The horrors of not heeding your horoscope

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/04/2019 (2673 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I am typically not a big believer in horoscopes, on the grounds that I am not a complete moron.

Before you fly into a blind rage and send me letters on your I (heart) Astrology stationery, allow me to point out that, although I have never been a big believer, I agree that horoscopes make sound financial sense, on the grounds that they help us sell newspapers.

While I have never been an overly superstitious person — although I have been known to mutter incantations to prevent rival hockey teams from scoring on penalty shots — I am re-evaluating my feelings on the accuracy of horoscopes based on what happened the other morning.

What happened was I was lying in the bathtub, researching a newspaper column by randomly Googling stuff on my iPhone, when I stumbled on a popular horoscope for that day, which I decided to read.

Before I tell you what it said, I should explain that I was born in late September, so my astrological sign is Libra, symbolized by the scales, as in the Scales of Justice held by Themis, the Greek personification of divine law.

Here is what astrology.com says about people with my particular sign of the Zodiac: “The Libra astrology sign is cultured, refined and loves beautiful things. Most of all, they love beautiful people, which is why Libras do so well at cocktail parties or at the theatre, opera or ballet.”

Wow! I mean, does that fit me to a T, or what? Cultured? Check! Refined? Check! And I definitely love beautiful people, especially those I meet at cocktail parties, the opera, the ballet or the frozen-food aisle at Safeway.

But that is not the scientific point. The scientific point is that I decided to read my daily horoscope for two main reasons, namely: 1) I wasn’t ready to climb out of the tub; and 2) I was curious to see how my day was going to unfold before it actually unfolded.

Which is how I came to read my horoscope, which warned: “The more you try to figure something out the further away the answer seems to be, so take the hint and give your brain a rest. This is one of those problems that can only be solved by standing back and letting the whole picture come into focus.”

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: “Gee, Doug, I don’t have a (bad word) clue what that means, but it sure doesn’t sound good.”

That’s exactly what I thought too, so I did some more research, by which I mean I visited gizmodo.com, a website that has an artificially intelligent “bot” that spews out monthly horoscopes without the benefit of human interference.

Here’s what Gizmodo’s “AIstrology” bot told me: “The ‘big storm’ to you in Gemini is Neptune’s tilt, with a ‘big wobbo’ moving right about your wrist. (The Neptune wobbo move makes Neptune a very big moon, and it is also possible Saturn, like Jupiter before it, might slip under Neptune in conjunction with a small moons, making an even wider-than-expected shift in your orbit, since they don’t form at such low velocities.)”

If you are anything like me — and based on the confused look on your face, you probably are — you are thinking: “Big wobbo? Huh?”

The message that I took from these horoscope predictions was simple: I should probably climb back in bed, because I was probably not going to have a good day, especially because I had an appointment with my diabetes doctor, who was most likely going to point out that my blood sugar was the equivalent of a large bottle of Coke.

But, foolishly, I got out of the bath and attempted to engage in a normal, non-superstitious day, which, and most of you will have already deduced this, was a big mistake.

For starters, I attempted to make breakfast, which consisted of peanut butter on toast, which is when I discovered my wife had replaced our normal “crunchy” peanut butter with some kind of organic glop called “Only Peanuts,” which is all-natural and apparently contains the same amount of oil as was spilled in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Anyway, when my toast was ready, I screwed off the cap on this fancy new peanut butter, tipped the jar to examine the contents, which is when — GLOOOOP! — the ultra-oily stuff slopped out of the container in a peanut-intensive tidal wave, washing over the kitchen counter, the floor and, mostly, the clean shirt I had put on moments before.

Our two dogs thought this was wonderful, and busily licked the floor clean as I stood there in a blind rage, angrily scrunching my hands into fists, which caused my toast to crumble into dust on the floor.

After changing shirts, I put the dogs out in the backyard, which has been turned into something of an icy swamp because pools of melted snow have mixed together with the dead leaves and mounds of dirt that pass for my lawn.

When I let the dogs back in, I ordered them to wait at the door so I could clean their mucky paws, but instead they sprinted down the hall and began racing about in the living room, where I eventually found them hiding behind the leather couch, after tracing their filthy paw prints on the hardwood floor.

The point is, I have some serious spring housecleaning to do, but not before I leave you, the non-superstitious reader, with your own helpful horoscope. Here you go: “Do not get out of bed ever again! If you do, remember one thing: stick with old-fashioned crunchy peanut butter. And that’s not just my opinion. It’s written in the (bad word) stars.”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca