Con Reviews: His Horoscope

Reader, welcome to 'Con Reviews'. A place where anything and everything will be reviewed by yours truly. Maybe I'll review a fishing rod? Or maybe I'll go to the zoo. Or maybe I'll review a full day of Channel 10 programming.

This week I'm gonna tackle my Horoscope for the day:

“You're quite goal-oriented today. This helps you work industriously toward a specific outcome. And when your energy is this directed, there's very little you can't accomplish! Whatever you need to do, you're willing and able to do, whether that means networking, researching or simply putting your back into it. Best of all, you can serve as an example to your children or coworkers -- anyone who is watching you do what you do best.”

I begin this month’s review a little sick in my stomach. Partly because I’ve been sweating the entire contents of a liquor store since I finished exams, and partly because of what I must review:

Horoscopes.

I don’t know what would drive a person to religiously check that little column of ambiguous fate, but something under the surface tells me religion plays a role. Not the whole ‘talking snake,’ or ‘old mate Noah lived to 900 years old’ shit, but the chemical physiology of religion in a human’s brain, the desire to belong, the longing for universality acceptance.

The above horoscope comes from the astrologist of the Sydney Morning Herald. The list of quasi-qualifications after their name is frankly quite staggering. “CA NCGR IV, PMAFA, ISAR C.A.P., FAA.” A medical professional has less qualifications. Astrology doesn’t put the quality in qualification. You can simply apply and pay for most of these tags. You can pay to make your email signature longer, if you somehow have decided that the longer the qualification tags run after your name, the longer your cock must be. But those qualifications, each a self-congratulatory pat on the back, clearly fail to include a class on humility.

Today I’m reviewing the relevance of my horoscopic guidance to my day. I’m a Virgo, as if that matters. Maybe it does. We’ll see.

“You’re quite goal oriented today.”

Am I? Well, I mean I did get out of bed and accomplish my goal of going to the bathroom without pissing and shitting all over myself. I did successfully push a button to make coffee come out of a box sitting in the kitchen. Does that qualify as a goal? What is the goal threshold here? I didn’t make Earth a better place to live, or fix my fucking break lights or vacuum the house, sort out my Superfund, or book a dental check-up. Those could and I guess should be my goals. Is a horoscope just a little ‘go get ‘em tiger’ for the day? Is there any purpose? I fail to see why a stranger who looks at the fucking moon for guidance can set my mood for the day. Do I feel the master of my own world, fate be damned? Of course not. Shit happens. It just does. To good people too. Shit does happen. We can guide our own life, we can try not to be such a dick, and we can decide to not screw with other people’s shit, but we cannot control everything. We are, after all, just a bunch of monkeys with smartphones hurling through space on a rock rotating around a bomb we need to survive.

“This helps you work industriously toward a specific outcome.”

I read this line and it just makes me want to stay in my underpants all day watching Malcom Turnbull on ABC 24 gradually but surely lose his once eloquent speech manner in the hardest farming job in the country: politician cattle herding. Watch closer next time: each television appearance he makes is just a little less professionally crafted than the last. Each sentence a little less polished. Each day a little balder. We as a nation are watching a late middle aged man die. Is it because I’m a ‘Virgo’ that I have such a deep desire to accomplish no goals today out of spite for a stranger with more capital letters after their name than me? The irony of completing the goal of writing this review today slaps me in the face as if I should be thanking an astrologer demi-god for my entire life thus far.

“And when your energy is this directed, there's very little you can't accomplish! Whatever you need to do, you're willing and able to do, whether that means networking, researching or simply putting your back into it.”

News flash: if you do something to make something happen, something will likely happen. Do you ever share my fear that with a digital record of everything we’ll be judged by future generations as the blind blissful idiots we are? ‘Networking’ is dead. The word holds as much weight as the corporate nothingspeak classic, ‘synergy’. Astrologers have a real air of advertising and sales about them. The party piece is what they are selling: nothing. It’s amazing what you can do when you convince people to buy nothing. Call or message a horoscope hotline, give them an inch of nothing and they give you a mile back. And at the end of the conversation the only real change you’ll experience is the lost change from your pocket.

But is false hope worth the money? Do we counter logical cynicism by justifying the ends. If someone is inspired to do something good, if someone is injected with exactly what they need to keep their train going, well, is that not worth something?

It’s these thoughts that keep humanity so damn stupid. Of course it’s all bullshit. We need to stop looking externally for a pat on the back. Shit happens, yes, but you can’t control shit. What you can control is your own frame of mind. An astrologer is a psychologist for someone who watches ‘The View.’ Someone who lives in la la land. Someone who needs to believe they are completely out of control, to relinquish their responsibility, all in order to attempt to keep control of their thoughts.

“Best of all, you can serve as an example to your children or coworkers -- anyone who is watching you do what you do best.”

Nobody cares. Do your job well, try to set a good example. All normal mantra’s of everyday life. Today is no different. Attempt to be good. Let the cab into the lane in front of me. Maybe just try to set an example of rationality in a world where Kardashian’s unfortunately exist. Horoscopes shouldn’t exist. It is 2016. Humans just shot a rocket into space, then the rocket came back and landed again. There’s all the inspiration you should need. We should inspire to create, innovate, and objectively learn. We shouldn’t pay more assholes to tell us what we want to hear. That’s what taxes are for. Talk is cheap and easy.

There’s only one occasion when horoscopes are suitable, and that is at 4:30 AM Sunday morning, sitting around a TV watching these delusional folk debate Jupiter while you and your friends make no attempts to sober up. Astrologers will serve to remind your gang that even though you’re all completely fucked, these guys are the crazy people, not you. A nice reality check.

There’s an ‘art’ to writing horoscopes. It’s not good art, but the majority of art isn’t good. It is a balance of giving the audience, based on an astronomer’s demographic, exactly what they want to hear, all the while still slightly challenging them to create mental bridges that pass over canyons of reasonable, intellectual doubt. All people can be stupid, but conversely all people can be smart. Nurture over nature, man. If you can make people create a mental bridge in their mind that makes a link between your astrological bullshit to their actual life, and you can do that instead of providing them with the bridge, you can be sure they will walk across it as they bask in their own proud mental creation and join the other insanely blind, peaceful idiots on the other side.

Never pay for these services, avoid them at all costs, and turn Premium SMS access off your mobile. Make your own inspiration from the plethora of real beauty reality gives us. For that one time you and your friends stumble across an astrology show on community TV keep it on for a few minutes and have a good laugh. 1/10.