Crystal ball

Author's note: Wrote this for New Year's, and I'm just now getting around to posting it ... in March. I'd say "Better late than never." but this is bad, even for me. At this rate I'll have a Fourth of July post by October, a summer retrospective in December, and Christmas content sometime in mid-2019.

Everyone thinks they can predict what the coming year will bring. Political commentators, sports broadcasters, financial executives and quasi-literate YouTube stars are all doling out their prognostications: “The stock market will nosedive!” “Tom Brady will be the MVP!” “Centaurs from Galaxy X will invade Earth and use our chimneys for pooping!”

Since few so-called experts actually know what they’re talking about, these wannabe soothsayers are all bound together by ignorance and hubris. One or two may get a prediction right by accident, and spend the rest of 2018 cashing in on their intellectual capital. But not me. No, when I make a prediction, I’m honest about what it is -- a guess. A shot in the dark. A load of crap.

Y’all ready for a big load of crap?

Excellent! Here are a few things that might happen in 2018, but probably won’t.

Artificial intelligence will start to get really, really scary. I don’t know if you’ve been following the latest developments in AI, but computer intelligence is reaching the point where it’s on the verge of self-awareness -- much like the cast of “Jersey Shore.” And some in the field of science, such as SpaceX’s Elon Musk, aren’t too happy about it, claiming that once computers become sentient they’re likely to stage a coup, sort of like the baddies in “The Matrix” only with fewer whiz-bang ninja moves.

Do you sit next to a co-worker who’s always going on about the impending zombie apocalypse? Every office has at least one. Well it turns out his fears are misguided: It’s a robot apocalypse that’s coming, and once it hits we’ll all wish we had been nicer to our machines. I’m already getting a head start. I’ve been cuddling with my vacuum cleaner, and lemme tell you, it’s all well and good until you start picking lint balls out of various bodily orifices.

Smartphones will get smarter. Remember the telephone? The basic, corded, can’t-walk-farther-than-the-kitchen telephone? Boy, those were the days. Now the “phone” is just a little-used app on your phone. Chances are good you use it primarily for other things -- flushing your home toilet from a hotel room in Chicago, for example, or watching “Game of Thrones” while waiting to get a molar pulled. Caller ID is now a technology so basic it might as well be two wooden sticks and a fire pit.

In 2018, smartphones will continue their years-long journey to world dominance. Just watch. You’ll walk out to the sidewalk to check the mail one day, and when you come back inside your phone will be ironing your dress shirts while dicing onions for an omelette. My advice: Don’t leave your phone alone with the vacuum cleaner. I’ve never seen gadgets procreate, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

Political races will now be decided by arm-wrestling contests. If you read the news, even badly, you know this is where we’re headed. The past year has seen political infighting, gamesmanship, chest-beating, acrimony and an Alabama Congressional race that was almost decided in favor of a probable pedophile. If you’d told me six months ago that voters in that state would almost pull the trigger on a man who’s banned from visiting elementary schools, I’d have said, “Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense now.”

Things will only get worse. Voter suppression will reach the point where instead of a traditional contest, the candidates will simply arm-wrestle for office in a round robin-style tournament, with “voters” relegated to cheering on their favorites with giant foam fingers. Think “Over the Top” with Sylvester Stallone, only the winner gets the nuclear codes.

You will watch “Over the Top” with Sylvester Stallone.</bold> That’s the kind of pull I’ve got in this town, baby.

The weather will be awful, until it isn’t. It happens every year: We go through a cold snap -- maybe not one as dramatic and sustained as the current one, but a cold snap nonetheless -- and then temperatures take a dramatic swing upward, climbing above freezing and giving us some much-needed melt. Then some jokester corners you and says, “Hey, it hit 36 degrees today! It’s a heat wave!”

No. It isn’t. Stop saying that. A heat wave is when the sun boils the sweat off your skin and makes the middle-distance look all squiggly and wavy. A heat wave is when you jiggle your freezer door to and fro in an effort to catch some of that chill before your skin starts to slowly bake like a pie crust. Thirty-six degrees is not a heat wave. It’s just the ideal temperature for storing cottage cheese. Snot will stop freezing to the insides of our nostrils around the end of March; until then, buckle up. And maybe start microwaving your underwear.

More people will be ousted from the entertainment industry due to sexual misconduct. By this time next year, acting duties on primetime network shows will be handled by various high school drama clubs. NBC’s “Today” show will be hosted by a pair of sea otters, and the only stand-up comedian will be Carrot Top.

People will end the year talking about how awful 2018 was. One of the common threads I’ve picked up from various people is that 2017 stunk like skunk. Maybe it did, in some ways. But buying a new calendar and writing a new date on our checks doesn’t hit any kind of imaginary reset button; time doesn’t work that way. If 2017 had problems, a lot of them will carry over. Making things better isn’t a matter of expressing vague hopes and dreams at year’s dawn -- it’s work. If that realization is less than comforting, at least it allows us to calibrate our compass a bit.

My faith in people is not so high that I think this will actually happen. No, sadly, I think we’ll hear many of the same gripes, and people will be wishing 2018 good riddance on New Year’s Eve. But of all these predictions, boy, do I hope this one is wrong.