1272 WestraDamus 2014
With 2014 upon us, we offer the 25th anniversary edition of the WestraDamus antidictions, those for the year 2013 presented each December or January for the year gone by and generally wrong. 'Damus started as a parody of the forward looking astrological year-enders appearing in the supermarket tabloids, almost always wrong and never acknowledged as such. But the Non-Prophet has grown into an American institution, like the Tea Party, the Heritage Foundation, Chris Christie, the Public Television begathon, global warming, the Kardashians, Reality TV and the war in Afghanistan. So, we continue...
Top of 2013:
Obamacare: The President of the United States will stand before us and declare the start of universal health care. He’ll tell us, we can throw away our Blue Cross cards, our Medicare and Medicaid cards and our diet books, secure in the knowledge that our health care costs and medicines will be paid for now and forevermore.
Mayor For Life: Mike Bloomberg will decide to void the election of Bill De Blasio and will remain mayor of New York City until he bounces the check to the undertaker and is buried in a special plot in the courtyard of the Bloomberg Building on Lexington Avenue.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is will be exposed as a closet liberal and the father of ex-Governor Sarah Palin’s children.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will defect to the Democrats.
In between bouts of doing nothing, Tea Party congressmen will start a fact finding mission to Honduras. A spokesman for the group will explain that members feel they need fresh ideas to grow their plans for anarchy and what better place to start than in the country with the world’s highest murder rate. A side trip to Brazil will materialize after the facts are found.
Egypt will deny it is competing with Italy to see which country can have the most government crises in the least amount of time.
The Federal Reserve will reduce interest rates to below zero as commercial banks make up their losses and fines by moving into the payday loan business.
Also last year… the prospects of a government shutdown, a fiscal cliff and an unraised debt ceiling will fall by the wayside after each member of the Republican Party is presented with a Whitman Sampler containing pot laced chocolate covered cherries.
As Forrest Gump’s mother used to say life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
Now, the month-by-month roundup:
JANUARY: Traveling Tea Party Congress members will look on in horror as the nightclub they’re visiting in the southern Brazilian city of Santa Maria erupts in flame and results in the deaths of more than 200 revelers. The Mayor, Cesar Augusto Schirmer, will tearfully brush off the deaths by declaring “A maioria dessas pessoas acabaria por ser um tiro de qualquer maneira which means “most of these people would eventually be shot anyway.”
Remember those stoner chocolates? Well, this is when they were first distributed. Without that this is where the fiscal cliff would have hoved into view. But it didn’t. Whitman’s executive vice president for quality control will be quoted as saying “I don’t know how that stuff got in the cherries, but after extensive laboratory study I can assure you that wherever it came from it was the purest pot money can buy.”
The states of Washington, Oregon, Vermont and Massachusetts and the cities of San Francisco, Boulder CO, Madison WI, Chicago, Newark NJ and Ann Arbor MI will pass laws requiring passing a psychological test and purchasing liability insurance in order to legally own a firearm.
FEBRUARY:
North Korea admits it bought its latest atomic bomb from Amazon.com and would have detonated it in January but the company’s delivery drone was not ready. Amazon denies this and a spokesman says “The package was delivered 28 minutes after Kim Jong un placed the one click order.”
The National Parks Service uses Presidents Day to announce that it will begin work on a newly commissioned likeness of John F. Kennedy on Mount Rushmore as soon as it can find Keystone, South Dakota using iMaps. Hey, guys, just go northwest from Porcupine SD, hang a sharp left from Rapid City and keep an eye out for very big faces.
Superbowl XLVII pits the New York Jets against the Kansas City Chiefs in New Orleans. Power goes out for 18 minutes. This is traced to someone trying to run the microwave and the toaster oven at the same time. It results one of the longest football games in history without a winner.
MARCH:
President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela will announce he is suddenly and completely cancer free after visiting what he describes as a miracle cure in his country’s little-known Grotto Citgo. An apparently healthy, but oil-covered Chavez will appear in a series of print and television ads touting tourism which also features similarly oil covered chorus of smiling Venezuelans singing “Young at Heart” in English with Spanish subtitles. A quick on screen small print flashes “results not typical, yours may vary. See our ad in “Modern Grocer.”
The Higgs Boson or so called “God Particle” will announce its existence during a scientific conference in Italy. It will step forward on the platform of an electron microscope and aided by a teeny tiny public address system declare “I’ve been here all along, but no one before thought to ask me who I am or what I am doing. Well, the answer is I’ve been very busy keeping all these other little things in line and working. This is no easy task.” On hearing the announcement, scientist Peter Higgs will be seen in the back of the hall, thumbing furiously though his copy of “EZ Italian for the First Time Tourist” and asking people near him “what did that thing just say?”
Associate Justice Antonin “Tony Ducks” Scalia will ask others on the US Supreme Court for an immediate up or down vote on gay marriage. Chief Justice John Roberts will answer “Mr. Scalia, we have not yet even read, let alone analyzed or debated the law.” And Scalia will reply “Johnny, you really have defected to the other side… it’s not just a rumor anymore.”
APRIL:
Kim Jong-un will announce the formation of the NKNAA, the North Korean Nuclear Arms Association as a trade association that, in his words,”will assure every member of this great nation of his right to bear nuclear arms.” Speaking from his playpen, Kim will declare “The entire rest of the world may oppose us, except Iran, India, Pakistan, Israel and South Africa, but you’ll get our nukes when you take them from our cold, dead hands.”
Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will raid the Timothy McVey Agricultural Center in the town of West, Texas and confiscate what they say is the largest illegal cache of Marlboro Lights ever found in the United States. According to regional chief of investigations Charles Hynes, the haul will have a street value of $278,432,657.23. Lead first responder Michael Madeira will declare that “this amount of tobacco, combined with the 13 megatons of ammonium nitrate on hand, would, if exploded, cause the deaths of the entire town and spread cases of instant lung cancer to the entire State of Texas and parts of Oklahoma.”
