BY SCOTT HOLLIFIELD
Media General News Service

Shhh.

I’m in a trance.

Each year at this time, I either summon my super power (the ability to see into the future, thanks to a 1940s Los Alamos lab accident involving Dr. Von Schnitzel’s ill-advised radiation experiments), gaze into my crystal ball (bought at a flea market from a guy selling tube socks, puppies and used clairvoyance devices) or lapse into a supernaturally induced trance to predict what will happen in the coming year.

I’ve chosen trance this time, since I fell shoveling snow, severely bruising my super power, and I pawned my crystal ball on one of my furlough days.

Cynics argue that my yearly predictions are simply a way to stretch one slightly entertaining column into two and reduce my workload during the holiday season, but I see it as service to the loyal reader(s?) who, faced with a glut of let’s-all-look-back-at-what-happened-year-in-review stories, would rather know what lies ahead so they can either live high on the hog or dig a hole in the
backyard in anticipation of the coming apocalypse.

So, back to the trance…

...and I’m done. Here now, is Part I of Scott’s Trance-Induced 2010 Year in Preview, a money-back-guaranteed guide to what’s going to happen (money-back guarantee void where prohibited):

January - Across the nation and around the world in places that mark the passage of time as we do, jubilant people in funny hats usher in a new decade following one that began with many huddled in bunkers fearing the collapse of civilization as a result of the Y2K bug. Despite the hysteria, the world did not end. That is currently scheduled for 2012.
Officials at the Federal Office of Overly Used Words announce the most overly used word for 2010 will be “green.”

February - Arnold Pitts, a retail sales manager in Tallahassee, Fla., becomes the first patient to receive treatment under the nation’s newly reformed health care system. Pitts is scheduled for a colonoscopy. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., predicts that shortly after treatment Pitts will be able to fly, while Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., assures the American public that Pitts will immediately burst into flames.

Neither proves to be true.

March - Trouble mounts for the world’s greatest golfer, Tiger Woods, as more alleged mistresses step forward to reveal intimate details of their relationships.
“Britain’s Got Talent” winner Susan Boyle says Woods “was certainly under par.”
Arnold Pitts, the retail sales manager in Tallahassee, Fla., is once again a pioneer, receiving the world’s first “green” colonoscopy, one that produces zero carbon emissions. Al Gore assists with the procedure.

April - The U.S. government announces the economic recovery is complete, unemployment is at a record low and all goals have been accomplished in Afghanistan while major newspaper publishers note the remarkable turnaround in daily circulation and skyrocketing advertising revenues in one of the cruelest and most elaborate April Fool’s jokes in the history of mankind.
I stare at CNN on my latest furlough day and weep.

May - Doctors announce that results for Arnold Pitts, the first patient to receive treatment under the nation’s newly reformed health care system and the first person to undergo a “green” colonoscopy, are negative and he gets a clean bill of health.
“I guess in the end, I’m all right,” says Pitts.

June - President Barack Obama, blasted by the left for not doing stuff and slammed by the right for doing stuff, frantically informs the nation that Vice President Joe Biden has accidentally floated away in a giant homemade balloon in what some critics call a desperate attempt to divert attention away from doing and not doing stuff.

Next week: Part II of Scott’s Trance-Induced 2010 Year in Preview.

Scott Hollifield is editor/general manager of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C.