By Brodie Hawkins Brockie

Well, we've made it to 2000 and I have never in my life had to wear a fish bowl on my head. Frankly, I find this rather disappointing.

Where are the hovercars? Where are the giant, rotating houses built in the sky? Where are the treadmill walkways to save us from the hassle of walking? OK, they're in the airports, but is that it? That's not enough!

Why do I still have to take a shower every morning instead of being dry-cleaned in a clear plastic tube?

Damn you, pop culture, you lied to me again.

Where are the tiny pills that fulfill the entire days eating requirements in one tiny capsule? Sure, the Pop Tarts I had for breakfast today came in a silver foil pouch, but that's just not the same.

The prognosticators of yesteryear were wrong. Way wrong. We haven't even been invaded by a hostile alien species. Not even once!

So, knowing this, I will temper my predictions with the memory of the failures of the fortune-tellers of the past.

Here, now, are my Visions of the Future:

Beverage sizes will continue to grow. Following the trend in recent years, beverage containers sold in fast-food joints, convenience stores, and movie theatres will continue to balloon to ridiculous proportions. By 2006, what we now consider a "medium" will be the new small, the current "large" will be the new medium, and so on. BY 2013, beverage will be so large that sizes will not be measured in liters, but instead in fathoms. This is a conspiracy between the beverage makers and movie industry to force people to buy tickets to see the same movie more than once after they spent the majority of their first viewing emptying their bladders.

Other than that, everything stays pretty much the same, only a little different.

Thank you, have a good future, and if the Martians do ever get off their lazy behinds and come down to enslave us, you can say I didn't warn you.