France will become the first civilized nation in the Western Hemisphere to ban gay marriage. Sixty million Frenchmen can’t be… married.
MAY:
“Orb” will win the Kentucky Derby and honors as the first three-legged horse to achieve the honor.
The US Department of Labor will announce the addition of a higher than expected 400-thousand jobs, ignoring the pink slips issued on arrival to 397 thousand of the new employees.
Moscow’s annual May Day military parade will show the world a host of new weapons in the Russian arsenal. Included are a long range ground to ground missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead from the Kremlin to Chechnya and a satellite connected hotel style table lamp with an effective broadcast range of 32-hundred miles.
JUNE:
Moderate candidate Hassan Rowhani will be elected president of Iran. In his first act of international diplomacy, he will withdraw from the North Korean Nuclear Arms Association, saying “We cannot trust that fat little kid to come to our aid when the aggressive imperialist forces of the Great Satan threaten to rain deadly Marlboro Lights upon the peace loving people of Persia.
The US National Security Agency will be accused of spying on everyone. A spokesman will say “use your head, how could anyone do that? How could we possibly have enough monitors to keep track of three billion people?” Meantime customers of the major cell phone services will find a new “federally mandated data interception and redistribution fee” to their monthly bills.
The US Supreme Court reinstates the Poll Tax.
JULY:
To use a technical term, lots of stuff will happen in the Middle East. Something violent will go on in Egypt and something else violent will go on in Syria but no one will be able to figure out what it is or what they are. Of course, one can say both things and put them under any month. But this one will be especially scary because the United States will not know what is happening and which side or sides to be on.
Simple, ordinary businessman Whitey Bulger will be exonerated at his murder trial in Boston. Interviewed after the verdict, jurors will declare “no gangster is named ‘Whitey.’” And then each will drive off in his new Lexus SUV.
Patriotic non-violent activist George Zimmerman will be found guilty in the murder of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Supporters will say the conviction is a travesty of justice, since it was obvious the sinister, hoodie-wearing child was obviously up to no good.
AUGUST:
Russia will reject the plea for political asylum from American Edward Snowden and send him back to the United States where he will receive a hero’s welcome and the Presidential medal.
Israel and the Palestinians will cancel a scheduled session of the peace talks because the caterer will offer pulled pork and otherwise fails to meet both kosher and halal requirements. Former President Jimmy Carter will say “at last the two sides can agree on something substantive.”
The founder of Amazon-dot-com will purchase the right wing Washington Times newspaper and promptly shut it down.
SEPTEMBER:
Here’s where things get confusing, even for your non-prophet. President Obama will seek congressional approval for military action against Syria and seek judicial approval for military action against Congress in efforts to (a) Free the Syrian people from themselves and (b) Free the American people to buy confusing health insurance policies. Since congress can’t agree on anything, effort (a) will fail and since the Supreme Court is not in session (b) will fail.
WestraDamus is trying to discover a link between the Noah-like floods in Colorado and the recall of some of the state’s anti-gun lawmakers. But Pat Robertson had not returned numerous messages at press time.
Public schools in Colorado will open this month. Chances are fair to good that no one will be shot inside one for at least a week.
OCTOBER:
“Be late for Something Day” was to take place on September 5th. Ceremonies will be held this month, probably on the tenth or eleventh. Cocktails at 6 PM, dinner at 7:30. But it’s perfectly fine to show up any time before 11.
America’s European allies will react strongly to reports the National Security Agency spied on them. French Premier Dominique Strauss-Kahn will be particularly vocal, saying “Not only did they do wrong, they did a bad job of it. If they were any good, they would have known nothing went on between me and that hotel maid in New York.”
Microsoft will narrow its search to replace CEO Steve Ballmer to 87 people, none of which you’ve ever heard of. A final decision is expected as soon as they can get their Windows 8 computers back on line and sift through the paperwork to find the least qualified candidate.
NOVEMBER:
The federal government will rule against the acquisition of US Airways by American Air parent AMR. A judge will rule that AMR is skinning its own investors even though they will own 72% of the merged company. The merger would have combined two losing entities into one. The formula Loser + Loser = Winner doesn’t work. Ever.
The famed St. Thomas Boys Choir of Leipzig will decide to admit girls for the first time in its 978 year history. The reason: Boys are reaching puberty so early, there aren’t enough sopranos to fill the choir slots.
November will bring peace to the world. Conflicts will end in the Middle East, the Balkans, In India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, North and South Korea. And even to a small extent to the nut job and extreme nut job wings of the Republican Party.
DECEMBER:
The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission will begin a crackdown on pedicab drivers with fast meters, despite complaints from the Pedicab Driver Association which will claim “we don’t have meters and there’s nothing fast about anything we do.” The TLC will say “yes, we know they don’t have meters. But if they did, 45% of them would be inaccurate.”
New Yorkers will mark the end of the Bloomberg Administration by staging a huge “Big Gulp-In” on the steps of City Hall. And everyone will smoke. Mayor Elect de Blasio will participate by personally giving away his boxcar load of vintage potato chips, all containing trans fat which will be hauled to the site by the tow truck seen in the viral video smashing cars during a snowstorm.
A new Christmastime movie will be released, starring James Earl Jones as Santa Claus.
So there you have the antidictions for 2013. We wish you the best of luck. And be sure to keep track of these events. Neatness counts.
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Comments welcome: wesrichards@gmail.com
(C) 2014 WestraDamus
Comments welcome: wesrichards@gmail.com
(C) 2014 WestraDamus
