Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for January 25, 2024

Always expect the unexpected.

Religions are for the gullible.

I decided to give up religion for lent. The commandment to “love everyone” conflicted with the availability of enough condoms.

It’s too bad she won’t see tomorrow’s horoscope: You’re Dead.

Your horoscope says: The stars and planets have no effect on your life in any way.

One time my horoscope said “Don’t be afraid to confront your true self.” So I looked for that jerk all day, but he never bothered to show up.

Instead of her horoscope, maybe she should have read the weather forecast: “Cloudy, with a chance of your death”

There wasn’t any mention of it this morning in the Obituaries, either.

… And now for Weird Al’s “Horoscope” song:

https://www.youtube.Com/watch?v=uXRinzI9Jmc

You just didn’t interpret it correctly. Let’s see. “Now is a good time to reevaluate your life and make long term plans”.

For those of us who count on the comics for all our educational needs, there’s an important snippet of information in this strip. When you pass away, assuming you’re headed up there rather than down to the fiery pit, you’re allowed to take your newspaper with you.

Which raises an important question: which paper do we want to have in our possession when the final trumpet sounds?

But your horror-scope on the other hand…

Edna’s mistake was relying on a newspaper column and not consulting a real astrologer.

as gullible as believing in heaven and the pearly gates.

Surpri-i-i-i-s-e

Every day I get up, stare death in the face and say “Not today.”

What is good about this policy is that I’ll only be wrong ONCE.

The idea that someone could write up a shot blip that applies to 1/12 of the population without it being so generalized as to be meaningless is absurd.

Fun thought/thinking experiment:

Check out the short, interesting, accessible. and fun article and vid here:

.Org/2023/12/31/1222132825/checking-your-2024-horoscope-astronomy-explains-why-your-sign-might-have-changed

Still on board? The Flat Earth Society is still accepting memberships.

https://theflatearthsociety.Org/home/

From their site:

“Benefits include a signed certificate, membership card, listing on our official registry and more.”

Well, all that makes it absolutely undisputable, right?

And now, to disappear a while down this other rabbit hole….

Typical Aquarius! Or so I guess. ‘Cause—true fact—I’m an Aquarius. And it’s my birthday.

Nor in mine.

That’s why they’re called Horror-scopes.

I pledge to give up feeling guilty for Lent

Many years ago, in one of my college classes, Rhetoric and Composition. The topic was persuasion and one of the books on the recommended reading list was on the zodiac and astrology. We conducted an experiment in which we took astrology columns published in three newspapers. For three weeks [12 class periods, ~20 students], we distributed lists of a dozen daily predictions in class and asked students to pair them with the appropriate astrological sign. We also gave students sets of twelve zodiac sign descriptions [taken from different zodiac books] and asked them to pick the one that fit their particular sign and write why they picked it.

Our results demonstrated that practically any prediction can be paired with any sign. Less than 1% of the sign mappings were totally correct; less than half of the mappings were even close to 50% correct; and, the results didn’t improve much over time [i.e., mappings at the end were almost as incorrect as those at the beginning.] The results also demonstrated that practically any zodiac description can be seen to fit practically any sign. Without the sign label, students tended to select descriptions with the most pleasing characteristics as their own. Descriptions for Aquarius were particularly popular choices [it was the ‘Age of Aquarius’], although only a few people in the class had been born “under that sign.”

People lock on to the positive attributes of their sign and ignore negative ones. People are also adept at noticing coincidences. That’s part of our natural learning process where we ‘clump’ things together to make sense. We’ve been looking for coincidences/commonalities /causal connections ever since we discovered fire. What we don’t notice are the vast number of times ‘coincidence’ doesn’t happen. We notice when we meet someone from our home town or someone with our same first name but we don’t make note of the hundreds of people we meet from different places or with different names.

You will never know where and when

That’s because all the horoscopes have already been written and are just being recycled, like fortunes inside fortune cookies

Reading the horoscope and thinking there’s an afterlife? Doubly gullible.

“You will receive an uplifting experience today.”

Gullible people don’t usually go to Heaven. They wind up at a different place with deceptive signage. :)

Wonderful.

“Horoscopes may be wrong, but those fortune cookies cookies sure are accurate “ , a quote I recall hearing one some years ago

There is pop astrology (the kind one finds in the newspapers next to the comic strips) and serious astrology (the kind practiced by Ptolemy, Galileo, Kepler and modern day equivalents). Comparing pop astrology with serious astrology is like comparing Justin Biber or Britney Spears with Igor Stravinsky.

Many long years ago a famous entertainer visited an astrologer on the day of his death and I’ve often wondered why she didn’t warn him. Proof, I think, that it’s all nonsense. Still it’s kind of a fun party game if you don’t take it too seriously.

Your stars knew it was too late to warn you,Lady.

Gullible Travels?

“It’s best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.” Mark Twain

The whole “Thou shall have no other gods” stuff indicates she wouldn’t even be in this line in the first place.

So, what would you have expected your horoscope to say : “Today you are going to die” … “Just get comfortable and expect the unexpected” … “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst” .. ?? The mind boggles. Anyway, there’re only 12 of them (should be 13, apparently) and they’re supposed to be a guide(?) for millions of people.

I’m still waiting for a strong, stunning horoscope. You know, something like: 1) You should quit your job today. Or 2) Your spouse will try to kill you today.

Horoscopes are fulla Taurus

I once dated a woman whose Church taught that you would go Straight to Hell for meddling with Horoscopes.

She Went to church every Sunday.

She read her Horoscope first thing every day.

When I asked her how she reconciled these two things, she got very Angry and refused to talk to me for the rest of the night..