Your HorrorScope

The universe does not care about you.  It does not have any secret plans, messages, or knowledge of the future.  It collectively knows nothing.  It exclusively obeys the sterile laws of physics.

The universe is mostly a gy-normous vacuous void rarely punctuated with big rocks, giant blobs of gas and burning furnaces, any of which want you dismantled into your components.  All matter is not created nor destroyed, but is continually recycled into new forms with great speed and precision on the astronomical time scale. Any biological matter is a minor dust that is snuffed out as fast as it is started. Your existence does not even exist on this scale. You’ll go from a bad idea, to a free-living consumer of Wal-Mart stuff, to a box of dust and mercury fillings (maybe some metal plates or bags of silicone) in fraction of a wink of an astronomical moment.

The recent flap about the rearrangement of the zodiac has left many a true believer or tattoo enthusiast clamoring for answers—How does the addition of an additional astrological sign affect me (and my poor decisions)?

Some India ink, a good safety pin and some 

good ol' jailhouse ingenuity and you can change

"Aries" to "Picies".  That's one of the easy fixes.

The truth is, it doesn’t.  The position of stars, moons and planets never affected you one bit.  In fact there is only one planet whose motion affects you, and that’s because it dictates if it is day or night, winter or summer. Your butt is parked on it right now.  If you fish in the ocean the tides might matter, so the moon might exert some minor influence on you that way, but for most people position of planets is of zero consequence.

The only way the bits of the universe can affect you is if you decide to let it affect you via the scientifically empty words of for-profit con-artists.  Anyone that claims that they can use your astrological sign or planet position to describe you or make predictions of your future is either lying or practicing self deception.

There is no science to astrology.  There can’t be.  There is no plausible mechanism.  Sure, it made sense before people actually realized that the stars were suns of distant galaxies and that constellations are arrangements only decipherable from Earth.  A lot of stuff made perfect sense back when we were dumb.

But in 2011 we have a sophistication that allows us to see past the bogus promises of such practices.  Still people choose to believe them.

The time within the calendar year when you were born has nothing to do with your eventual life.  Where you were born,  when in history you were born, who received you upon birth, your access to food, shelter, education, clean water, medical care—these are the major drivers of downstream outcomes.  From there, your own decisions, based on your acceptance or refutation of evidence will be a central factor determining what happens to you and how you respond to it.

The universe does not care about you.  Get over it.  In the eyes of the cosmos you are not so special.  While you are a guest within the film of life that covers this rock, you are the captain of your own ship.  Don't rely on superstition to dictate direction of your limited days.