The 2017 Predilection Issue

It's finally here!  The Far Side's world-famous and highly accurate Predilection Issue 2017 Edition.  We recommend that readers print this page and check off the predictions as they happen, since we have a 99.99998% rate of getting things approximately pretty close to being in the neighborhood of the ballpark.  The amazing accuracy of our prognostications have been verified by multiple nefarious agencies associated with university frat houses during hazing rituals in chemistry lab basements under the second Blue Moon of each year.

With that said, let us tarry no more!  On to some truly nerve-wracking scrying!

1. Liz 2, being the last surviving monarch/dictator of the 20th century, will check out this year.  Charlie will abdicate, thus clearing the way for Willie 5 to have a seat at the head of the House of Lords.  This series of events will happen just in time for the British people to decide that a Royal Family is just too damn expensive and turn Buckingham Palace into the Blue Blood Bed & Breakfast featuring Beefeater's London Dry Gin.  The hotel will immediately win a prestigious international award for Best Alliteration for a Tourist Trap Name.

2. As part of the Neo-Populist Wave, country after country will legalize marijuana, led by Russia whose Peerless Leader will gain the new nickname Vlad the Inhaler.  As a result, the tourist industry will crater, wars will be averted and terrorism will become an historical footnote, as billions of people elect to stay home and chill on the couch watching reruns of Duck Dynasty while listening to Pink Floyd, rather than put forth the effort.  The US Food and Drug Administration will issue new guidelines for use of the word "Sinsemilla," with the top requirement being that the buds be "without seeds."

3. Chinese backpackers and Mandarin teachers will become the new social phenomenon, as the emergent Sino Middle Class adopts the Bohemian lifestyle.  Youth hostels across Europe and the US will be overrun with Chinese teenagers out to "discover themselves" before settling down into a life of over-achievement in science and manufacturing, burdened by mortgages and credit card debt.  "Bùxíng" will begin appearing on cafe signs and flop houses around the world, as business owners try to become back-packer friendly and entice the big-spending teens to drop a few renmimbi in their establishments.

4. Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the US, only to find that the Obama's booby-trapped the White House when he gets a cream pie in the face when entering the Oval Office for the first time.  In a drunken rage, the Clintons will crash the Inaugural Ball and take over the stage, and while Bill wails out an off-key rendition of I Did It My Way on the tenor saxophone, Hillary will stumble through her recitation of the "I coulda been a contender" speech from On The Waterfront.  Simultaneous earthquakes will be registered in Tahiti and Death Valley as Marlon Brando's ashes roll over in their respective graves.

5. California will secede from the US, but no one notices.  Its economy will immediately collapse as the burden of new regulations and taxes causes Hollywood to move to Reno, and the former State realizes that it had no other income or source of energy, since it had long-since regulated other industries into oblivion.  President Jerry Brown will move the seat of government to Portland, Oregon, as his country returns to a natural state and he realizes that brown bears are a bit difficult to tax and regulate without guns.

6. It will be revealed that China's entire space program has been hoaxed by Tian Zhuangzhuang, also known as China's Stanley Kubrick, in a studio in suburban Beijing.  The hoax was discovered when crew members were heard coughing and wheezing off-camera due to the oppressive air pollution in the city.  Subsequently, researchers discover the use of clear rubber Bungee cords to achieve the weightless effects in videos released by the government.  In a related story, the clear rubber Bungee cords become one of the hottest selling must-have items of the year and the profits are used to fund China's space program.

7. Donald Trump will be hailed as the New Obama, ushering in an era of equality for White People across the country.  Mass demonstrations demanding equal rights for the emerging white minority will become the norm in cities across the nation.  Joel Osteen will become the de facto spiritual leader of the movement after delivering a wildly popular speech from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., which will come to be called the "I Have A Cream" speech.  Skin whitening products, long popular in Asia, will suddenly become the rage and pack shelves in Walgreen's.  Social Justice Whities (SJWs) will burst onto social media platforms declaring that, in the name of tolerance, trigger words like "whipped cream" and "sour cream" will no longer be tolerated.  Entire universities will be converted to "safe spaces" as competing groups all demand their own areas to be themselves without prejudice.

8. Tobacco will come back into vogue as scientists declare "smoking leafy vegetables as healthy as eating them."  A chain of tobacco shops called Starpuffs will appear by the dozens in malls and strip centers around the world.  The phrase, "Double puff extra gold with single wrap natural," will become the new hip lingo of the post-Millennial generation.  Hand-rolleds using seaweed wrappers will become the rage in Japan, while black-wrapped cognac dips will sweep Russia and Poland.  Among the Wall Street crowd, the double-crown gold leaf will reign supreme.

