The Terrifying Future! Part 1

December 3, 2012 12:01 AM

The future is all cicadas. Even in your fricking breakfast cereal.

Reporting Brian Cullen

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Featured, Guides, Humor, One Man's Opinion, Personalities, Strange but True

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asteroids, cicadas, future, horror, mickey mouse, Soccer

by Brian Cullen

The future’s coming at you, fast! Maybe too fast. Maybe it’s already here, in an Einsteinian 4-D model. What do we know? We’re just a stupid men’s site. Here, have some pictures of bikini-clad babes. But for those of you who remain, we’ve posted a handy guide to the next several years of your life…assuming an asteroid doesn’t take us all out in 2036.

Read on below to see our timeline of all the unbearable awfulness coming your way — in some cases, at thousands of miles per hour.

The FUTURE! The ultimate unknown! It’s both terrifying and exhilarating, mostly because that’s the place where a) you and all your loved ones are going to die and nobody knows what’s waiting for us on the other side, meaning we could spend the rest of eternity floating in a horrifying state of non-conscious nothingness and b) SWORDS ARE MADE OUT OF LASER BEAMS! Respectively. BUT it’s also the only place to go to advance this here plotline we call life (but that’s just because science still hasn’t perfected the “Save Game” feature that I really, really, really could have used around 2001 or so). So join me, won’t you? Because we’re about to look 87 years into: Our story so far: November 22, 2012: Thanksgiving at your Aunt Karen’s house. She gets drunk off of cheap pinot grigio and makes passive aggressive comments about how you’re looking a little “puffy” this year. Then she hits on your significant other, whom she later tells you is “beneath your dignity.” Soon... December 21, 2012: The world ends! But only for Lizzie Calhoun, aged 12, of Cincinnati, OH, whose mother was unable to acquire One Direction tickets. The rest of us are chilly and a little hungover, but otherwise unscathed. December 22, 2012: New Mayan calendar year begins. Doom prophecies left out in favor of Far Side comics. 2013: Per Wikipedia: “2013: The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (comprising Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar) hope to establish monetary union in this year. FIFA Confederations Cup to be held in Brazil. 34th America’s Cup to launch from San Francisco. Rugby League World Cup to be hosted by England and Wales.” W-wait. That’s it? That’s all that’s happening in 2013? Jesus. Okay, guys, if you ever wanted to, you know, take a year off and ride a motorcycle across the American southwest or work on a coming of age novel about your parents’ divorce called The Loneliest Flower or whatever, this sounds like the year to do it. 2015: The spacecraft Dawn to arrive at Ceres, which is…let me see here…a hidden planet!? You guys, there’s a hidden planet between Mars and Jupiter! So how the hell did Dawn find its way there? “Easy,” says NASA Chief Rocket Guy Flex Powerpunch, “Rather than fight the boss on Venus, Dawn jumped over him and found the hidden diamond key in the secret area. Then on Mars, in zone2-1, right after the crater, he stood in front of the telescope to earth and pressed down, down, up, and then both shoulder buttons, and then the Infinite Door appeared. Dawn used the diamond key, and presto!” Powerpunch hypothesized that Ceres will have over 500 gold coins, 2 Ollie the Ostrich tokens, and a direct warp to Neptune. October 21, 2015: Hoverboards still don’t exist. Facebook breaks under the sheer weight of snarkiness borne of unrealistic expectations of the Mattel Corporation. 2017: Felix Baumgartner lands. 2021: I’m going to quote Wikipedia, because this is the scariest sentence I have ever read. Somehow, each word ratchets up the terror, inching ever closer to violent and involuntary bowel evacuation. “Brood X, the largest brood of North American seventeen-year cicadas, will emerge.” CRAPDAMMITHELLDAMNCRAPRUNMOMGETTOSAFETYJESUSHELPMECRAPNORUN! GET! A! FLAMETHROWER! 2023: The copyright on the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons expires, meaning that if you have any sort of erotic, E.L. James-ian fan fiction involving Steamboat Willie, you’ve got a good 10 years to polish it. …that’s a pretty unfortunate choice of wording. I’m sorry guys. 2029: Gliese 581, which is not a funky deathbot but rather a red dwarf star, will receive “The Message From Earth,” which was a radio transmission sent out in 2008. So what will this 21-year old message say upon reaching Gliese 581? “WOOOO! 21! LET’S GET SOME GALACTIC JAGER SHOTS!” probably. “What about ‘Moonshine’?” offers his clever, twerpy friend. “Beat it, jerkwad. Go back to Gliese 876!” June 4th, 2033: Your own personal Great Depression kicks off the day after your third wedding. 2036: Let’s see here, “99942 Apophis–” well THAT’S a fun name! “–has a 1 in 250,000 chance of hitting earth on April 19.” AUGH! 2053: Having failed to destroy 99942 Apophis, subsequently allowing the total eradication of Iowa, the M1 Abrams tank will be retired from service. During its decommissioning, a hokey-yet-sincere power point presentation will play showing the M1 destroying its very first building in Operation Desert Storm, all the way up to its final battle in the 2049 “Throwdown with France,” where it tried in earnest to blow up a bunch of stuff, but its best days were clearly behind it. “Tanks for the Memories,” the powerpoint will conclude. Tanks for the memories indeed, M1 Abrams. 2061: Halley’s Comet returns. “I’m back, Jerks!” screams a zombiefied, reanimated Mark Twain. “Reports of my death have been stunningly accurate for 151 years!” he screams whilst chewing on the intelligent, decaying brains of linguist Noam Chomsky and 2042 Nobel Laureate Craig Kardashian Odom. 2074: The Green Wall of China is expected to be completed. “What the hell is this!?” demands a flummoxed foreman, “I said ‘Great’ wall, ‘GREAT’ wall! We’re all gonna be fired!” 2082: Information on the 1982 Falklands War is declassified. Students of a century-long failing education system stare puzzlingly at the documents, wondering: “What the hell is a Falkland? Some kind of sword?” 2099: The maximum calendar year limit that Windows products such as Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista etc. operate under. “While these products will absolutely be intact in 2099, you should always buy new Windows products as soon as they come out!” says suspicious-looking, mustached computer trends analyst Gill Bates. 2100, January 1, Midnight: Your great, great granddaughter allows Luther, a leather jacket-wearing college kid to feel her up in a dive bar, while her close friend Todd, who has secretly loved her for years, can only look on in horror and heartbreak. Aw, Todd, buddy... So there you have it: the next 87 or so years in around 1,000 words. Tickled your fear bone yet? If not, stay tuned. Next time, we’ll look beyond 2100 in Part 2 of: THE TERRIFYING FUTURE!

The only thing more colorful than the cocktails are the capes

Brian Cullen really, really enjoys robots but doesn’t understand how they work. He also enjoys drinking beers, and has a pretty solid understanding of how that works. You can read about his musings about both on Twitter @BucketCullen.