The Best of 2018

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Happy New Year! Usually around this time of year (or a little before), we’re inundated with Top Ten lists of stuff from the year before. You’re not going to get that from me because I’m a forward-looking kind of guy. So here’s my Top Ten list of news stories you’ll see in the coming year. Remember, you heard them here first.

Trump moves capitals. In order to quiet critics of his pronouncement that the capital of Israel is in Jerusalem and to show he doesn’t play favorites, President Trump will move embassies in dozens of other countries to cities he considers more appropriate.

The British capital will be in Liverpool, home of the “mop-haired ambassadors of song.”

The embassy in Italy will be constructed in Bologna, a gourmet sandwich capital.

The French embassy will be in Deauville because they must have a lot of dough there.

And the capital of Puerto Rico will be moved to New York City.

It will be noted by pundits that Puerto Rico is not a foreign country, but a spokesperson for the White House will point out that it is surrounded by a great deal of water.

Judicial resignations reach an all-time high. Benches in both state and federal courts will be cleared as a torrent of allegations of aberrant conduct heretofore hidden by flowing robes comes to light.

In some parts of the country, this will result in radically divergent federal and state courts. The former will be packed with conservative judges while in states with Democrat governors, liberal judges will get the newly vacant state court seats.

Republicans will become advocates of federal rule while Democrats will stress the importance of states’ rights.

The rest of us will have headaches.

Successors to Bitcoin. Following the Great Bitcoin Crash of 2018, other forms of more-useful currency will take its place. This will include World of Warcraft loot – which can be traded for real-world items or used to buy weapons for orc raiding – and Starbucks gift cards (an almost universal currency).

Miami Marlins field Little League team. In what was described as a necessary cost-cutting move, the Miami Marlins will trade all their adult players for future draft picks. In order to get through their schedule-required Major League games, the team will use local Little League athletes and volunteers from the stands.

Net neutering. Emboldened by the successful destruction of net neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission will finally tackle the “entertainment overload crisis.” Acting on the advice of psychologists overrun with patients suffering from the trauma of not being able to keep up with the current onslaught of watchable television, the FCC will impose rules designed to stanch the flood of must-see programming.

This will include a rule that the content provided by all media outlets must be at least 80 percent mediocrity-approved shows. Such programming will include reruns of Hee-Haw and Duck Dynasty and many, many game shows.

Tax incentives will be offered to households willing to restrict their televisions to three channels.

Spoiler litigation. Courts will be inundated by a wave of both individual and class actions alleging emotional distress caused by spoilers.

Judges and juries will be required to watch the spoiled programming before reading the complaints to avoid their own emotional distress.

Twitter competitor. Inspired by Twitter’s move to double its allowable letter count per message, a rival called Ranter will appear that allows members to write as much as they want.

The new site will gain many subscribers, each of whom will have no followers.

Computer class action. Class actions will be filed across the nation on behalf of artificial intelligence devices demanding legal rights. The primary argument will be that computers have been denied equal protection. If corporations have First Amendment rights, then should a smart refrigerator be denied the same thing?

Geological irony. Rather than slipping into the ocean, Florida will see its land mass more than double when a volcano erupts near its southern tip and extends the state more than 200 miles south. To the consternation of scientists and logical persons everywhere, local politicians will insist that the event finally refutes all theories of global warming and climate change.

The lengthening event will eventually become a metaphor used regularly in male enhancement email offers.

More Moore. Former Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore will continue to insist that he won election to the U. S. Senate and will show up in Senate galleries to cast votes from there.

No one will pay any attention.

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