DESIGN MATTERS
BY JERRY DIETHELM
A Plethora of Predictions
SHAGGY DOGS, CLAW˳BACKS AND SUFFERING BOEHNERS
1. Hurricane Cassandra (aka “Sandy”) will again send
advance warning of her return to the East Coast but
no one will believe her.
24. Jilted solar and wind power producers will
demand sharp claw-backs of the price EWEB pays for
power at the Seneca biomass plant. Their motto: “It’s
not business, it’s just personal.”
2. Ice skating in hell will create new converts to the
seriousness of climate change.
25. A rebuilt and sustainable Eugene City Hall will
rise, phoenix-like from its early modern bones and
win new accolades for inspiring and transformative
civic architecture.
3. PERS retirees will be forced to wear a scarlet P on
their chests, and retiring members in the private sector
will be arrested for showing inadequate envy.
4. Walmart executives will lobby for a change to
the U.S. Constitution – the part calling for “a more
perfect union.”
5. John McCain and Lindsey Graham will hold up
Kim Kardashian to Susan Rice as an example of
someone who hides nothing from the public.
6. Abraham Lincoln will return from the dead to
kill vampire movies and drive a wooden stake
through vampire concepts in economics and today’s
Republican Party.
7. Talus slopes at the base of fi scal cliffs will pile up
with the coprolites of political punditry.
8. The baby thrown out with the bath water will be found.
9. Out of the ashes of the fi nancial meltdown will
emerge a new economy in which we buy only half as
much junk from China.
10. Medical science will fi nally fi ll in Little Orphan
Annie’s eyes.
11. Ten thousand doves of peace will fl y over the
war-torn Middle East, covering the wine dark sea of
injustice, destruction and despair with a blanketing of
white reconciliation.
12. The SEC will require that all new economic
proposals involving austerity be fi eld tested in novels,
plays and fi lms.
13. Chip Kelly will only move to the pros on the
condition that Phil Knight buys the team.
14. The Eugene City Council will vote unanimously
to ship the city’s homeless to The Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel, where “everything will be all right in
the end, and if it’s not all right, it’s not the end.”
15. The average height of frontcourt players, centers
and forwards in the NBA, will rise to 7 feet 8 inches,
while the backcourt guard average will shrink to 4
feet 2 inches, causing the game to resemble croquet.
16. All shaggy dog stories will be clipped, shorn and
their tales shortened to a point.
17. Nate Silver will turn down a seven-fi gure signing
bonus from an anonymous group (rhymes with oak) to
“modulate” his polling in the next election.
18. Eugene weather report: Betty Taylor will reign
and shine on the Eugene City Council for another four
years, hail our civic liberties and continue to break
through the clouds of darker minds. In a grand event,
she will dub recent opponents from her own party
“Knights of the Wrong Table.”
19. Political apostates in last year’s local skirmishes
will be found letting the air out of their bicycle tires
in order to improve their chances of making it across
rapidly thinning ice.
20. A fi nal attempt to privatize the Amazon
Headwaters will fail when the genius loci rises from
the waters to declare, “These are not Beverly Hills.”
21. The part of the villain, Mr. Sweet Potato Head in
the eponymous movie, will be played by Sen. Mitch
McConnell.
22. Anyone suffering a Boehner for more than four
years will be sent to his doctor.
23. Sid Leiken will become so unique that he can’t be
likened.
26. The EWEB building will become our River, Art
and History Museum, where we will pay homage to
the spiritual artery of our city, remember to remember
ourselves, celebrate our art and rejoice in a restored
Eugene Millrace.
27. The Federal Courthouse Garden idea will sink
deeply into every mind where it will grow and spread
its cornucopia of hope, food, tilth and justice on ever-
fertile ground.
28. Scientists at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
will predict the birth of a new element when the
periodic table misses its period.
29. Desperate to rebuild circulation, the R-G will
offer enough big bucks to break Don Bishoff’s pledge
that “he will write no more forever.”
31. Those who make yearly predictions will be
licensed and held to a much higher standard of
accountability.
32. People who gave up walking for extended internet
use will grow web feet.
33. In Kentucky and Missouri, rape will come in 31
legitimate fl avors; and in Oregon, rapeseed DNA will
force itself on the organic seed industry because God
wants it that way.
34. Tea Party members of the U. S. House of
Representatives will be thrown overboard into Boston
Harbor.
35. We will fi nally receive an answer to our SETI
signals sent out into space requesting more I Love
Lucy.
Jerry Diethelm is a Eugene architect, landscape architect, and planning
and urban design consultant. Find his predictions last year (which all
came true) at http://wkly.ws/1eo
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eugeneweekly.com • December 27, 2012
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