New Year’s Alternative Histories - Humor

I thought I'd start my 2026 posts with another installment of Alternative Histories. People seemed to like this theme, and I find it amusing and somewhat therapeutic.

So with a Happy New Year's, the following is the irreverent list I concocted:

(1) People's well-intentioned New Year's Resolutions become contractually obligated with draconian legal enforcement.

(2) The US Department of Justice breaks up a 50-statewide criminal organization called Planet Fitness. It was determined that this no-opt-out fee extortion racketeering network preyed upon unsuspecting victims. Authorities use purple prison suits for Planet Fitness gang members.

(3) It turns out that Captain Phillips was in on the Somali hijacking of his ship, the Maersk Alabama, and took a cut of the action. Phillips then leads a group of Somalis to Minnesota. There he becomes a popular 3-term governor and retires from politics with a net worth of $863 million. Tom Hanks is replaced by Ray Liotta in the movie version of Phillip's book.

(4) A Federal Court District Judge overturns the decision to remove planet status from Pluto, citing Stare Decisis.

(5) Ed Sullivan is given the lifetime achievement award for Most Awkward and Stiff Pop-Culture TV Show Host.

(6) Sonny Liston, instead of allegedly taking a dive (Mafia fix payoff) in his second fight with Cassius Clay, wins by 9th-round KO after Clay drops his hands in a taunting gesture. The loss causes Elijah Muhammad to reject Clay as a utility fixture of the Nation of Islam, and Clay is never renamed.

(7) It turns out the Gordian knot was originally tied by an inept Boy Scout in the most epic fail of all time, by a country mile, while working on his rope tying merit badge. However, the flunky Scout bounces back by inventing slip-on shoes to be marketed by aging celebrities as Sketchers at some point in the future.

(8) Celebrity actor and former pro-wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson loses a copyright misappropriation lawsuit concerning the IP naming rights of Saint Peter. As part of the settlement, Johnson has to perform all scenes in his next Fast 'n Furious franchise movie role affixed to an upside-down cross.

(9) Atticus Finch walks out on his troubled client after his meager legal retainer is exhausted in To Kill a Mockingbird. Finch then goes to a lucrative DC legal firm and is replaced by a progressive public defender who calls for no-cash bail for the black client. (The client is unfortunately then lynched by a rabble mob outside once released.)

(10) Trump announces that another section of the White House will be renovated and that it will be funded from the sale of confiscated Venezuelan black market oil tankers. A captured Maduro is forced to do the ribbon-cutting upon completion.

(11) Sustainable energy engineers finally make a major breakthrough in powering the electrical grid via channeling Tom Jones's boundless sexual radiant energy on stage. The engineers discover that it's Not Unusual for the Welshman to meet surge peak demands when busting out into his Sex Bomb number.

(12) Mark Twain wrote a different ending to Huckleberry Finn. Tom Sawyer not only tricks Huck Finn into painting a fence, but also into turning Jim into a slave catcher. Tom pockets a profit from the ruse. (Poor Jim.)

(13) The Communist Chinese invasion of Taiwan is unexpectedly thwarted completely by seven old, grizzled Japanese WW2 soldiers still stuck on an obscure, tiny island that Xi tries to utilize. Chinese military losses become crippling.

(14) Travis Kelce gets locker room bragging rights for life when feminist pop-star icon Taylor Swift writes a song about his impressive manhood. All previous boyfriends are emasculated. Wait, did this actually happen?

(15) Christian scholars discover that the reason why Luke's Jesus lineage differs from Matthew's Gospel is that Luke was using an uncompleted page on Ancestry.com as his source material.

(16) Scholarship of Martin Luther's 95 Theses reveal that his #1 complaint was that German priests were not getting enough nookie from German nuns. This can be taken on faith alone.

(17) It's third-party verified that Al Gore did, in fact, invent the internet. All of it. He also followed up that creativity by inventing climate change alarmism with an artificial trading scheme.

(18) DMC has to issue an urgent recall for the DeLorean. It turns out that the 80s sports car had a severe manufacturing defect of being subject to time travel when it exceeds 85 mph.

(19) William Tyndale debuts his new English translation of the Bible on social media and is mercilessly ratioed.

(20) In the new year of Y2K, the world does in fact come crashing down. The only fix is to perpetually wind back the digital clocks and relive a sort of Groundhog Day while waiting on Microsoft to update the buggy software—if only Bill Gates could stop being a creep.