Dr. Mysterian Predicts

PREDICTIONS 05.08.08

2008-05-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

The next 10 years will see a 40 percent increase in the price of food. As a result, a large percentage of Americans will adopt a vegetarian or near-vegetarian diet to save money, only eating meat occasionally, as a special treat. This will have the unintended consequence of causing the near-collapse of the various American markets that rely on the sales of meat; they will briefly be rescued by enormous government subsidies, and, eventually, by the development of inexpensive, vat-grown meat. An unexpected side-effect of this transition in the American diet will be that rice will become the dominant grain in American dishes; we will move away from our meat-and-potatoes past to have a diet that mostly closely resembles that of India.
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The next American library will be online. You will request a book, and it will be provided either digitally or simply sent through the mail.

PREDICTIONS 05.01.08

2008-05-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

In five years, thanks to the soaring price of gasoline, the demand for public transportation will be three times what it is now, leaving most urban bus lines badly overcrowded and struggling to keep up with demand. It will also become increasingly common for people to look for housing within a short walk or bike ride from their job, and many suburbs will begin to turn into ghost towns as a result, with others becoming a sort of enclave of suburbanites who all work at nearby companies. Many businesses will try to entice new employees by demonstrating that there is a wealth of affordable housing nearby. Other businesses will relocate to the cities, and formerly abandoned downtowns will becomes thriving communal centers. The poor, in the meanwhile, will be pushed out by rising housing prices, and will sometimes need to travel 10 miles or more to get to work; for some poor people, transportation will cost 30 percent of their income.

PREDICTIONS 04.24.08

2008-04-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

By the end of 2009, pranking will become so common in the United States, and frequently so vicious, that a National Pranking Association will form to establish ethical standards for playing pranks. Among these will be: Private property must not be destroyed; pranks that involve public humiliation are discouraged; a prank must stop if the victim of the prank requests it.
* * *
A new Olympic event will make its first appearance in the summer of 2012: Freestyle nunchucks. These ancient fighting sticks will now be divorced from their history as a weapon, and participants will be judged on their prowess in spinning one or two nunchucks, and on the complexity and difficultly in their routine. Unfortunately, fans of the sport will be notorious for a large amount of hooliganism, with actual nunchuck battles breaking out between competing fan clubs between matches.

PREDICTIONS 04.17.08

2008-04-21T10:52:00.001-07:00

The next few years will see the beginning of the end of radio, as radio audiences begin to move to Web-based music stations, such as Pandora Radio, which allows them to program their own taste in music and listen without commercial interruption. Talk radio will linger on for a few years after pop music radio stations shutter their doors, but only by moving to an online format where their punditry can be played through computers. By 2012, in order to get a radio in your car, it will have to be installed by a specialist; most cars will, instead, come with the ability to download and stream online radio stations.
* * *
In 2015, robots will begin landing on mars in large quantities, sent by NASA to start the construction of the first permanent research base on Mars. In just five years, these robots will have constructed a small city, and humans will begin to inhabit the Red Planet.

PREDICTIONS 04.10.08

2008-04-14T08:20:00.001-07:00

Most American states will have concealed carry permits within five years, and roughly 5 percent of the population will be carrying a handgun at all times. The results of this will surprise both sides of the gun control debate. Despite the increase in citizens who are armed, crime rates will neither go up nor down. Concealed handguns will so rarely be used in self-defense against crime that having a handgun on your person will be statistically insignificant when faced with street crime. At the same time, people with concealed handguns will very rarely accidentally injure or kill an innocent stranger, so carrying a handgun will not make things more dangerous, as gun control advocates worry. It just won’t make that much difference at all, in part because very few people will choose to have handguns, in part because of the rarity of the situations in which an armed civilian might need to use a handgun.

PREDICTIONS 04.03.08

2008-04-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

A major trend in celebrity culture in the next three years will be the rejection of celebrity peer groups. America’s most famous actors and models will refuse to associate with other celebrities, and instead find peer groups consisting of interesting but fairly anonymous people. George Clooney, as an example, will count many scientists among his friends, and Brad Pitt will spend almost all his time with architects.
* * *
By the end of 2008, 20 percent of home owners in the United States will be facing foreclosure and bankruptcy, threatening this country with a greater financial crisis than was even experienced during the Great Depression. Once budding new condominium developments will become inexpensive apartments, expensive residential neighborhoods will convert into slums, and urban blight will once again define the American city.

