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“What if my problem wasn’t that I don’t understand people, but I don’t like them?”

— from the film, “Nightcrawler”

Greetings from Philadelphia! This week, Your Humble Columnist is back in the City of Brotherly Love to attend the wedding of a very close friend. As such, I took some time before leaving to see how my predictions for 2015 turned out.

I am going to put each of my predictions—many of which were just desultory rants—in italics to make it easier to digest my X-Files worthy soothsaying genius.

— In the film “Back To The Future, Part II”, it is predicted that the Chicago Cubs will win the World Series in 2015. I say this prophecy comes true! The Cubs have hired Svengali manager Joe Madden to run the team. They have young, talented players. And, by winning the World Series, the Cubs can stop me from stating how it was mathematically possible for someone to have met Thomas Jefferson and been a witness to the Cubs’ last championship.

Well, the Cubs made a run at it! With a young team, the best manager in baseball and a front office willing to throw some money around, fans of the Cubbies can look forward to many memorial playoff chokes in the next few years.

Did you know that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were both still alive when the Cubs last won a World Series?

— Taylor Swift will get curb-stomped by the Kardashian sisters for stealing all their press, because the Internet somehow is not big enough for all of their combined irrelevance.

I was dead wrong on this one! The Internet can accommodate any deluge of media whores willing to put their entire lives on display.

At least Taylor Swift has talent. The Kardashian-Jenner brood are completely without talent or redeemable qualities.

— In July, the spacecraft New Horizons will pass by Pluto. And while I personally will be fascinated by the knowledge we gain from this remarkable scientific achievement, I will still have to shake my head at how much it costs to send a satellite past a rock deep in space that does not help a single human being on Earth. My prediction is that Pluto and its “moon” Charon will captivate the world’s attention. And we will all envy its solitude.

I have to say that I was like a giddy teenager viewing the photographs that New Horizons sent to us from Pluto. To think that humans can not only figure out how to send a functioning spacecraft so far away from us; and, to have that vessel beam us back photographs of a foreign body never stops amazing me.

— The good news is the Utah legislature will revoke the so-called “Zion Curtain” law, which prohibits cocktails from being poured in front of impressionable children who are eating 2,000 calorie plates of crappy food in chain restaurants. The bad news is the legislature will find some other arcane, supercilious way to make Utahns who drink alcohol feel like pariahs.

The Zion Curtain is still, sadly, with us. The good news is more elected politicians in Utah are willing to discuss the income potential of alcohol. The bad news is that 2016 is a presidential election year. Many Utah pols are going to be voted into office that are right wing lunatics. If Utah is to improve its reputation, the first legislative session of 2016 will be the only time to enact sensible reforms regarding the Beehive State’s nutty, arcane and farcical liquor laws.

— In 2015, there will be no warehouses to rent as tech companies will have to use them all to store all of these “curved” televisions somewhere. The warehouses with the 3-D TVs are already filled to maximum capacity. On that note, if you still pay extra money to see a film in 3-D, you are pretty much a clueless idiot who should be forcefully prevented from procreating.

This was an easy one. Whenever a new gadget, like 3-D TVs, is pushed too heavily, I raise a skeptical eyebrow. And while 3-D films are still with us, most people now understand that the overall technical quality of a film is lessened when you put on those 3-D glasses. It’s a money grab.

— Rand Paul will run for president. Libertarians will rejoice. Paul will not poll over 3% on December 31st. Libertarians will call American voters stupid.

Nailed it! I think Senator Paul is an important voice that should be heard. I just do not want him to be the President of the United States. He won’t be.

— I predict that all predictions by climate scientists will once again fail to materialize. And the mainstream media will fall shamelessly silent.

If Twitter Warriors took as much time seeing how unhinged the priests inside the Holy Church of Climate Change are as they do insulting those of us who log and check in with all of their unfulfilled vaticinations of impending doom, they would never give an inch to these insane control freaks.

Climate Change is the biggest threat to the planet? Spend a few days in Syria and come back with that oracle hung around your neck—if you come back from Syria with a neck!

— President Obama will continue to use drones to bomb Muslim jihadist outposts throughout the Middle East. The problem is, the murderers he needs to kill are in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York City and somewhere terrifyingly close to where someone you love lives.