9. The economy will be the top news story of the year, dominating every conversation everywhere.  The big story will be the demise of the US dollar in favor of the Russian rouble and Chinese renmimbi.  This will only last a short time, however, as a new crypto-currency called BeggarBux sweeps the globe.  BeggarBux will be based on a basket of celebrity names, so that every time "Kim Kardashian," "Jay Z," or "Hillary Duff" are mentioned, a million BeggarBux are added to the global economy.  This leads media outlets to throw in gratuitous mentions of useless celebrities simply as a means to expand the economy.  Entire articles will appear on the front page of the New York Times that are composed of nothing other than celebrity names, prompting some commentators to say, "Not much has changed."  By July, a special bonus million BeggarBux will be added for every mention of Ivanka Trump.

10. In the cyber-universe, China's WeChat will put the entire Silicon Valley royalty out of business.  It will use the Xinhua news service as the sole source of "real" news and the app will provide all the services currently offered by over 100 stand-alone apps cluttering up peoples' SmartPhones.  Around Christmas time next year, Jeff Bezos and Barack Obama will be discovered on Skid Row lamenting, "If we only hadn't banned alt media, we'd still have jobs today."  In a desperate attempt to remain relevant, Mark Zuckerberg will upload his entire existence into a WeChat drone, which will be promptly shot out of the sky by an annoyed farmer in Nebraska, who will be quoted in Xinhua as saying, "Danged drones is allus spookin' mah cattles."  The drone's last words will be noted as, "I just wanted to friend him."  In related news, Elon Musk will land a drone on Mars and immediately claim Utopia Planitia his private domain and his army of robots will start re-carving the Face on Mars into his own image and likeness.

And there you have it folks!  The headlines before they're headlines!  The news before it's news!  The trends before they're hashtags!

Don't forget to tune in all next year as we watch these predilections become reality.  Be sure to send a link to Life on the Far Side to all the folks you think need a swift kick in the pants, and get right over now and follow us @RadioFarSide on Twitter and at RadioFarSide on YouTube before it all gets folded into WeChat.  Oh yeah, and there's also Life on the Far Side on Farcebook, too!  You won't want to miss a single second of the fun and frolic to come!

Here's wishing you and yours a happy and prosperous New Year!  From all of us Deep in the Jungles of Borneo!

2014 - The Predilection Issue

Yes indeed, folks, it's time once again for our world famous Far Side Predilection Issue, where instead of making useless predictions, we simply follow the trends to their natural conclusions.  If you've hung around here for any length of time, then you'll know that last year's Issue was 99 and 44/100% correct, which is how we got to be world famous in the first place.  You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows!

So, without further ado (or is that aduh), let's get down to bidness:

Bald is Beautiful

Earth's northern hemisphere will begin glowing brightly in X and Gamma ray wavelengths, thanks to Fukushima denial.  This will garner the attention of a number of extraterrestrial races, notably from the Orion Arm of the galaxy, who will complain loudly that the radiation is interfering with broadcast signals and ruining Duck Dynasty. The show's ratings go through the roof.


"Radioactive" will be the new buzz word at Paris and Milan this year.  Glow-in-the-dark clothes, bald toothless models and plutonium jewelry will be all the rage.  Sales of prednisolone will explode and it will come to replace Xanax as the latest drug craze among Hollywood's oh-so-hip.

A new dance will sweep the globe, called the Fission, in which dancers slam into one another in very cramped spaces trying to overcome physical resistance and merge into a single entity, releasing vast amounts of energy in the process.  The dance will become a major sourse of energy in the Third World, especially Iran.

Tsar Baby

Vladimir Putin will reveal his Romanov roots and revive the Russian Tsars.  He will celebrate his coronation by cooking an omelet using Faberge eggs.  This will cause quite a stir as men around the world suddenly realize that you can be manly and cook too.

Not to be outdone, Obama will announce his roots as a Kenyan prince and begin the process of turning the US into yet another barren African hell-hole.  Most Americans won't even notice the difference.  Meanwhile, in Kenya a goat will be born with a face that bears a striking resemblance to Obama's.  Thousands will hail it as an omen, but no one will be quite sure of what.

Meanwhile, Queen Liz will declare Charlie unfit to be king, thus clearing the way for Billy to assume the throne in 30 years when she finally kicks off.  By then, Billy will be so old that he'll spend a month enjoying some of the perks of being king and then abdicate to let Georgie take over, while he and Kate take a Mediterranean cruise on the royal barge.