PREDICTIONS 03.26.08

2008-03-31T08:13:00.000-07:00

A report published in 2010 will estimate that almost a half-million people in the United States could be classified as slaves, in that they are bought and sold as property, are not free to come and go as they wish, and make no wages for their labor. Most of these modern slaves will be sex workers, smuggled in to the United States from Africa and Eastern Europe, but some will be domestic or farm workers. This same report will make in clear that, at the time of its writing, there are more slaves worldwide than at any time in human history.
* * *
The next presidential election will produce one very surprising statistic. Fifteen percent of voters who define themselves as Fundamentalist Christians -- a group that traditionally votes Republican -- will cast votes for Barack Obama. These votes will almost all come from people in their 20s, who statistically lean more to the center than their parents.

PREDICTIONS 03.19.08

2008-03-24T07:52:00.001-07:00

The year 2009 will give us the option of a permanent tan, in the form of a dye job that dyes the dermis, in the way that a tattoo does. This stain permanently colors the skin a dark brown, causing what seems to be a deep tan. An unexpected consequence of the popularity of these chemical tans, however, will be that they will also fade with time, as a tattoo does, and, after about 20 years, the owner of these permanent tans will appear bright orange rather than brown. These so called “orange people” will actually take a strange pride in their coloration, in part because the permanent tan treatment will be so expensive that being bright orange will be a sign of status.
* * *
The next popular trend in pop religion will be Satanism, which will enjoy unexpected national attention and a boost in membership when Justin Timberlake joins the Church of Satan in 2012.

PREDICTIONS 03.12.08

2008-03-18T06:13:00.000-07:00

Soul food is about to make a comeback, but with a health-conscious twist. A new soul food chain will sweet the United States in 2010, but with a focus on healthy versions of classics of Southern cooking. Chitlins and black-eyed peas will still be on the menu, but made with lean meats and vegetable shortening; vegetarian selections will also be available.
* * *
By 2012, 30 percent of the books published in the United States will relate directly to Internet content, including books about peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, books about Web browsers, books about how to make films for the Web, books based on work originally debuted in blogs, and books navigating the best online content. This phenomenon will become so pronounced that bookstore employees will mockingly refer to themselves as employees of Internet tech support companies.

PREDICTIONS 03.05.08

2008-03-09T11:08:00.000-07:00

By 2010, five of the 10 top-paid writers in the United States will be bloggers.
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The Star Wars movies, along with related books, comic books, animated cartoons, and video games, will soon grow to be the largest work of fiction ever produced in the widest variety of mediums. The average Star Wars fan will invest about three entire months enjoying the science fiction series, while the truly dedicated fan will spend as much as a year’s worth of their lives reading and viewing officially produced Star Wars stories. One die-hard fan will attempt to experience everything officially produced by LucasFilm regarding the series, and will blog about it; this fan will give up after three continuous years.
* * *
Television as we know it will cease to exist in the next 10 years, going entirely online.

PREDICTIONS 02.27.08

2008-03-02T13:52:00.000-08:00

We already know of many industries being transformed by the Internet. Film and television must contend with illegal online versions of their products. Both the music and publishing industries are reeling from the wide and easy access to low-cost alternatives, watching their profits plummet. But there are other industries that are starting to experience the transformative effect of the digital age.

One of the greatest, and most surprising, cultural changes produced by the World Wide Web will be a significant drop in American theaters. Within five years, theaters across the country will begin shuttering their doors. The reason? The same people who would have started and supported small theater will have turned their attentions to creating short films for the Web, which is both cheaper and reaches a larger audience than traditional theater, and has a permanence that live performance can’t offer.

PREDICTIONS 02.20.08

2008-02-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

Surprisingly, Yiddish will enjoy a major revival in 2009. Adults will begin to study the language in small groups and at retreats, and many will send their children to Yiddish-speaking summer camps. Yiddish theaters will spring up throughout the United States, and new feature length-films will be made entirely in Yiddish. The cause of this revival: A pop song that becomes a national hit, recorded in Yiddish, and based on the old Yiddish standard “Rozhinkes mit Mandlen.” The language, which currently had about 50,000 speakers worldwide, down from 11 million before World War II, with soon have more than a million people boasting a degree of fluency in the tongue, most in the United States. More interestingly, many of these new speakers will not be Jewish, even though the language evolved in the Jewish community of Europe and, for most of its history, was almost exclusively spoken by Jews.

