2013 has barely begun but social scientists and their friends have already begun examining prevailing and countervailing trends in order to write the first articles which get the big bucks. Among them:
A suspicious acceptance of double- and treble-chins. Despite the overwhelming disgust normally felt by pretty much everyone when shown a picture of an old, white man (typically a member of the United States Congress), people in 2013 have not demonstrated the disapproval - if not downright hostility - people in previous calendar years have with regards to flab under the chin. Several print journalists have bemoaned the loss of Newsweek in 2012, as this would doubtless have made a good cover story in a week in which Jesus was not on the cover.
Food as illegal drugs. A shocking development in the counterculture (believed to have been instigated by the behind-the-counterculture) is the rise of edibles as means of "getting high." While meat and other animal products have often been sold in the black market in "developing" countries, the rise (no yeasty pun intended) of wheat-based comestibles as recreational drugs has baffled experts and not a few amateurs. Youtube videos of surly youths "snorting gluten" cause at least one European nation to forget all about how scared they are of Muslims.
Climate sex change. While climate change deniers spent the year getting lost at conventions for "The Vampire Diaries," scientists have begun to publish tentative reports about research which suggests that Mother Earth - long a caring, feminine planet - may have, some time in the 20th century - changed into a dude. Deep sea exploration in the Pacific Ocean will yield controversial evidence of the discovery of "the Earth's scrotum."
Opera on the beach. Scores of people who never ever go out into the sun and prefer to sing on stages in giant, air-conditioned buildings paid for by very rich people who wouldn't do it if it weren't tax deductible have decided to bring "the scolding art" (as Da Vinci probably never called it) to beach bunnies and surfer boys at America's most popular clothing-optional beaches. The humidity reportedly ruined not a few expensive musical instruments, which were also filled with sand, as well as the voices of obese Italian men who are often mocked as "dying whales" by uncultured young toughs on whose sandcastles they inadvertently trod.
With only 364 more days in the year to go, futurists and speculators have already declared 2013 "a wash," but people who just bought new calendars and dayplanners are not as ready to make such a judgment. At least half of them have clicked the box on the survey that says, "Ask me again in February." It seems at the very least safe to say: developments may be forthcoming.
