June 14, 2011

  • My future is secure, but wrong.

    I rarely get to read a proper newspaper nowdays since people seem to not leave them lying around in trains anymore, but when I do, I take the opportunity to see what is in store for me for the day by way of reading my horoscope (mainly because it's on the same page as the comics). Being an Aquarius, I am curious by nature and easily amused - the horoscope page fulfills both of these aspects of my life.

    In that respect, I would like to share with you the first few lines of my horoscope, as determined by Jonathan Cainer who  (judging by the little photo accompanying his astrology column) appears to be about the feast on something or someone tasty, from todays Sydney Daily Telegraph newspaper:

    "Whatever you do it will be wrong in the eyes of someone, who will criticise it. You will cause them offense or you will fail to meet an expectation."

    I feel this is a bit of a "derrr" moment so I'll pause so you can say it ......

    Ready to move on? Great.

    I'm certain Jon C. thinks that he's helping out all the Aquarians reading the paper today, but the thing is that everything anyone does or says will always be wrong in  eyes of someone and those people will in fact criticise them for it. It doesn't matter what star sign, colour, gender, height etc you are, someone is always going to take a negative view of anything you do and chances are someone's going to be mightily offended. I know this because I generally offend at least two people per day.

    It's not really Cainers fault though. Like every other hack astrologer writing up columns for newspapers worldwide, he's got to come up with a "one size fits all" type of paragraph for each individual star sign every day of the year and just mentioning generic things will ultimately appeal to a certain percentage of the population. I'm pretty sure that there are other Aquarians out there who read todays posting and thought that described them to a "T" and just as many who read it and rolled their eyes at it's ambiguousness.

    Astrology in itself is just fortune telling, as much as Tarot Card reading and stirring up the contents of a bucket of goat entrails will predict the future. As celebrated scam artist PT Barnum, who was widely but erroneously credited with saying, once said "There's a sucker born every minute."

    The interesting thing about these daily horoscopes is that there is  phone number included where you can get a "specially recorded message" that promises to give the "key to your future". I rang it once just to see where my future lies. I got 3 minutes of rabbiting on about nothing in particular then a minute of invitation to pay money to hear more. I didn't think finding the key to my future was actually worth it - I prefer the hit and miss that I've managed to survive for the past 4 decades.

    I think I can comfortably predict my near future without relying on the stars, goat entrails or a knock on the head. I'll go to work, say something ridiculous, get laughed at and offend people and everyone will have a good time of it.

    Except for Cainer - he'll be upset that I think he's a fraud and won't pay him for the key to my future.