PREDICTIONS 02.13.08

2008-02-13T08:19:00.000-08:00

In the next half-decade, thanks to online art stores such as Etsy, the average American will spend 15 percent of their income on original works of art.
* * *
Beginning next year, colleges that offer courses in film history will begin to offer a minor in pornographic studies, with students turning in theses about such legends of the adult film industry as Russ Meyer and Doris Wishman.
* * *
By the end of 2011, the average American will spend 2 1/2 hours playing video games online.
* * *
A Galliano craze will sweep America in the summer of 2009, with cocktails made with the anise-flavored liquor suddenly becoming the speciality at local watering holes throughout the world. Especially popular: The Galliano Kir, made with white wine and Liquore Galliano.

PREDICTIONS 02.13.08

2008-02-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

PREDICTIONS 02.07.08

2008-02-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

By 2018, it will no longer be accurate to refer to the United States as a “superpower,” as the US will have fallen behind countries such as Brazil, India, and China in terms of military might, GNP, and world influence.
* * *
By the year 2075, sex changes will be common and as permanent or temporary as desired. Thanks to developments in genetic engineering and medical science, human sexuality and gender will be plastic, rather than fixed, and many will choose to change gender many time over the course of their lives. As a result, names will becomes non-gender specific, and words like “mother” and “father” will become meaningless.
* * *
Alabama will be the first state, in 2012, to legalize drunk driving, as onboard computer systems will make intoxicated motoring completely harmless.

PREDICTIONS 01.31.08

2008-01-31T08:53:00.000-08:00

By 2021, there will be more atheists in the United States than Christians.
* * *
George Bush will not even attend work for the last 45 days of his presidency, instead spending the time sulking at his ranch in Texas.
* * *
A popular art form that will develop over the next few years will be a sort of live reality television show, wherein actors with cameras spend an hour or so roaming around a location, improvising a movie, which they then mix live onstage in front of an audience.
* * *
Tax fraud will become so common over the next five years that 1 in 15 Americans will do prison time as a result.
* * *
In the next year, we will see a rash of young women changing their first names. The reason? They are named “Britney.”

PREDICTIONS 01.24.08

2008-01-24T08:54:00.000-08:00

Dr. Mysterian’s Academy Award Predictions: The Best Picture nod will go to No Country for Old Men, the Best Actor award will go to Daniel Day-Lewis, Best Actress will go to Laura Linney, Best Supporting Actor will go to Javier Bardem, Best Supporting Actress will go to Cate Blanchett, and Best Director will go to Joel and Ethan Coen.
* * *
A major movement in the contemporary art scene will be the practice of taking thrift store paintings and adding additional, often whimsical elements to them, such as adding giant robots to bland rural scenes or adding celebrities into portraits.
* * *
The late Australian actor Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker in the forthcoming Batman movie will be nominated for the 2009 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and will win the Oscar.

PREDICTIONS 01.17.08

2008-01-17T08:55:00.000-08:00

By 2015, Scientology will be the third-largest religion in America. In the meanwhile, worldwide efforts will be underway to ban the religion in almost every other country.
* * *
Men’s fashions will take a surprising look back at the 1970s over the next ten tears. Once despised elements of male sartorial extravagance, such as butterfly collars and bell bottoms, will make a huge comeback, as will feathered hair and mustaches. Strangely, all this will be done semi-ironically, as wearers of tomorrow’s retro disco duds will be wearing their haute couture outfits, in part, because they find the clothes funny.
* * *
By the end of 2009, online advertising will have surprise the total amount of advertising dollars made by radio and print combined. 5 percent of the population of the United States will make their living as bloggers.

PREDICTIONS 01.10.08

2008-01-10T08:56:00.000-08:00

Pipe-smoking, which has been losing popularity in the past few decades, will suddenly become popular again among early adults -- both men and women. The reason for this will be surprising: It will be the result of a dance craze called “The Pipe,” which is performed with a pipe in the mouth.
* * *
Expect most fine dining seafood establishments to offer an assortment of shark in the next decade, the result of an explosion of shark farming in southeast Asia.
* * *
In the next 50 years, a severe financial crisis will cause America to sell off Alaska and Washington State to Canada. Many residents of these states, disgusted by the political failure that led up to this event, will choose to remain in their home states and become Canadian. The cause of this momentous event? A war with China.

