by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

The future is almost upon us. It'll be here any minute. Okay, it's here now. This keeps happening. We need to be equipped and prepared for such accidents.

So here, in the name of encouraging our preparedness, are some of the future trends that we might anticipate:

Flying cars. You think it's ridiculous. I can assure you that, in the 1930s, microwaves and dental floss would be impossible to bend your head around too.

We can be a world capital of the flying-motorcar if we act now. Quebec imagines itself as Sweden, except, oops, we don't make cars. So we'll furiously try to develop this device. Montreal, which will still be studying right-on-reds for the next few decades, will ban the flying cars, leading to a massive exodus into areas like Mirabel and Lachenaie, who will welcome the vehicles as there's nothing but fields and barns to crash into.

Nimby restrictions will continue to grow exponentially, as every type of thing will be banned. My fave recent such measure: wealthy residents of the Crawford Park area of Verdun recently engineered a ban on large vehicles parking in front of their homes. Winnebagos were ruining their lives. "It's Crawford Park, not Trailer Park," they said.

Quebec traditionally had an anglo finance minister. So whenever somebody begged the premier for more money, he'd just shrug: "I'd love to give it out but I can't get a nickel out of this cheapskate nickel-hugging Presbyterian." Everybody won. Anglos felt important, and the francos had a villain. After they removed this tradition, the provincial debt went from about five bucks to well over $100-billion. In the future they'll return to proven methods.

Forks are finished. Martha Stewart will lead the revolution for sporks, which she became acquainted with in prison. In case you've never been inside, these are highly functional utensils that combine the best of spoon and fork technology.

Ceremonial daggers my foot. The Junior Kirpan Mafia will be coming for you. Sure they're very young, respectful, studious and pious, but they're armed and potentially dangerous.

Montreal artist Jana Sterbak became slightly world famous for designing a meat dress called "Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic." Don't snicker. One day you will be wearing one.

Wealthy motorists frustrated by the great equalizer, traffic jams, will pioneer a brand new gimmick: motorcycle motorcades for millionaires.

All telephones will be equipped with "send" buttons, so phone numbers will no longer necessarily have seven digits. Phone companies will cash in by selling off shorter phone numbers. Your prestige will be in inverse proportion to the length of your phone number. "Wow those guys are big wheels, their phone number is 514-3339!"

Remember the Nemnis? They were proud Canadians-in-Quebec who laid the seeds of Adscam in their relaunched Cité Libre, where they argued that the Canadian flag should be omnipresent in the province. In the future, somebody will notice that the Nemnis ditched this province and now live in Ontario.

Our landscapes will change forever when trees are genetically adjusted to grow leaves in the winter. Before that happens, we'll get into a new "toupees for trees" fad which will see companies load your winter arbour with leafy plastic branches.

Some fine citizen will undertake the removal of 50,000 heavily entrenched pieces of gum stuck on the sidewalk in front of downtown's LaSalle College.

Junkies will be fitted with permanent blue-tinted contact lenses that will mimic the blue light in public bathrooms such as the one in the Ultramar at St-André and Ontario. The blue light makes it impossible to find a vein to stick a needle into.

Pie-ing of the leaders is finished. Pranksters will instead put a mirror under former mayor Bourque's nose to see if he's breathing, and design a neck brace to stop Mayor Tremblay's head from wobbling around when he gets nervous.

Brain implants will make everybody super-intelligent, and lead us loudmouths to great embarrassment at our low standards of intellectual rigour. Until then, it might be well advised to keep a low profile.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca