So I said to myself, “Lance, you can do better than a year in review.”

Myself said back to me, “You sure can, kid. Do a bold and not so bold predictions column for 2016. That way some of the stuff that would have been in your year in review will be covered and some of the stuff yet to be covered can be mentioned and then you will have it covered and don't have to mention it again until 2016 comes to an end.”

I like the way the self that talks back to me thinks, although he can be a bit a wordy and I have to tell him to keep it simple stupid and he goes into his room and pouts, listens to Icelandic death metal music and reads Sylvia Plath poems.

I'm not really sure there is such a thing as Icelandic death metal but there should be. Maybe you kids out there with your flannel shirts, wooly beards and Mumford and Sons suspenders can hip me to that.

So anyway, as you can see, even my real self tends to ramble, which has become a hallmark of these columns because it throws the reader on a detour and they wish they hadn't began to even read from the beginning because there he goes on a tangent about beards and Iceland.

I tried growing a beard over Christmas and was doing well until I discovered it interferes with my CPAP mask. I also tried to grow a beard last Christmas so as you can tell I'm running out of column fodder and am basking in the promise of a new year where I will probably again write about how I tried to grow a beard over Christmas.

Now that I am sleeping on a new memory foam mattress and have slept with the CPAP since I can't remember, trying to grow a beard like Mumford and Sons fans do makes the beard seem like an impulse buy, standing in line at the grocery store and seeing a headline where Donald Trump is abducted by aliens and then left to wander a lonely planet while the congregation says amen.

I think Donald Trump being abducted by aliens would be a good thing, cleanse the planet and get people thinking about real solutions rather than building a wall around stuff.

Now that the Weekly World News is no longer on the market there's no point in impulse buying unless the person ahead of me is writing a check and then I peruse the headlines of the various tabloids — except for the WWN which I miss terribly — while I wonder who writes checks in 2015.

I realize this column is getting out of control as I ruminate about a whole lot of nothing.

But sometimes nothing is something and sometimes it might be the better part of valor to write incessantly about minor little irritants like me trying to grow a beard or the self talking back to me.

I figure no one really cares what I think 2016 will be like anyway and I believe this whole column would be more poignant if I had a turban and crystal ball or at least a big, old marble, which, since I have none of the above, kind of makes the whole prediction thing moot.

If I wrote a prediction column all you Carolina Panthers fans would be mad at me and consider me a traitor to the Old North State so I won't tell you your beloved team will not make it to the NFC Championship game. It will be Washington and Arizona with the Cardinals winning and going on to win the Super Bowl.

Cam Newton will be watching that game eating Greek yogurt, sitting in the hot tub with a mopey Greg Olsen, who is listening to Icelandic death metal and reading Sylvia Plath.

I hate to pull the race card, but Greg Olsen looks like he could be from Iceland and looks so broody he would probably like Icelandic death metal.

About the only thing I'm sure of for the coming year is there will probably be more columns like this where I go on a writing rampage like some bearded mad man fresh out of Walden Pond.

No doubt there will be a future part three of the — patent pending — Striper Club series of columns and future references to pigs and city council.

If I had a crystal ball the night city council turned down the ordinance proposal I would have marched straight to the Crystal Ball and Wizard Store on the avenue and demanded a refund even though there's no Crystal Ball and Wizard Store on the avenue because a city council in another dimension turned that down.

I bring up the pig thing again because any columnist worth their weight in ink, or in my case gigabytes and server capacity, should have the knack to flog a dead horse. I am turning it into an art form.

At that meeting, when the fine folks at S&L Pet Shop asked me what I thought council would do, I had the audacity to predict it would be a slam dunk, council would be pro-business and approve the ordinance change so the business would be able to sell the little piggies. So much for my career as the new Nostradamus. I suppose by the way I've been sinking my teeth into city council over the pig thing I could be the next Nosferatu although my taste for blood is null and void.

I'm sure there will be another apartment complex proposal on the agenda which will be turned down because of the expert testimony of people against the proposal who think they know more about real estate values than appraisers do.

The people who think they know more than appraisers do have the NIMBY — not in my back yard —disease because they are fearful the wrong element — you know, Icelandic death metal fans who read Sylvia Plath — will turn their panacea into some slum. If you really get to know the wrong element you would find most of them would give you the flannel shirts off their hairy backs.

Speaking of my columns, I can envision at some point I will boldly mention my passion for Gwyneth Paltrow again, possibly in connection with the Striper Club or because I saw an article about her while perusing the tabloids as someone in front of me in the checkout line wrote a check. As a side note the lovely Gwyneth did an outstanding job portraying Sylvia Plath in the aptly titled movie Sylvia.

At no point will there be another mugshot controversy and accusations of not running them because of something beyond my control like votes on pig ordinances, apartment complexes, football playoffs and other stuff.

The truth of the matter is, as my pig vote prognostication showed, I have no clue what will happen in 2016 so the best course of action for everyone is to not listen to the self talking back to you, sit back, watch it unfold, dig a little Icelandic death metal and Sylvia Plath and hope for the best.

Happy New Year! — Lance Martin