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Future News
 Exclusive! The Beauty and Truth Lab reports the news before it happens! In this special PNN report, our psychic journalists bring you the stories that haven't happened yet -- but will! It's brought to you by the mummified middle finger of Galileo's right hand, which is on display at a museum in Florence, Italy. Here are the prophecies the National Enquirer refused to publish! + (Some of the below is excerpted from the revised and expanded edition of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia) + Conviviality Revolution A new breed of well-read, charismatic homeless people will arise. They'll spread understanding and laughter through their communities, and will be routinely feasted in the homes of grateful citizens. + Eros Upgrade The average length of an act of heterosexual intercourse in North America -- which is currently only four minutes -- will jump to 22 minutes. + Lawyer Glut The government will pay subsidies to some lawyers so they won't practice law -- much as it now pays supermarket chains to keep cheese off the market when there is too much and the excess would bring prices down. + Mutant Opinions Botched genetic experiments will create a strain of mutant bacteria that causes infected victims to hate opinion polls. + Book Futures One of the bestselling self-help books of the decade will be The Zen of Juicy Sacred Radical Temper Tantrums. + Men's Time of the Month Biologists in Sweden will furnish conclusive evidence that men have "periods" analogous to a woman's menstrual cycle. They seem to correspond to changes in the relationship between Earth and the planet Mars, the biologists will claim. At the peak of the male "marstral cycle," which can last up to 10 days a month, the adrenal glands release a hormone that makes men more likely to be irritable, more skilled at disguising their irrational impulses with logical explanations, out of touch with their feelings, and prone to violence and poor judgment. There's also a vulnerable phase preceding the period, which the biologists will dub PMS, or Pathological Macho Stress. + Genetic Performance Art A rowdy new class of genetic engineers will have little interest in creating oil spill-eating bacteria, frost-resistant strawberries, or other supposedly useful hybrids. Considering themselves to be a cross between computer hackers and performance artists, they will create fun monstrosities that appeal to their sense of play and perversity, like winged horses and trees that grow leaves resembling one-hundred-dollar bills. + Homechurching As public schools continue to decline and private schools become more expensive, increasing numbers of parents will homeschool their children. As the pronoia meme spreads, an analogous phenomenon will arise among religious groups. Called the "homechurch" movement by Christians, the "homesynagogue" movement by Jews, and the "hometemple" movement by other religious groups, it will consist of people creating altars and conducting worship sessions in their own abodes. Seekers pursuing this approach to spiritual communion will serve as their own priests, priestesses, and rabbis. + The Joy of Childbirth The national murder rate will plummet when "The Hedonistic Midwife Channel," a new cable TV network, begins to broadcast live childbirths 24 hours a day. + Sentient Vegetables Researchers will uncover stunning evidence that vegetables have an intensity of consciousness and feeling much closer to that of animals than has previously been suspected. Many vegetarians will renounce their previous diets and swear to eat only fruit and nuts. + Tax Love A new grassroots political movement, Tax Patriots, will assert that paying taxes is the greatest patriotic duty one can exercise, even more than serving in the military. + Recovered Memories Under hypnosis, many adults will recall long-suppressed memories of joy and peace experienced when they were children. + New Opportunities for the Poor Cities strapped for funds will create a 900-number option for the 911 emergency line. Wealthy users will pay $1000 per minute for the privilege of having their calls answered first and fastest. Poorer users may get slower response, but at least the service will remain operational -- thanks to the 900-number subsidies. + Uplifting Video Games There'll be new interactive video games with socially redeeming value. In one of the best models, kids must negotiate all eight levels of Buddhist enlightenment with a graceful, red-robed character who resembles the Dalai-Lama. + New Mt. Rushmores To demonstrate their lasting commitment to serving the needs of the American consumer, some corporations will buy mountains and carve their trademarks and logos into the rock -- much like Mt. Rushmore. + Cool Insanity It will become fashionable, as well as powerful, to act insane. People with the least control over their emotions will dominate their peer groups because everyone else will do everything possible to keep them from getting into bad moods. + Holistic Crack Stunning new trends will include gay children, holistic crack, and computers that can talk to the Goddess. Also look for digitally remastered CDs of the Big Bang, the discovery of a 6,000-year old TV, and an aphrodisiac that stimulates compassion even more than sexual passion. + Dolphin Porn Dolphins will cease to be smarmy symbols of nature at its cutest when the public becomes aware that they're among the horniest of all creatures. An expose will reveal that dolphins are sexually active from birth, females are wildly promiscuous, and adolescent males are usually bisexual. + Dionysian Revel in Iowa A mass ecstatic frenzy will infect more than two hundred housewives in Iowa. Much like the maenads of ancient Greece, they'll renounce their volunteer slavery and take to the woods and hills for an orgy of singing, dancing and dramatic readings of Women Who Love Too Much. + Orgasms Exploited Desperate to justify its funding, the Pentagon will spend 10 billion dollars on research to develop military uses for the human orgasm. + Liberation of the Repressed Id There will be sex riots in Albania, Tadzhikistan and Malaysia. + Pantheosexual Liberation The rise of the pantheosexual movement will present a new threat to sexual law 'n' order. Describing heterosexuals, gays, and bisexuals as narrow-minded, pantheosexuals will claim to have erotic feelings for everything from trees to toasters to clouds to all seven genders of human beings. + Fashion Dead Zone Not one single person in Ulan Bataar will have fat cells from their butt injected into their forehead to smooth away wrinkles. + New Forms of Tattoos Body-mutilation as fashion statement will leap to its final frontier with eyeball-piercing and brain tattoos. + Personality Shrinkage True "personality" as we know it will begin to die out as more and more people perform imitations of composite characters they've assembled in their mind's eye by watching celebrities they admire. + New brands of mental disturbances will arise: Traffic Bliss Syndrome. Victims will secretly enjoy being caught in traffic jams because it's the only time they can be alone with themselves and have the luxury of letting their minds wander like crazy. Pibloqtok. Temporary insanity caused by excessive happiness. Victims, when overwhelmed with unfamiliar feelings of joy, experience waves of terror. They lapse into an animal state, tear off their clothes, and acquire superhuman strength, as if on angel dust. Persona-lite. Victims suffer from the uncontrollable urge to seek out plastic surgery that will make them resemble their favorite celebrity. Thanatoil. Victims suffer from death wishes that take the form of working too hard, eating junk food, not getting enough sleep, and taking in toxic entertainment. Mediapocalypse. Victims, believing the media is the psychic equivalent of nuclear weapons, are terrified to read newspapers. + Dreamaniacs The newest militant minority will be Dreamaniacs, people who religiously get at least nine hours of sleep a night, and think everyone else should too. They'll claim that sleep-deprivation is primarily responsible for the decline of civilization, and proselytize obnoxiously about salvation through lucid dreams. + Pro Sports Expansion Major League Baseball and the National Football League will follow the lead of many other American corporations by placing franchises in the developing. Grateful native athletes will play for teams like the Managua Cobras and the Nairobi Roosters for only a few dollars a day. + Nice People Evolve Many seemingly nice people will cynically use honesty, cheerfulness and openness to manipulate others into doing things their way. + Meme Futures Bumpersticker of the year: BE LIKE ME. + Pain Measurement A prominent sociobiologist will develop technology for measuring emotional pain. Moralists of every stripe will seek to use the device to prove that their favorite victims suffer more than the favorite victims of other moralists. + Life Span Research Scientists in Dallas will report that the average person's life span is reduced by approximately one minute every time he or she smokes a cigarette, overeats, gets drunk, or crosses the street in order to avoid having to exchange boring pleasantries with an approaching acquaintance. + Pharmaceutical Candor Big drug companies will announce that they'll no longer develop a new drug if it's a cure for a relatively rare disease that wouldn't affect enough victims to generate a huge profit. + Even More New Opportunities for the Poor As the gulf separating rich and poor grows wider, poor people will resort to ever-more drastic acts to raise cash. Some will sell their organs to diseased millionaires who need transplants. Others will contract to be tattooed on their foreheads and arms with advertisements. The most desperate will break into prisons and demand to be jailed in order to ensure themselves regular meals and warm places to sleep. + Buddhist Real Estate A Buddhist real estate magnate will build a chain of sacred shopping centers in the American heartland. |
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© 1995-2013 -- Rob Brezsny. All rights reserved
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