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Looking Forward to 2017

          2016’s been one of the most horrible years on record, hasn’t it? From refugee crises to political disasters, environmental disasters to a cavalcade of celebrity deaths including David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Ronnie Corbett, Garry Shandling, Harper Lee, Abe Vigoda, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Anton Yelchin, Kenny Baker, Gene Wilder, Richard Thompson, Leonard Cohen, Andrew Sachs, Zsa Zsa Gabor, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds. So it’s wonderful to have 2016 over with. We can only hope everything will be better in 2017.
          Or can we? Through methods I cannot disclose, I’ve peered into the future and caught a glimpse of what 2017 holds. Here are the things you deserve to be warned about:

January: Donald Trump is inaugurated the 45th President of the United States. Meat Loaf performs at the ceremony and is soon after appointed Secretary of Agriculture when Trump realizes he doesn’t have one yet. Trump immediately sets to work adding his face to Mount Rushmore. 


February: Nine Lives, the movie about a talking cat, surprisingly wins Best Picture at the Oscars. As the only person involved not ashamed of the production, Christopher Walken accepts and re-enacts his goofy song from The Jungle Book live. Snoop Dogg hosts.


March: A scandal erupts in the U.K. when Nigel Farage is ambushed and pelted with tomatoes after equating anyone who doesn’t support UKIP and Brexit with castrated French mongooses. He retreats to his home in Bromley where he mopes until September.


April: Due to climate change, the small island nation of Tuvalu vanishes entirely beneath the ocean. The U.S. government retains its minimal stance on environmental protection by claiming the island never existed in the first place.


May: A real-life Hogwarts School opens in south-western France, that nostalgic twenty-somethings from all over the world flock to; only to realize after the four day event that they wasted thousands of dollars to learn absolutely nothing useful.


June: Robert Mugabe dies after thirty years as President of Zimbabwe. After years of human rights abuses, crimes against humanity, and numerous bouts of corruption, his soul mourner is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  


July: TV hosts John Oliver, Samantha Bee, and Trevor Noah disappear under mysterious circumstances. When questioned whether they were systematically eliminated for being liberals, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer responds “No, absolutely not. This is a democracy, we would never do that. It was because they were foreigners.”


August: A plane crash over Mexico takes the lives of dozens of American CEOs. ISIS claims responsibility for the disaster. They also claim responsibility for the Zodiac murders, the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, PETA, Drake’s latest album, and the 2016 U.S. election.


September: Another innocent animal loses its life when a miniature hippo called Mortimer is killed after a gunman sees a child try to pet it on a safari. Mortimer posthumously is elected Mayor of San Diego.


October: BuzzFeed is shut down indefinitely after being hijacked by a group of Silicon Valley hooligans. Having nowhere to go for poorly written news stories, gormless quizzes, and quirky lists, thousands of millennials take to the streets and riot.


November: After months of fighting a national carbon tax, Premier Brad Wall gives up and secedes Saskatchewan from the rest of Canada. No one has the heart to tell him that this can’t be done without a referendum.


December: On Christmas Eve, scientists discover we’ve actually been living in the Upside Down alternate dimension from Stranger Things all this time. The next year looks promising as we cross over into the real world of the mid-1980’s.


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