PREDICTIONS 01.03.08

2008-01-03T08:57:00.000-08:00

Many local theater companies will transform themselves into microbudget filmmaking organizations. It has now become possible to make a feature-length film for the cost of producing a small play, thanks to digital productional, editing, and distribution. As a result, many theater companies will experiment with making films rather than plays, bringing to this new medium a similar artistic model as they brought to stage productions, and with the same goals. After all, few amateur productions of plays are ever seen by more the a few hundred or thousand people, and if a film can be made in the same amount of time and for the same expense, it can potentially be seen by tens or hundreds of thousands of people when placed online. Of course, there will still be theater, but there will be less, as many of the people who would have been attracted to the stage will instead turn their attention to digital filmmaking.

PREDICTIONS 12.27.07

2007-12-27T08:21:00.000-08:00

Cameraphones and digital cameras will become so ubiquitous at live musical events in the next few years that they will become an issue of serious consideration for performers, some of whom take to banning recording devices at their performances, some of whom welcome the additional publicity. In a few instances, performers will go to court after assaulting fans with cameras.
* * *
Artistic statements, the carefully prepared documents an artist uses to present themselves and their creation, will become unique artists creations in the next few years. It will become quite popular for artists to do nothing but create an artistic statement, although these statements will often be cleverly designed, filled with ambiguous and contradictory statements, and sometimes be constructed in such a way that they can be transformed, though folding or cutting, into a papercraft model.

PREDICTIONS 12.20.07

2007-12-20T08:22:00.000-08:00

As much as 30 percent of our food in the next 20 years will include genes that were spliced in from human sources, such as rice modified with human genes that produce protein ordinarily found in human breast milk. In the future, there will be a thin line between vegetarianism and cannibalism.
* * *
Our wars will increasingly be fought with robot soldiers. Within five years, robots will have taken over many of the tasks of the foot soldier, such as reconnoitering a terrain and guarding a location. These robots will tend to look like high-powered weapons on wheels, and many will be under the direct control of bivouacked human soldiers, but the wars of the future will involve machines that do our killing for us.
* * *
Do to the WGA writers strike, this year’s Oscar ceremony will be entirely improvised.

PREDICTIONS 12.13.07

2007-12-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

A surprising cult audience will develop for the films William Shatner appeared in the 1970s. Shatner-themed parties will become increasingly common, with crowds gathered on Saturdays, redubbed “Shatnerdays,” to cheer such cinematic oddities as Kingdom of the Spiders and The Devils Rain, in which William Shatner battles tarantulas and melting Satanists. Attendees at the parties will dress in costume patterned after William Shatner sartorial excesses in the film Impulse, in which the actor played a woman-killing con man who dressed in an impressively ridiculous series of polyester outfits. These parties will typically include rapturous listening to Shatner’s musical output, particularly focusing on his semi-spoken word album The Transformed Man, released in 1968. A competing contingent will focus on Leonard Nimoy’s output from the 1970s, but it will generally be agreed that Shatner’s material during the period was funnier.

PREDICTIONS 12.06.07

2007-12-06T08:23:00.000-08:00

By 2018, about half of all soldiers employed by the United States will be Blackwater-style mercenaries, They will cost, on average, five time as much to employ as a soldier in the United States military, but they will be this country’s only option, as employees who might have volunteered for the military will instead by actively recruited by mercenary organizations with the promise of better gear, better training, more benefits, and shorter tours of duty. These organizations will also be responsible for 80 percent of the war crime complaints in war-torn regions of the world, from torturing civilians to My Lai-style massacres. They will also be notorious for gaming the system to get bigger payouts from the U.S. government, at the expense of the safety of U.S. troops and other contractors. This era of mercenary military will be one of lasting embarrassment for the United States, shaming us before the other nations of the world.

PREDICTIONS 11.29.08

2007-11-29T10:53:00.000-08:00

The next popular trend will be something eventually dubbed “hyperregionalism.” This trend will start with the popularity of the “100-mile diet,” in which people mostly eat food that grows within 100 miles of where they live. Local cooks will become quite skilled at creating recipes from only locally grown food. Soon, rather than sowing their front yards with grass, people will begin to plant indigenous grasses and flowers -- it won’t be unusual to see houses surrounded with what seems to be untamed desert or swamp. Web pages will begin to spring up that examine the history and culture of specific states, cities, and, eventually, neighborhoods, and hobbyist will be able to detail the complete histories of their immediate environments. CD compilations will be released celebrating music created in specific neighborhoods, and people will develop a great interest in art that was created within a day’s drive of their homes.