KRASSNER HAS A CRYSTAL BALL

Let's end the week with Paul Krassner's predictions for 2004. He has taken the culture's pulse for so long and with such accuracy that his prescience should surprise no one.

It's a tough game, making predictions. He knows that as well as anybody, except for Our Maximum Leader, who ought to be eating his words about now for predicting we'd find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Colin Powell's defense notwithstanding.

So Krassner has done a wise thing. He's made his predictions wickedly amusing. Here are some of them:

1. Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant will be cellmates.
2. Charles Manson will be released on parole and announce that he's looking forward to spending more time with his family.
3. Fidel Castro will come out for term limits.
4. Wal-Mart will move its corporate headquarters to China.
5. Saddam Hussein will be sentenced to a lifetime of community service.
6. The stunt doubles for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez will get married.
7. The world's tallest building, to be built at the site of the World Trade Center, will be sponsored by the Target chain, whose corporate logo of a bulls-eye a few floors below the spire will be visible for miles.
8. The Patriot Act will be expanded to include thought crimes.
9. The ACLU and PETA will combine forces to fight for the civil liberties of all animals.
10. Strom Thurmond will be tried posthumously for statutory rape.
11. Jesse Jackson and Johnny Cochran will compete against each other in a national poetry slam.
12. Bottled water will be imported from Mars.
13. Monica Lewinsky and Paris Hilton will enter a convent and become nuns for a reality-tv series.
14. Sen. Joe Lieberman will convert to Islam.
15. God will at last be given credit for creating evolution.