TOMORROW’S NEWS TODAY!

Fair warning! If you are the kind of person who can’t watch a movie if someone tells you the ending before you’ve seen it, stop reading this column immediately! If you’re the type of guy who TiVo’s the ballgame and then spends the whole day avoiding the radio, the Internet, and people, so some schmuck on the elevator doesn’t blow it for you before you get home, step away from the essay!

Now, let me speak to the few of you who remain, who, like me, can’t take it anymore. If the suspense of current events is taking a toll on your nervous system, if the avalanche of horror stories about earthquakes and elections, Lebanon and Lohan, cyclones in Asia, tornadoes in America, murders, mergers and inquisitions has you quivering in fear or awaiting The Rapture, then read on.

These times are trying—to kill us. Every thing bad is up, everything good is down. Will things be better tomorrow? Will there even be a tomorrow? How does it all come out?

I was at my wits’ end, worrying about the future. So I committed a mortal sin. I ate from the Tree of Knowledge—or at least that’s what the guy on Mission Street who sold it to me called it—and the future appeared to me, as in a dream. I have sinned and glimpsed the future, so you wouldn’t have to. But shed no tears on my soul’s account. When the devil comes calling for me I plan to be in rehab.

The best news about the future is that it could be worse. Let me share with you some of what I saw or hallucinated, which amount to the same thing. Here are a few choice items:

Being unable for health reasons to discharge the responsibilities of her high office, Britney Spears tearfully steps down and George W. Bush ascends to the Presidency of the American Council of Overachieving Mediocrities. “My hopes and prayers are with Ms. Spears,” says the new leader. “She’s left some mighty small shoes to fill and I’m going to try like heck to fill them.”

President Barack Obama holds a press conference at Andrews Air Force Base, where he pins a medal on the last American soldier to return from Iraq. “It is time,” President Obama tells reporters, “for Iraq to grow up or blow up on its own. I have every confidence that peace will return to that Cradle of Civilization, but if the Fertile Crescent continues to need blood to fertilize it, they’ll have to use the local product.”

Rising to the occasion, the Sunni and Shiite leaders of Iraq announce a new ceasefire, pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor on a holy pact to limit civilian deaths to no more than a hundred a day for the next twenty years. The Kurds wish them all the best, then secede.

As his heroic battle with illness ends, Fidel Castro finally goes to meet his maker. Joseph Stalin greets him warmly, and says, “Good dog, Fido, good dog.”

In an deeply humanitarian gesture, after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again calls Israel, “a stinking corpse,” the Israeli Air Force sends a cruise missile his way to provide him some much-needed first-hand experience. For his further enlightenment, the IDF paints “Never again means never again, mother*****r,” on the nose of their generous gift.

Racial reconciliation in Africa! Robert Mugabe dictates the removal of all white people from Zimbabwe. Millions of formerly-black residents switch their affiliation to white, reregister as Caucasian, and take advantage of the government’s free, one-way bus ride over the border.

In a shocking development, Hillary Clinton is diagnosed with colorblindness during her post-election physical at the Mayo Clinic. According to her spokesperson, the former candidate’s first words upon learning of her affliction are, “Oh my God! He’s black? I had no idea!”

After lengthy negotiations, Microsoft announces the completion of its long-anticipated purchase of Yahoo. In related financial news, ColecoVision merges with Atari and Studebaker buys Packard.

The Wall Street Journal reports that while the housing crisis is easing somewhat, more and more Americans are losing their cars as the bank forecloses on their gas.

While I’ve only dared offer you a sampling of what I saw, I think I can safely say that the future is not bad at all.

Unless you’re a fan of the Boston Red Sox, in which case … but no, I don’t want to ruin it for you.