Almost unnoticed, Sultan Hamengkubuwono of Yogyakarta will marry the daughter of the king of Thailand, sparking a new martial art exercise craze called Thaindo.  It will be notable for its unusual style combining long periods of thinking about moving (called meditation) and short spurts of movement involving rice and food bowls.  Senior citizens the world over will hail it as a Godsend, while critics will say it hardly varies from day-to-day activities.

China Sheik

Due to China's increasing hunger for power and the US demand slowing appreciably, relations between China and Saudi Arabia will continue to warm.  So much so, in fact, that China will declare Islam an tolerated religion and Chinese citizens will begin sporting keffiyeh as the new must-have fashion accessory, especially since it serves double duty as a pollution mask.  Things will start going down-hill fast, though, as the Chinese will keep calling the Islamic holy book "aw-Kolan".

The final nail in the Sino-Saudi relationship will be when three commerical airliners crash dive into Shanghai office towers after being hijacked by the very same Saudi terrorists who pulled off 9/11.  The hijackers will all survive, of course.

 Nexus Perplex Us

 The internet will continue to scream forward with people legally changing their names to IP addresses.  This will cause major problems for those who use IPv6, since the names will not fit on standard identification documents.  As a result, IPv7 will be introduced, with only 128 characters instead of the usual 1,040.

Wzk2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 will rise up as the new guru of geeks when he develops the next-generation Google glass, which involves implanting artificial cornea that receive text and images directly out of the aether and project it onto the retina of users.  This will lead to a new phenomenon of people walking in circles due to mistakes in Google Maps.  In their frustration, people will be screaming into the Bluetooth-enabled headsets trying to get things sorted out.  Old timers will remark how the world's just gone completely crazy with folks wandering around in circles talking to themselves.  Psychiatry will go into severe decline as shrinks will no long be able to tell who's nuts and who isn't.

Meanwhile, an Australian man will cause a huge stir when he develops a new laser holography system that can project full-motion 3-D objects onto the sky itself, using moisture in the air as billions of tiny reflectors.  He will announce his invention by faking the Second Coming and scaring two and a half million people in Melbourne out of their minds.  The Vatican will immediately put in an order for 1,000 of the devices.

The Greater Depression

Christmas 2014 will see the resurgence of "Depression Chic" as the latest toy craze in the US and EU will be home-made rag dolls and hand-carved wood blocks.  The latest and hottest app will be Foxfire DIY, as people (who still have devices and electricity) rediscover the joys of building their own tree-branch huts and foraging for food and herbs.  "Mushrooming" will be the new catch phrase among the urban-survival hipsters, as they use the last bit of gasoline in their cars to get to the nearest forest, when edible fungi become the new currency.

Mad Max films will see a revival in kerosine-lamp theaters as people try to glean any tips on post-apocalyptic survival from the old Mel Gibson series.  Mel's career will see a major upsurge as he becomes the guru of medieval and post-apocalyptic warfare and living.  His films Braveheart and The Patriot will become required viewing in ad hoc war colleges as folks try to crash-learn military tactics while facing off with hordes of federal goons.

Last in Space

A Kyrgyztani man will try to garner the same success as the Dutch folks putting together Mars I.  He will put up a website seeking volunteers and donations to launch the first human settlers to Venus.  The website will receive a one-rouble donation and one volunteer; a goat farmer in Kafyristan who is the only person on Earth who hasn't heard about Venus' atmosphere.  Critics reviewing the reality show will note the effective use of chirping crickets to enhance the desolate feeling at the group's press conferences.

The Chinese, emboldened with the success of the Chang'e program, will move ahead with the Chang'f series.  The first launch in September will land an inflatable habitat in the Sea of Tranquility housing three specially trained dogs, who will seek out and urinate on the legs of the Apollo 11 lander.  A mission controller outside Beijing will be quoted as saying, "That's one small piss for a dog, and one giant piss on Mankind."

Well, folks...that's the pre-news from here on the Far Side.  Don't forget to keep looking down - so you don't see the writing on the wall.  All of us here at the Far Side World Headquarters (FSWH) wish each and every one of you a most happy and healthful New Year!  May all your monkeys be trainable and may all your chickens be born upright.

Keep stopping by Life on the Far Side and Radio Far Side, as we continue to bring you the most insightful and informative material on the internet (which ain't saying much, really).  We'll continue to bring our unique brand of inforedutainment (tm) with an IndoTex (r) flavor each and every other few days.

Sampai jumpa!