Saturday, March 05, 2005

Cubic Zirconia In the Crystal Ball

I’ve long avoided having a psychic consultation. For one thing, the Church kind of frowns on them.

“All forms of divination are to be rejected,” states the Catechism. "Recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and other human beings…They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.”

Also, I feared that I would be told, “You know that whole rich famous writer thing? Totally not happening. Enjoy the drive-thru window.”

Last year curiosity got the better of me, although I feared I might need a second opinion. So I got fourteen of them.

I gave each reader the name of a romantic interest and a male business contact, then asked how my career would shake out.

This is what I learned:

* The romantic interest is my soulmate.
* The business contact is my soulmate.
* I am going to travel this year.
* And meet new people!
* I need to cleanse an ex-boyfriend from my aura.

I must say that some of this was completely accurate, given that I travel and encounter new people every time I drive to Wal-Mart for toilet paper. It was a fairly safe thing to prophesy, as I have yet to hear of a psychic to look a person in the eye and tell him, “You’re going to sit on your ass this year, meet absolutely no one, and go broke.”

One told me that the Virgin Mary was “aligning (me) and (a) beautiful male together.” I was thrilled that Mary, who clearly has nothing better to do with her time, had elevated my dating life to an Catholic version of The Bachelorette, picking and choosing amongst the hotties.

Then again, there was the psychic who had to cancel our reading because she had “unexpected visitors from out of town.” Um. Couldn’t she have… I don't know... forseen this?

So on my birthday, I collected a raftload of for-the-year predicitons, which as you can imagine are the Most. Accurate. Things. Ever.

The following is from astrowatch.com:

This year will be ruled by number 6

Awwwww yeah! Six! I love six! I can’t tell you how relived I am I didn’t get hooked up with nine, who I hear has a drinking problem and schedules essay due dates for the day after spring break.

You are generous, practical, cooperative, accommodating and a broad-minded person.


As evidenced by posts such as this.

You have a large social circle and many acquaintances,

“Large” in this sense meaning “consisting of the squashed egret outside my apartment, the Walgreen’s prescription hotline lady, and the voices in my head.”

but you like to share your personal life with only few. You are highly sincere to your friends,

“Those pants so totally don’t make you look like you’re smuggling a roll of Bounty towels in the rear, Amy, and in case I haven’t mentioned it, I sincerely hope I can hang out with your boyfriend on a daily basis, because I cannot imagine my life without listening to fourteen-minute screeds about stem cell research while trying to eat macaroni and cheese.”

but you need to control your tendency to behave moody, dominating and jealous at times.

I AM NOT MOODY. Shut yo’ mouth or I shut it for you.

Career - Support from your partners and colleagues, would boost your morale and confidence.

Proper use of commas, would cause me not to vomit.

Finance - This coming year sees new ventures and plans materializing to your benefit.

Well, that’s good. I bask in the relief that the $288 kit I ordered that will teach to make millions by investing in real estate at absolutely no cost to myself will at last pay for itself.

Your income would be from more than one source.

Cool, table dancing and streetwalking.

You would enter new partnerships.

...thanks to my new pimp!

Romance - Family members would be understanding to your concern and extremely helpful.

This one is totally spot-on. I was talking to Jim The Baby Nephew last week, and I was like, “Jim, I wonder whether or not the complexities and interaction of a healthy long-term relationship are at last addressing my deeply rooted insecurities,” and he was all, “Mwaaaaaaahgah!” and suddenly it all made sense.

Your spouse especially would be a major source of emotional support.

Especially if I, you know, had one.

A distant journey later in the year cannot be ruled out.

Noooooooooo way! How did they know that the apartment complex is moving the dumpster to the other side of the parking lot in September?

The months of May, July, August and November will prove to be highly eventful.

Because of all the…events, apparently.

further illumination to come at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Monday, February 28, 2005

Stay With Me On This

I’ve now had a good month to recover from my birthday, which did not suck nearly as much as I feared it would, which made me nervous, as a fully joyous Tink birthday fulfills at least ninety-five percent of requirements for the apocalypse. It did, however, maintain at least some aspect of Suck, thus safeguarding the survival of mankind for at least another year.

The festivities were originally planned for an evening at Margaritaville, because nothing says We Are So Glad You’ve Been On Earth For Twenty-Eight Years like bottom-shelf tequila and an $18.95 pile of tortilla chips. The Swamp, catching wind of this, immediately invited an entire convention of twenty thousand construction engineers to partake of our world-class tourism screwage industry.

Twenty thousand people. Twenty thousand. Clearly I’m increasing in cosmic significance, as I’ve gone from requiring one man to ruin a birthday (“I feel kinda bad, having to end things today…”) to necessitating the population of a medium-sized suburb.

The local news media was actually advising the locals to stay away from the attractions area, which is what we loosely refer to as the part of town with the densest concentration of large stupid foam hats for sale. You can imagine that we year-round citizens of The Swamp hugely appreciated this; after many months of whining over a post-9/11, recession-slammed, non-shuttle-launching, quad-hurricane-affected economy, the media has been begging us to blow our enormous Florida paychecks on such necessities of life as a beanbag Goofy doll appearing in the guise of crashtest dummy. But oh, now that the almighty construction engineers are in town, we’re not supposed to love on our own creepy anthropomorphic souvenirs anymore. I’m sick of this type of thing and I would totally move to Nebraska if it didn’t suck even worse over there.

Margaritaville was therefore out, seeing as it was crawling with people pounding the walls to find a stud rather than pounding the vodka to… okay, so it wasn’t tremendously different from the regular crowd. Fine; I welcome the challenge to uncover some semblance of originality in this town. So I seized the opportunity to gather with my dear ones at an intimate, unspoiled cafĂ© free of chain corporate banality and tritely labeled appetizers.

So when we got to TGIFriday’s, I ordered an appletini and a plate of Baco-Bonanza Potato Skins and watched the world go by in all its diagonal red and white lines. Then, I went to the bathroom. Then, I discreetly informed the waitress that I was celebrating a very special life milestone. Then, she brought me a free sundae, on the theory that if I were preoccupied by fudge it would be more difficult for me to scream “IT’S MY BIRTHDAAAAAAAAAY!” at the her every time she passed the table. Then, I went to the bathroom again. Then, we went bowling, only we really didn’t, because we got to the lanes and the shoe guy was all, “Well, we’re doing Total Utter Sucker Bowling right now, which costs $27.00 for three games, excluding shoe rental and ball use and scorekeeping rights, but it’s totally worth it, because, see, if you knock certain pins down in a certain combination, you can win, like, four million dollars, and it’s all completely legitimate,” and we were like, “Uh, no,” and he was all, “But why?” and we were like, “Because we’re not idiots” and left.

Man, you know what? This was supposed to be a brief lead-up into a completely different post, and lookit, here we are at the near-600 word mark, with a point nowhere in sight. I’ll try again tomorrow.

considering ritalin at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

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