Eerie that I named Paris. The fight against radical Muslims whose sole purpose is to kill us is now being fought up close and on the streets in cities around the globe. We can be partisan political animals, slovenly waiting for the next tragedy so we can hastily Tweet insults to those of a different political ideology, or we can prepare for the war that is right outside of our front doors.

— Sequels and reboots are set for Mad Max, The Terminator, The Amityville Horror, Friday the 13th and, most egregiously, Vacation—where a grown-up Rusty Griswold follows in his father’s footsteps by taking his family on a cross-country vacation. A note to Hollywood: I also miss the 80’s. But they are dead. Let them go!

The new “Mad Max” film was a huge critical and box office hit. My first prediction of 2016 is that the “Vacation” film that was released in 2015 will sweep the Razzies.

And now they have remade “Point Break”. How does anyone have the temerity to remake the only Keanu-Swayze film this world would ever know? Scandalous.

— In Logan, Utah, more chain restaurants will open. More trashy people will be on the front page of the Herald-Journal and CVD because they are pill-poppers and child molesters. Petty crime will go up. The air will be dirtier than ever. Everyone will still be making less than $10 an hour at a job where they are easily replaced…and all the letters-to-the-editors will worry about is the crypto-communism entailed in a free bus system and roundabouts.

Restaurants opened and closed. We had a guy call in a gun threat at Wal-Mart to get out of a speeding ticket. Junkies and sexual predators are becoming habit in local news. Most people here are lucky to show up to work and have the business open, no less make anything close to a livable wage. And everyone that had a chance to have their voice heard regarding CVTD charging a fare were stunningly absent when the meeting was held.

— More massacres will continue to take place using guns. And the sites of these massacres will all take place in areas where the perpetrators will be highly confident that no one present will be carrying a gun.

I wish this prediction had not come true. It did.

— In Aggie sports, Stew Morrill will leave USU with the same number of NCAA Tournament wins that he had at the end of 2001. Also, Boise State and BYU will get an extra home game played in Romney Stadium come football season because Cache Valley residents will be too broke, or too cheap, to buy tickets to those games.

Take away wins against BYU and Utah and then name Stew Morrill’s five biggest wins as the Aggies’ coach.

Yeah, he beat nobody. His legend is built on easy wins…and few of them in March.

I was in the stadium for all six Aggies home games, though I can only remember 5 of them. For the Boise State and BYU games, the stadium was at least 40% filled for the visitors. Disgraceful. I am a proud Aggie…but we are not a great fan base. To say otherwise is to be an ignorant homer.

— In television, all programming will be exclusively shown on each network’s own streaming service, which is the way television worked for the first 60 years of its existence—it was just that you had to buy a television to see it.

The saturation of the television market will implode on itself very soon. Too many options, still just 24 hours in a day. There is a reason why network television is still going strong. It’s easier.

— By year’s end, Mark Zuckerberg will give an interview where he admits Facebook was a tool for him to gain control over everyone’s life. He will call everyone who has Facebook his own personal sheep, and then he will light a victory cigar with a $100,000,000 bill bearing his likeness. And none of you will do anything about it.

Am I the only person that finds a correlation between Zuckerberg giving away 99% of his facebook stock with the continuing release of medical studies stating that social networking makes people unhappy and unhealthy?

Just read most Tweets and comments on Facebook stories and tell me if that is the type of person you want to be; or, the type of people you want as a dominant influence in your life.

There are other ways to see photographs of your nephews. Dump social networking and leave it for people you have tried to avoid with extreme prejudice every chance you could.

— Finally, on a personal note, when 2015 is over, I will weigh under 220 lbs. I will have FINALLY eradicated all the negative influences from my life. I will have a job that I like. And I predict this will all happen with me staying in Logan, Utah.

I am in still in Logan. And I have done a good job getting most of the negativity that has been a cancer to my soul purged. I still have some work to do. Don’t we all?

So, that is that. Not a bad record for predictions. Overall, 2015 was a crappy year for me and the world entire. 2016 should be better. Right? Right?!?! Bueller? Bueller?