Headlines from the Year 2020 (no. 13)

[Note #1: AWOL Civilization is taking its Christmas vacation. We would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. The next post will be Wednesday, January 6.]

[Note #2: I invite you to read John Houk’s review of my novel The Kicker of St. John's Wood, in SlantRight.com.]

This is the thirteenth installment in a continuing series. Here is what life will be like in the year 2020 if our civilization continues to go AWOL:

• From his summer retreat in rural Sweden, Tiger Woods announces the opening of B-BADS (Buxom Blonde Anti-Discrimination Society); competition for college internships expected to be intense
• Hottest new job: Fling Fairness Counselor, who helps athletes and celebrities achieve racial and ethnic diversity in their choice of illicit relationships
• Climate absolutely normal for eighth straight year; “just wait until the recession is over,” warns Al Gore
• Columbia School of Journalism officially drops fact-checking from its curriculum; “that’s so 1950s,” says the dean, Keith Olbermann
• British Prime Minister Jacqui Smith raped in the House of Lords by Muslim peers; “it was a legitimate expression of grievances over the House’s racist history,” she concedes
• Selections by treatment approval committees fail to “look like America”; doctors warned by Health Czar to boost percentage of white males denied care
• Safe Schools Czar Roman Polanski prosecutes Indiana high-school teacher for failing to educate students about the horrors of heterosexual relations between consenting adults
• Annual inflation rate approaching 1,000 %; U.S. Treasury to issue “inflation bonds” to cover the loss in real value of existing bonds
• Canada’s psychiatric hospitals overflowing with patients; “even though they committed despicable hate crimes, they still deserve humane treatment” admits head of Canadian Human Rights Commission
• Last manufacturer leaves American shores; “it’s nothing but capitalist greed, driven by Christian fundamentalism,” says Business Czar Van Jones
• Last French restaurant in Paris moves to Tokyo; “good riddance to that vestige of European imperialism and ethnocentrism” declares EU President Zapatero
• Only three permits issued last year in the U.S. for construction of new houses; trend hailed as major victory for green building regulations
• Vacant premises of defunct NY Stock Exchange taken over by the Carbon Credit Exchange; annual trading reaches $40 quadrillion
• U.N. Secretary-General Oprah Winfrey declares Michelle Obama to be the Messiah; Nobel Committee Chair Barack Obama threatens to retract Oprah’s 2018 Nobel Peace prize
• Santa Claus to be tried in San Francisco court for cruelty to animals, income-tax evasion, tree genocide, and child abuse against kids with low self-esteem who failed to qualify as “nice” during the previous year

Would you care to add your own headlines?

[Note: To see earlier installments of “Headlines from the Year 2020,” click the All Fiction link on the sidebar (located under Orwellian Snapshots).]