Sad news this morning from the Astounding! Psychic! Predictions! industry: Unless some mighty major stuff happens mighty quick, like say within the next three days, it was another baaaaad year for the tabloids and their prognosticators.

        That from New Yorker Gene Emery, who annually tracks Astounding! Predictions! and reports back on accuracy.

        He didn't track our personal fave — Princess Di found alive, well and living buck nekkid with a remote Brazilian tribe — but on the ones he did follow he found, well, zero percent ...

        • Prince Charles was supposed to fly in the space shuttle and announce his engagement to Camilla Parker-Bowles (is it just us, or does she look an awful lot like Mr. Ed?), said one noted psychic. Didn't happen, says Mr. Emery.

        • A trio of terrorists carrying a nuclear bomb was to be arrested in New York. And there are more bombs out there, President Clinton would tell a shaken nation. Nope.

        • Los Angeles and San Francisco, always two favorites in the psychic industry on account of they love to bring up Sodom and Gomorrah were going to fall into the ocean. Another earthquake, don't you see?

        • After aliens destroyed the Mars Polar Lander, Mr. Clinton was supposed to go on TV and tell the nation not to worry and that aliens have already slept in the Lincoln Bedroom. Must have been big contributors, 'eh?

        • An iceberg the size of California was, sadly, scheduled to wipe out Hawaii. Oh the humanity.

        • And speaking of icebergs, good old iceberg lettuce was supposed to give up hidden properties that cure cancer.

        • In the political arena, Hillary Clinton was supposed to lose the New York Senate race and Bill Bradley was supposed to win the U.S. presidential race. None of the psychics predicted that the good people of Florida wouldn't be able to figure out the ballot and would tie up the election for more than a month.

        Millennium Moments: Meanwhile, off at the End of Times As We Know Them, there were a whole batch of dire moments predicted of the year 2000. Reviewing same ...

        • Jesus Christ, returning to Earth to clear up the mess humanity made, is gunned down at the United Nations by National Guardsmen who follow that nasty episode with 200 canisters of incendiary tear gas fired into the indignant crowd. That hideous event was due Easter, 2000. Oops.

        • Speaking of come-backs, Adolf Hitler was due as well, this time as the Anti-Christ. First official act: Imprison or murder 600,660 true believers in a single day. Oops again.

        • We really hate to mention this one, what with three days to go in 2000, but what the heck? A “stunningly lethal epidemic” was scheduled to kill almost everyone left on earth — the ones Hitler and the National Guardsmen missed, we guess — by the end of the year. One more time: Oops.

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