Headlines to 2048

2006-01-15

In a recent post I commented on news agencies and their attempts at being clever when creating headlines. Naturally, I think most of the cleverness falls short of expectations and there should be serious corporal punishment for the activity (public caning and the like). That?s not very likely, sad to say.

Anyway, this raised some curiosity about the future of news headlines. As many of you know, when I need to know the immediate future I consult the LibertyBob Psychic Department (or Mindiacs, as they like to be called). For the distant future, I look into the box of stuff I will have bought some time ago many years from now. A quick peek in the box provided the following headlines.

January 2048: New President Li?l Bowwow sworn into office. The populace of the three remaining states expects great things from him.

September 2047: China completes the purchase of five more states bringing the number owned by them to forty-nine.

May 2045: Iraqis elect new interim government that will decide on the structure of the next interim government that may figure out how to create a democratic form of government for their nation.

February 2045: Japan announced that it has been able to replace the moon with a smaller, cheaper, more efficient moon. This was cheered by most of the world?s population except for those using oceanic-tide, hydroelectric power generation.

June 2041: The completion of the European Union government was announced. Now all former nations in Europe are simply states in the Union. Not everyone was happy when the German president of the Union showed earlier plans in which the Union was referred to simply as the ?Fourth Reich?.

December 2034: The area of northern Iraq occupied by ethnic Kurds joined the United States as the fifty second state. The new state is known officially as ?Kurdtucky?.

January 2032: At the World Global Warming Conference in the Italian Alps, scientists believe they may have overstated the possible impact of global warming and have decided that action is not necessarily called for. They spent the rest of the weekend swimming in the nearby Mediterranean Sea.

July 2026: News agencies throughout the world declared that July of 2026 was the slowest news month of the century. Absolutely nothing happened that they cared to write about.

June 2026: Super Villain Chemicon announced that we would force an apathy causing drug into the ventilation systems of every news agency in the world, starting the following month.

September 2024: After years of negotiations, France finally won its independence from its alien masters from the planet Cornon. The rest of the world had a good chuckle when it was revealed that the people of Cornon are actually Iowans playing a bit of a prank.

July 2023: British historians have finally admitted to finding the hand of former U.S. President George W. Bush up the backside of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Some British people feel embarrassed about their former prime minister being so controlled. Others were just relieved that one of their own didn?t come up with those policies under his own power.

March 2016: Texas finally decided to become a U.S. state. It was difficult for them to let go of their status as an independent republic which is why it took almost two centuries.

October 2014: Microsoft released the latest version of their flagship operating system, Windows. With the new features and design the product is almost entirely UNIX. This brings them on par with other operating system such as Linux and Macintosh to just give up and admit that UNIX is pretty much the only operating system humans will ever need.

February 2010: Terror group al Qaeda will be essentially destroyed when the locations of all of its leaders and central communications nodes are posted on the LibertyBob web site. Said the author of the site, ?This information was really provided to me by the LibertyBob Psychic Department. If I thought it was legitimate, I wouldn?t have had to finally snuff the lot of them.?

September 2009: South Korea petitioned to join the United States. Said the President of the Korean Republic, ?We feel this will help with trade for both countries and will stop the CIA from telling us that they will bomb us if we don?t join the U.S.? There is no word on the acceptance of the petition.

November 2008: Though the world is happy to see the end of the George W. Bush presidency, they don?t really hold out much hope for the new president, Carrot Top.

August 2008: The United Nations realized that they really need to be replaced by a group that has some sort of value in the world. In a majority vote, they elected to replace themselves with a group that will actually try to enforce peace in places that don?t have valuable natural resources, and possibly try to help people who are not white.

That about sums it up for the news headlines for the next few decades. Most of the other headlines had to do with sports results, where to find natural sources of energy, and the secrets to longevity, but I?m sure nobody wants to read that crap.