THE NAKED CITY: FUTURE SHOCK 2023!

In the early 1900s in America, those seeking to foresee the future would often gravitate to a dedicated ‘psychic’ tea room. Here they would be greeted by exotically dressed tea leaf readers and palmists, complete with all the foofangle of crystal balls and gypsy like paraphernalia. Sometimes a glimpse into the future was offered as a bonus to those who spent up big on the tea room’s menu and tips were also solicited.

However it was actually illegal to charge directly for a psychic consultation and the law was often enforced with raids and undercover policemen posing as customers. These days fortune telling is still a crime in some states and jurisdictions, however prosecutions are few and far between.

America today is flooded with ‘psychic’ telephone lines, TV psychics and fortune telling shops. It’s a billion dollar industry with an open invitation to any shameless charlatan to dupe those often seeking guidance and resolution of family and financial distress.

In Australia, the law generally states that fortune telling is not an offence unless the perpetrator deliberately sets out to deceive. Proving this would, of course, be extremely difficult. However, in South Australia and the Northern Territory it still remains a summary offence, a somewhat curious anomaly in the law that has yet to be fully tested in a modern court.

Over the years we have seen police in Australia calling on psychics to help them solve baffling crimes, and a number of late night psychic TV shows where callers pay by the minute. These days there are a rash of online psychics, none of whom have been able to nail the winning Powerball numbers or disclose the whereabouts of Juanita Nielsen. There are also a number of psychic tea rooms scattered across the country, although I have yet to discover if they can make any sense out of a tea bag.

You may well think that I am cynical when it comes to this kind of mumbo jumbo but here in the spirit of the great American psychic Jeron Criswell King (aka ‘The Amazing Criswell’), are the Naked City’s fearless predictions for the tumultuous year that awaits us all in 2023.

Vladimir Putin is pelted to death with Vodka bottles after he makes an impromptu appearance at a Fats Domino tribute concert in occupied Ukraine, singing a hopelessly out of tune version of ‘Blueberry Hill’.

TV dating shows reach an all time low when cadavers are matched at a well known funeral home, with the winning couple buried together in a $100,000 vault. Those eliminated from the show each week are offered a consolation prize – free cremation.

Kanye West renounces his antisemitism and flees to a kibbutz in Israel after an epiphany whilst eating lox and bagels in a New York diner.

Donald Trump’s enormous buttocks (aka his big wobbly arse) are declared a national monument and a facsimile is added to the four presidential busts at Mount Rushmore.

Prince Andrew, in an attempt to regain some credibility, appears on the UK TV show Naked Attraction in a lather of uncontrollable sweat.

Sky News Australia relocate HQ to the Marshall Islands to express their defiance of global warming and are consumed by a tsunami of rising sea levels.

The Egg Board of Australia joins forces with the Republican movement and invites King Charles for a meet and greet tour of the ‘colony’.

Baz Luhrmann produces yet another sequel to his Elvis movies, this time a full-on musical based on the infamous Elvis autopsy video.

Scott Morrison leaves Federal Parliament after accepting a cameo in an all Aussie remake of the 1987 Sci Fi classic RoboCop.

The National Gallery in Canberra release a 10,000 piece life-size jigsaw puzzle of ‘Blue Poles’ designed as the present for somebody who has everything.

Channel Nine continues the success of Lego Masters and Snackmasters – tedious extended commercials disguised as TV programs – with Rubmasters, in which contestants smear lashings of Dencorub on each other for no particular reason other than totally mindless TV.

Stadium shows get even bigger when 500,000 punters descend on the Wolf Creek Crater in Western Australia for a Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent spectacular.

And finally:

Bushells release an exciting new brand of ‘psychic’ leaf tea, the leaves of which give you an excellent chance of nailing the next biggest Powerball jackpot.