It is a new year, and the predictions for 2007 are here. Miss Ann, local palm and card reader, said the ability to predict is a gift. I believe that predictions are made by looking at the past and forming a conclusion from reoccurring trends. I visited Miss Ann to get her view of what a prediction is and to ask her for predictions for 2007.

Miss Ann said Thibodaux would be safe, and hurricanes will pose no threat in 2007.

“My predictions are a gift from God,” Miss Ann said. “People tell me their problems, and the minute I pray for them, everything goes good.”

Miss Ann also said Nicholls would help in making Thibodaux famous, and Thibodaux will grow to be like Houma.

Although I am not a palm and card reader who was “born with a God-gifted power to help humanity,” I have a few on-and off-campus predictions of my own.

The Nicholls campus has a few things on its to-do list besides making Thibodaux as “famous” as Houma. I predict that the cafeteria reconstruction will be finished, and the road resurfacing will begin in late 2007. I also predict that the parking lot resurfacing will be waiting on the results for new housing again this year and the construction of the recreation center will not have been started.

Despite all of the projects cluttering campus, fashion on campus will be anything but unfinished. Ladies will be wearing more feminine clothing like dresses with sweaters. Gentlemen will be wearing slacks with T-shirts, bringing a new dressed-up/casual style to campus.

I also predict that polyester will be the new denim. Plastic accessories and Grandma’s couch prints will bring Retro-chic to 2007.

Although celebrities will be wearing the new fashions of 2007, they will be tough to keep up with considering they change spouses more than they wear underwear. I predict that “TomKat” will break up in mid-2007 over Tom Cruise’s couch jumping addiction. “Brangelina” will break up in late-2007, and Angelina Jolie will get back with her brother. Lindsay Lohan will continue with her love-hate relationship with partying. Kevin Federline will release an album about “being a g” and marrying well. It will fail miserably.

I predict that pop-punk band Good Charlotte will release a new album about life and not selling out, again. My generation will find a genre that will be “noise” not music. Emo, short for “emotional,” is a broad title that covers different styles of emotionally-charged punk rock and will be the “noise” of my generation, and 2007 will open its arms to it.

K-Fed will also make a movie about a man that is trying to make it in the music business. (Does that plot sound familiar?)

To continue with the theme of new sequels to old movies, “RoboCop 4” will hit the box office in late 2007, starring former 90210 star, Jason Priestley. The sci-fi, action hit will premiere new technologies that companies will immediately start to produce.

Technology will come to a whole new high in 2007. I predict Microsoft will come out with a new video game system so consumers can play new games, but it will reboot after every level. I also predict Sony will lose money from the sales of its Play Station Portable because the tough competition with the Wii Nintendo. Video games in 2007 will become so realistic that when you get shot while playing Grand Theft Auto or Splinter Cell, you actually have been shot.

Cell phones will reach the peak of their technology in 2007. A new solar-powered, credit card-sized cell phone will emerge with an MP3 player, digital camera and camcorder, E-mail, pocket utility knife, video games, juicer, Web browser, satellite radio and television, collapsible thermal cup, calculator, GPS, text messaging, digital thermometer and peppermint breath spray dispenser. Due to all of the features, consumers will not be able to make outgoing calls.