You realize, don't you, that the decade that was brought in with Y2K and all the other millennial whoo-haa is now 80% gone. It doesn't even have a name and it's already a senior citizen. Time is flying. Heck, my holiday week off is almost gone. So we better do some prognostications for 2008 before another moment slips away. These are mine:

• Sports: Morton will stay up despite being the most points by ties leaders again. Santana will pitch in the AL East. I may watch an NHL playoff game. I will attend a Watertown Wizards game on a sunny afternoon in late June and consider it a very fine thing.
• Canadian politics: There will be an election in 2008 and it won't be pretty. By any measurement the Harper government has been a dud filed with blamery. What other PM at war could say he is uncertain whether Canadians at large understand the importance of remaining involved in the fight and not realize it is an indictment of his own leadership. The program to bring in accountability has been abandoned, the plan for Bali was to sit at the wet bar while others made a deal and the revival of and reliance on the team from Mulroney era as elder statesmen has been a botch. The opposition may have a GER plan (giving enough rope) but it is unclear if they know how to tie the basic knot required to do the job. In the end, we will have a less stable minority and it won't matter who wins as the Tories have proven they will implement anyone else's policies in order to avoid conflict or at least making a decision...and everyone else believes in the same thing anyway.
• The World: this could be a nasty one. A year of American election during wartime as well as a Russian one and, perhaps, a Pakistani one. I am going to go out on a limb (ie be wrong) and say that Hillary will not be US president but she may be Vice-President. I will also say that the Republican candidate will be a man and, dare I suggest, a man who has been filmed with a shotgun and wearing hunter's orange. In the end, it will not matter who wins as the US economy will be weakened further by the botch of a deregulated mortgage system and a consumer credit bubble economy. This will mean there is little or know choice to change course dramatically. China and Russia's power will increase. A really bad thing will happen and a country somewhere may even be invaded. Magnetic pole reversal will or will not occur but movies (including TV movies of the week) about it happening will be made and we will all be left thinking fondly of the days of movies about meteors and killer waves that wipe out the east coast of the USA. People will reread and adopt both the Flushing Remonstrance and the Declaration of Arbroath to the current situation.
• Society, Style and Art: I will continue to have none of the above. The recession will devolve much of the lifestyle columns into discussions about how to cocoon and make jam. Wine will be replaced by beer; tea will take the place of coffee; steak will become sausage; Lego over logo. Privacy will continue to be abandoned in favour of the will of the widget. The internet will become less important than it is even now though someone will make another killer app with mass adoption that will do absolutely nothing for anyone.
• Me: through more foster parenting, we will have at least more extra kids in the house than I have fingers on one hand, just like we did in 2007. I will hit 20,000 sit-ups sometime in the summer as I have already hit 8,000 since September. I will have a book deal but it may be for a very short book and the deal may not be that attractive. The garden will expand with ornamental bushes being hacked down and forgotten forever in favour of another herb or one more radish. I will hit my 4,000th post and my fifth year here but attention will more and more be paid to the beer blog, given that it gives. I will finally acquire that trombone mouthpiece. Payments will continue to be made.

Is that all I can expect for 2008, uncertainty or more of the same? I have to be careful, you know. Maybe we can go with something or things unexpected will occur that will have the effect of improving or reducing the quality of our lives to one degree or another. I may go see a band play that I haven't seem before. I definitely will BBQ a new and unexpectedly tasty mammal. Yes, that I can promise you will happen. There you go. El Predicto speaks.