2001 & All That:
What I See in the Murk Ahead
Mme. Anna-Magdalena Petrofina-Blavatsky,
Staff Psychic

Ed Note: Following a rigorous international search some months back, we hired Anna-Magdalena Petrofina-Blavatsky (no relation to the Mexican Petrofina's, she says) as our staff psychic. To much acclaim, she made her first appearance in these pages in Magellan's Log 14. Impressed by the sensitive ambiguity of her psychic attunement, we have been eager to get her comments on the vibes she's picking up re the near- and medium-term future. We finally tracked her down on the Ross Ice Shelf ("If you think porpoises are smart, wait'll you check out emperor penguins," she avers). Apparently her contact with the world from that location is intermittent. To get her laptop going, she says she has to heat its batteries for five minutes over her Primus stove. We submitted various questions which readers had emailed us following the appearance of her first column.

Reader: I am heavily invested in large-cap NASDAQ stocks. What does the future hold for me?

Mme. Petrofina-Blavatsky: When I was finally able to reach my spirit guides (you have no idea how difficult it is to achieve a state of focused inner peace when surrounded by about 10 million horny, squealing penguins), I placed your question to them and they instantly broke out in raucous laughter. As this was a behavior I had never before experienced from them, I am a little puzzled, but it seems that you might be well-advised to sell at your earliest convenience.

Reader: I am an assistant professor of history at a prestigious East Coast university. Achieving tenure, which is my be-all and end-all, depends on my getting out an insightful analysis of the current geo-political situation. Any clues will be greatly appreciated, though, as I am sure you will understand, I won't be able to credit you in a footnote.

Mme. Petrofina-Blavatsky: My guides assure me (if I understood them correctly through the 120-db babble of these idiotic little creatures crowding around my tent) that, apart from the collapse of China, a nuclear mini-holocaust in the Middle East, and the decimation of Southern California by an Iraqi-planted virus, the outlook for the next ten years is quite rosy.

Reader: In the small-print ads at the back of my favorite wrestling mag, there's an outfit in Pocatello, Idaho, offering to clone any human being for $9,999.95. The thought of having another me in the world is, I find, quite encouraging. I would like to know how this possibility looks from the Higher Planes.

Mme. Petrofina-Blavatsky: Most of my helpers refused to respond (or maybe I just couldn't hear them because of this infernal yap-yap-yap outside). The one who did respond said, in effect, that whatever dope you were on when you dreamed up this question put you on such a "High Plane" that you are completely out of this world. He suggested that you'd be better off getting your name on the waiting list for the Betty Ford Clinic, or, failing that, switch dealers.

Reader: I really don't see how the world can get much better that the Internet, DVD's, satellite TV, 24/7 porn, Diet Coke in 18-packs, and unchallengeable American global hegemony. Yet, I suppose history will continue. What do your spirits foresee?

Mme. Petrofina-Blavatsky: Sometimes my contacts transmit material which causes me to shudder and/or blush. This is one of those times. However, my reputation and integrity as a medium require that I forward the message to you as I received it. To wit: "Nothing is certain in the murky, swirling world of shitty possibilities that you inhabit, which, if you will recall, the late great George Sanders in his suicide note referred to as a 'cesspool.' The future is not set but is, rather, diarrhetically fluid. At the moment, you and your 6 billion fellows, are floating a little above the tide on a deceptively solid clump of fecal matter called 'technology.' We can only assure you that that clump is about as permanent as a snowflake on a hot stove. The Big Brown River rolls on..."

END

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