I woke up thinking about how to approach a short piece of writing – trying to figure out what I would put into a brief “thank you for subscribing” introduction, tiny piece of generic text.
Start with a little definition, what the subscriptions goes for? Oracular Astrology, what this might be about.
Straight up numbers are important, as I was listening to a local weather forecast. Plausible, scientific, neat, and wrong. Not that it’s bad, just the weather guy can’t seem to hit the actual weather that well. Lots of high pressure zones and low pressure areas, and bands of moisture, but still, not on the money. My own, internal method of guessing is more accurate.
In that vein, though, I should assess my own predictions in light of what really happens. Hence the oracular nature of my work, what is sold here. I figure, in an average month, I will be right, at the most, three times. For the $2.95/30 days, that’s basically four horoscopes. So three of those four will apply. The fourth? I’ll be so far off base, so detached from reality as the reader understands it, so wrong that it’s laughable. Still, hitting three out of four? Way better than the local weather, and not bad for odds in Vegas.
But this isn’t about being right all the time. What I figure is that at least once a month, I’ll piss off the reader. Not that I intend to, just the way it works. Cultural bias and background will have an influence on that. Plain ignorance on my part, of which, there is no shortage – that’s a factor to consider.
There’s also a point in Shakespeare’s Scottish Play that came to mind. MacBeth kept asking the three witches about his future. In turn, he interpreted what he heard as his own glory. Not how it turns out, the witches were right, he got screwed, in part, by hearing what he wanted, not what was said. Hence the problem with oracles.
I’m doing this one from memory, as I don’t have a copy of the text handy, but I believe it was Stephen Crane in his novella “The Open Boat,” who had a character cry out, “If that old ninny-woman Fate can do no better than this, she ought to be deprived of the management of men’s fortunes.” Might be wrong – porous memory of mine.
Doesn’t really matter, though, if it’s the local weather, Shakespeare’s witches, or the first of the American realist authors at the turn of the century, won’t be right all the time. That’s why, with the paid horoscopes, there’s a lot more to read – and see. Don’t like the Sun Sign this week? One of the weeks when I’m wrong? Try the Moon Sign, or Rising Sign. Be pleasantly surprised. And figure, at that price? I can’t be right all the time.
Like I’ve previously noted, this is akin to the Oracle at Delphi. Some days, you won’t know what fumes I’ve inhaled.
