawberry-picker in Oxnard -- will be deported and spend the remainder of his days as an apple-polisher in Guadalajara, in spite of testimonials from Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and other right-wing nuts.
• General Motors, hoping to regain its profitability and status in the industry, inaugurates an advertising campaign that emphasizes consumer worries of soaring prices and fuel shortages as peak oil extraction is passed. The teaser campaign will run for a couple of months describing a remarkable automobile for the twenty-first century that will rely on an inexpensive fuel to be available well into the future. After that tremendous build up, the car will be displayed in showrooms throughout the country -- an updated version of the ancient Stanley Steamer, a car that ran on coal.
• Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the French Republic, will win the 2008 New York City Marathon. His victory will be attributed to his new diet. He starts dinner with pineapple and mango-trimmed lettuce. Then he has a mug of coffee and cream. He calls this hors d'oeuvre a starter. His tipple is ice water with an occasional tumbler of red Burgundy on the rocks. He will acquire a pied-à-terre near Waco, Texas, that he'll refer to as his ranch. It will facilitate his courting of the leftover daughter of George W. Bush. They will bond picketing foie gras together. She will teach him about alimony and how to grow as tall as Gary Cooper. He'll discard his smooth talk in favor of her father's Bronze-age mumble. The couple will use French letters instead of les condoms. The prospective bridegroom, now packing a gun, will learn to say, "God bless you all" to the French, and to ignore their reply in Bronx cheers. He'll insist that fetuses be taken off death row to make room for grown-up applicants.
• Congress will replace the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, with a less costly, federal-run alternative called the Federal Youth Organization for Uninsured, or F*YOU, which will give poor children access the best medical system on earth (if you can afford it).
• Swans contributors will bitterly argue on who is most fit to inhabit the White House in January 2009, between Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, depending of the size of their respective tits and the comfort of their buttocks (and how best shaved their pubic hairs are). Pictures are located here for full consideration.
• The dispute will become so heated and acrimonious that when Cynthia McKinney hedges over the two slobs on the merit of her genetically- and naturally-beautiful tan (as well as a few additional credentials) the contributors will desert Swans in droves and join Ron Paul's program to abolish the government.
• Revolutionaries, having voted for the Democrats in 2006 and faithfully returned to their strident activism in the aftermath, will once again take a time-out from their revolutionary endeavors and call for a vote in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton (a famous revolutionary in and by herself) or whoever is on top of the Democratic ticket. Then they'll return to their rotating undertakings. The Revolution will triumph.
• It is now official: Creationism replaces the teaching of evolution in science classes; America becomes a Christian Nation; Jesus lands in Utah on board a UFO witnessed by Dennis Kucinich, who stricken by such a miracle abandons his wife to become a monk but wows to remain within the wing of the Progressive Democrats of America and spread its gospel to the sheeple.
• There, there, hold on, they all, contenders to immortal shame and presidential office, have a hand in their pocket to keep the blood flowing. It's about keeping it hard as a stick. It flowers as a roaring spring after the rainy season. They all keep mum about it, if ever to hinder the thought of it. Then, it follows as always, the emasculation will come from the bien-pensants who don't want the hoi polloi to embrace the sin -- not to do so will be too radical, and potentially lead to a revolution in thinking and acting. This won't be allowed to happen.
• Like in 2002, barbarity, mediocrity, macabre adventures, self-serving reporters, navel-centered scribes, puking pundits, pousse-à-jouir malarkeys, extroverted assholes, introverted wholeasses, bushies and cheynies, hillaries and sissies will carry the day. It's Sunday morning in America forever.
• Finally, Congress passes the House Anti-Humor Act of 2008, which is swiftly signed by the president, declaring any humorous thought, action, planned thought, planned action, or any threat of humorous thought or action heretofore undefined, as treasonous and subject to suspension of habeas corpus. The joke's on all of us.
• Cambronne! Cambronne! Cambronne!