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 NOW MORE THAN ever, thinking people everywhere want to know what the future holds...so we've once again turned to famed psychic Stella Sabrini to share her predictions for the year 2000--and beyond! Augmenting her own powerful precognitive abilities with secret lost Hohokam texts and a probability supercomputer of her own design, Stella has pierced the veil of time itself to bring these astonishing visions of what is yet to be: • The Southwest Center for Biological Diversity files a lawsuit forcing the federal government to list the chupacabras--the legendary Latin America goatsucker--as an endangered species. Development is halted throughout Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California while wildlife biologists try to develop a habitat conservation plan to save the creatures. Monster hunters and real-estate developers turn to the courts, arguing the goatsuckers are a dangerous pest and shouldn't be considered endangered because they are plentiful throughout Latin America. • Distraught by the legendary weatherman's retirement, a member of the Michael Goodrich fan club seduces her idol at his Oklahoma home so she can obtain a sample of his "genetic material" in order to clone him. His many clones find work at local affiliates throughout the country, delivering deadpan weather reports and finding homes for forlorn dogs, until a DNA defect causes them to go mad and wreak havoc on the set. • Local right-wing Christian scientists announce that CAP water "cures" homosexuality, leading to an influx of thirsty, sexually confused peoples to the Tucson area. • Cartoonist Max Cannon is revealed to be breeding a race of monkey men in his secret basement laboratory.
• Guy Atchley is revealed to be the most technologically sophisticated Muppet (TM) ever produced by Jim Henson Studios. Controlled by longtime muppeteer Frank Oz, the Atchley Muppet stars in the concluding chapter of George Lucas' new Star Wars trilogy, which receives critical raves and leads to a number of other newscasters (including Peter Jennings) coming out as Muppets. • Encouraged by the success of Jesse "The Body" Ventura in Minnesota, as well as Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood and Congressman Fred "Gopher" Grandy, '70s TV star Scott Baio will move to Tucson and win the mayor's seat in a landslide victory. Credit for the win is attributed to the overwhelming popularity of his campaign bumper sticker, "I Want Charles in Charge of Me." • Mexican drug kingpins replace Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio with a lookalike double. But the scheme is uncovered when America's Toughest Sheriff's staff becomes suspicious after the publicity-shy double begins to shun opportunities to appear on television.
• The University of Arizona sells its literature department to Nike, and thereafter only offers courses in the Freudian and Deconstructionist readings of "The Swoosh." • Using a revolutionary new computer image-enhancing system, UA astronomers will discover a feature on Venus that resembles the face of Princess Di. • Under pressure from Norman Mailer and other best-selling authors, Fife Symington is released from prison following the publication of his acclaimed prison novel Errors and Omissions. He and Evan Mecham open a chain of restaurants throughout Arizona.
• In 2012 Tucson's daily newspapers, The Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Citizen, announce they're merging and reducing the editorial staff--to zero. In another bold move, the corporate owners jack up subscription rates and buy a high-tech word-processing program that converts old stories into new ones merely by updating names and dates--a move that makes dollars and sense because neither paper has said anything original in the preceding two decades. Penetration of the newly renamed Star-Citizen continues to decline.
• Traffic on Tucson streets grinds to a permanent halt during the week before Christmas 1999. Computer nerds blame the Y2K bug and demand millions from taxpayers to fix the problem, while right-wing religious zealots view the monumental standstill as a harbinger of ultimate doom and kill themselves. Normal people merely report having more sex as a result of lost shopping time. • Local TV news stations will soon go to hangliders instead of helicopters, after a consultant's report indicates the public thinks hanglider pilots are more sexy, in a Mad Max sort of way, than wimpy helicopter pilots.
• Our glutted roadways are soon bypassed by a shiny new
monorail system that cheaply and efficiently moves Tucson's burgeoning
population of working poor to every corner of the rapidly sprawling
metropolis, where they can hold up their tattered "Will Work
For Food" signs. The gridlocked and abandoned cars of Christmas
'99 are left on the streets as shelters for massive numbers of
out-of-work TNI employees.
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• On the day after Thanksgiving 2003, Tucson Mall officials
seal all shoppers inside and launch the entire mall into space!
UA scientists theorize the giant shopping plaza was actually a
spaceship designed by man-eating ETs to capture a meal.
• Efforts to save the pygmy owl are so successful that by
the 22nd century the tiny raptors become pets as common as dogs
or cats.
• The Gannett corporation, by 2016 the sole owner of the
rapidly fading Star-Citizen (as well as every other newspaper
in America), develops robot reporters to "ensure greater
objectivity" by regurgitating whatever's told to them. The
journaldroids' work increases readership among artificial intelligence
computers, but human readers continue to ignore the paper and
penetration--as always--continues to decline.
