Your Horoscope for Today, Part 2

I pride myself on having regarded astrology as patent nonsense even when lots of otherwise sensible persons were giving it credence. I have never asked another human being what his or her sign is, and have only rarely told the ttuth about my own, as it gives me pleasure to misrepresent it, and then have the other smirk knowingly and say, “I thought so.” (For a very long time, before there was an Internet on which to check song lyrics, I dared to hope that Mr. Rotten had endorsed this exact practice in “Anarchy in the UK,” in which I thought I heard him sing, “Give the wrong sign/Stop the traffic line.”) At other times, I would insist that the other rephrase the question from What’s your sign? to What sign were you born under?, whereupon I would happily reply, “Births strictly forbidden.”

I’ve always found it incomprehensible that anyone could take seriously the horoscopes in newspapers or magazines, as they’re so very vague, as they of course have to be. I would very much to prefer something like:


Libra

You will finally find and return that long-overdue library book. The librarian will shake her head sadly on noting that you owe $11.20 in fines on it. Claiming to have left your wallet in the car, you will ask if you can settle up “next time.” All too familiar with this plea, confident that she will never lay eyes on you again, the librarian will arch her eyebrows censoriously while murmuring, “You bet.”

Samsung

Absolutely nothing of the slightest interest will happen, and you will have only yourself to blame, as immobilizing despair will keep you whimpering piteously under your duvet. As the day grinds on, though, you will take some solace in being able to blame your parents for the larger part of your inability to live happily in the world.

Snuffleupagus

You’ve been very rigorous about eating at least five portions of fruits and vegetables every day, but now you read an article suggesting that even one who eats only allegedly organic produce ingests dangerous levels of various carcinogens. There is nowhere to hide in the cruel modern world.

Thespian

You will phone your agent in the morning, only for his secretary to inform you he’s in a meeting. You will phone him again in the afternoon, while taking a break from your (temporary!) job as a greeter at Walmart, but he will turn out to be in another meeting. In a tone in which equal parts pity and contempt may be detected, his secretary will confirm that she has indeed been giving him your messages.

Pisces

You will wish you were able to afford fish a couple of times a week — preferably Chilean sea bass. You will try to remind yourself that a large percentage of your fellow humans would kill for your diet of grilled cheese sandwiches and pasta with bottled sauce, but it won’t do much good, just as it didn’t do so much good in your childhood when your parents invoked starving children you’d never met in countries you’d never heard of to try to get you to eat your fucking lima beans.

Shinola

You wonder if you’ve ever heard or ever will hear an interview with a professional athlete in which he or she doesn’t misuse the word hopefully. You will not be able to say for sure why this bothers you so much, and will speculate that it’s a function of your having resented student athletes so much back in high school, where you had an A-minus average but they enjoyed heavy petting with girls who didn’t know you were alive, and didn’t want to know.

Vegan

Going out to dinner with friends, you will announce as everyone is seated that you’re not at all confident of being able to find anything to eat, but wouldn’t dream of making everybody go elsewhere just to accommodate you. At several points over the course of the meal, you will frown in profound moral anguish at what your friends are eating. When they ask about this, though, you will claim they were just imagining things. You will bravely assure everyone that you’re really enjoying your bread and olive oil, which were — really, honestly! — all you wanted.

Leprosy

The top half of your right ring finger will fall off as you try to type a text message. This will not hamper your guitar playing nearly as much as if it were your left ring finger. Django Reinhardt didn’t have full use of all his fingers, and it didn’t slow him down, so quit whining — or, if a Brit, whingeing. It's the only world we've got.

[Many of my books are now available for download from Amazon. They include The Total Babe & Other Wine Country Yarns, Lentils on the Moon (aka A Message From Jesus in Braille, aka A History of the Jews in the Hudson Valley), Self-Loathing: An Owner's Manual, Third World USA, The Mona Lisa's Brother, and, for baseball nuts, Foul Balls and Alpha Males. You need neither a Kindle nor an iPad to enjoy 'em; simply download (free) Kindle software for either Mac or Windows, and enjoy them on your laptop or other computer!]