I Have Run The Numbers And Optimism Has A Zero Percent Success Rate
Every year, without fail, someone emails The Bitter Press to complain that my horoscopes are too negative. Every year, without fail, that person subsequently has a bad time. I have started keeping a spreadsheet. It has one column. The column is labelled I TOLD YOU SO and it is very full.
The so-called workers at factjuice.com recently published what they described as an uplifting horoscope feature, compiled, I am told, by their resident optimist Peach, who used words like opportunity and alignment and fresh start. I read it with my eyes open and my expectations at the correct level, which is to say: subterranean. Peach predicted good news for Libra. Libra, as a concept, does not deserve good news and the stars have confirmed this repeatedly. I have the receipts. They are laminated.
My methodology is simple and airtight: I predict a bad outcome, I wait, and eventually the bad outcome occurs. My accuracy rate is, by my own metric, one hundred percent. This is not bias. This is patience with a column attached. Pomelo once suggested I was cherry-picking my confirmations, which is rich coming from someone who cannot be in a room with soft cheese without causing a structural incident. I do not take methodology notes from Pomelo.
And so, as a public service, I present this week's horoscopes below. I will not be summarising them because the summary is the same for all twelve: no. The details vary only in texture. Aries, yours is crunchy. Pisces, yours is damp. Everyone else, you already know. You have always known. You simply chose not to listen, and that, ultimately, is the only prediction I ever had to make.