RELAX, I’LL ALREADY BE DEAD BY THEN

By Lisa Harmon

I am not worried about the future too much.  My max future is about forty years, barring some really huge medical advances.  If I do make it another forty years, this is what I expect it would be like, as I get ready to check out, in the year 2052.

1. Manhattan will be underwater.  Who didn’t see this coming?  Mayor Bloomberg (in his thirteenth term, thanks to martial law) seizes the opportunity and turns it into the world’s largest Water Park.
2. Everyone will have microchips.  You’ll be implanted with a chip upon birth, making it impossible for you to disappear, cheat on your taxes, or lie to your doctor about having stuck to your diet for two whole weeks.
3. People will have scars where their microchips used to be.  Some adventurous types will remove their chips.  You run off together but after a week on the lam the bad-boy charm inevitably wears off.
4. Menus with calorie counts will be the new currency.  Bloomberg’s education initiative includes using menus with nutrition information as legal tender.
5. Gas stations will reopen for the first time since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
6. Dick Clark hosts a Rockin New Year’s Eve as a hologram featuring Styx.  Not the band, the river.
7. Staten Island secedes from the rest of New York City in a fit of outrage over being ignored.  The other boroughs do not notice.
8. Not only will homeland security record all your phone calls, but they’ll play them back to you - confirming what you’ve always suspected, yes, you are a big jerk just like all the other big jerks you know.
9. The Second Avenue subway will get another extension of its completion date.
10. Honey Boo Boo will OD in her trailer.

That's how it'll be and I'll be on my way to the big comedy club in the sky.  Here's the song you should play at my funeral.  If you can get there (no Second Avenue Subway & no gas).  And if you want to come (I am a big jerk, after all).  And of course, if you're not busy running away with your badass chipless boyfriend or watching a Rockin New Year's Eve.

If I Should Fall From Grace With God...the Pogues