Greetings from The Year 2008. I have much to tell you, so listen carefully. I am next year.
I was not expected to be especially momentous. I have a European Championships but no Olympics or World Cup. I have a US election and Hillary Clinton will win. But I didn't intrude on my predecessor, 2007, to tell you that. No, I am here, or indeed now, to tell you that you MUST STOP SAVING COUPONS. I can see, looking back over my shoulder, that you are spending much time collecting coupons for a variety of household items. Many of these products are substandard, and the discounts afforded by said coupons minimal.
But the real problem is that these coupons keep piling up. For many years now the Prophets of Doom have predicted that one day there would be too many coupons. The cupboards and coupon jars of the West, they exclaimed, already unsteady, built way above a safe height of stacked coupons, would overflow catastrophically.
Some feared the worst; others hoped the day would never come. But most agreed that around 2050 a tipping point would be reached. My friends, I wish it were so. But THE DAY IS ALMOST UPON US. In January 2009, just around the corner from me, the tipping point will arrive. And the world will, as the name suggests, tip. Tip right over, and end up upside down, unbalanced by the mountains of coupons building up in Europe and North America. All these coupons, stacked ever higher, changing the Earth's centre of gravity, causing it to teeter, and totter, until finally it topples.
It is not too late. If you act now, the Earth's orientation can be maintained. But leave it too late - as people have done in my December, hoarding coupons as Christmas approaches - and the world will just flip over, and everything will be upside down.
Redeem or destroy those coupons, please. You have been warned.
days without, you know ...