My wife, The Queen B, has started to complain.

Wednesday, January 02, 2002

My wife, The Queen B, has started to complain. &uot;How many times can one person listen to that song?&uot; she sputters. How could anyone listen to Eartha Kitt’s ‘Santa Baby’ too much?

I am glad that The Queen B has voiced her protestation. She reminds me that it is time for me to make a visit to that renowned mystic from the Far East (the eastern part of Freeborn County), the fabled soothsayer, the Swami From Just Outside Bath.

I enter his abode through a maze of hanging beads with the smell of burning incense and the sounds of sitar music filling the air. The Swami From Just Outside Bath told me that he is most excited about 2002. The reason for his unbridled enthusiasm is that the Swami believes that 2002 is a palindrome. We haven’t had a year that reads the same forwards and backwards since 1991.

Now here are the Swami’s annual predictions. Remember, the Swami From Just Outside of Bath knows little, sees even less, but suspects a lot.

– A Hartland farmer while digging with a backhoe in an attempt to try to find the end of the root system of a Canada thistle will strike gold. He will instantly become a multi-millionaire. He will farm for a few more years until the money is all gone.

– Farmland will reopen the plant in Albert Lea. There will be one slight change from the old plant. The new one will be an amusement park called, &uot;Meat World.&uot; Featured attractions will include: &uot;The Bacon Grease Slide,&uot; &uot;Make a Pig Out of Yourself&uot; (visitors dress like pigs and make a terrifying visit to a packing plant), &uot;Ham It Up&uot; (a theater troupe made up of old hams) and the &uot;Pork Chop&uot; (a martial arts class featuring the use of a frozen meat product as a deadly weapon.) Guests will enjoy the opportunity to canoe the lagoon and to guess the sausage. Families will wait in lines for over an hour to see the World’s Largest Pickled Pig’s Foot.

– Albert Lea Lake will be put to good use. A company called &uot;It’s Water&uot; will bottle the water from that lake and sell it with the advertising slogan, &uot;It will put hair on your chest.&uot;

– The city of Hartland will make a bid to locate the County Courthouse in that city. The offer will be an attractive one as there is plenty of parking available.

– A sales tacks will go into effect in Albert Lea. Ace Hardware will offer 100 carpet tacks at half the usual price.

– The price of gasoline will fluctuate 365 times in 2002.

– Every owner in Major League Baseball will claim to lose money while at the same time be willing to pay an average fielding, second baseman with a .237 lifetime batting average and a bad attitude $3 million a year to play for him.

– The education at a local school will be expanded to the four Rs: reading, riting, rithmetic and reductions.

– The folks in Washington who are in charge of the census will admit that they just pull all the numbers out of the thin air.

– A man will agree with every decision made by the County Board. He will reside in Polk County, Iowa.

– The city of Alden will change its name to Alben so it can be ahead of Albert Lea in the telephone directory.

– A spokesman for the Mayo Clinic will admit that the Clinic has nothing to do with mayonnaise.

– The Minnesota Vikings will continue to play when they feel like it. Many addicted fans will continue to watch the Vikings whether they feel like it or not.

– A tax-funded study will find that people do not enjoy paying high taxes.

– The winter will include wind, snow and cold. (The Swami From Just Outside Bath likes to throw in one sure thing.)

– The Minnesota Twins will solve their financial problems by playing all of their home games away.

– The city council of Clarks Grove will be faced with a serious problem when the long-lost Mr. Clark shows up and demands his grove back.

– A University of Minnesota study will show that rap music causes the artists to grow rich.

– Hartland inventor Pat Pending will cross an electric eel with a fir tree, creating a tree that grows its own Christmas lights.

– For safety reasons, airline travel will be limited to those willing to travel in their birthday suits.

There they are, the Swami From Just Outside Bath’s predictions for 2002. Remember that he has been wrong before.

Hartland resident Al Batt writes columns for the Wednesday and Sunday editions of the Tribune.