A Tall Dark Stranger

If humans are so intelligent, how come so many people still believe in astrology, witchcraft and all that crap? If psychics have any real powers, how come they don't ring you up when you want to ask them a question? And how about that phrase "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual". Every time I hear anyone call themselves "spiritual" it's just after they mention astrology and rebirthing their inner-child silver chord of reiki feng-shit, and just before I land a flying Clenched Fist Of Love on their mouth, or shove their tarot cards up their third eye and tell them to go self-heal themselves. Hey, the whole point of religion is that you do believe, even though logic tells you its impossible. That's why they call it Faith. Start trying to explain it in terms of creative auras and energy channels and you've got plain, ordinary physics, but without the provability.

Horoscopes? Ever notice how every time someone asks what sign you are, they always say "Thought so, you're so much a..." after you tell them. So how come they couldn't tell you and had to ask in the first place? Astrological signs are based on symbols drawn by people who believed that light from stars came from burning chariot wheels, the world was flat and had dragons in each corner. And yet people even make financial decisions based on them. Can you believe there are homo sapiens out there who literally believe clumps of rocks and dirt floating around pockets of gas have anything to do with their stocks and lottery winnings?

You've got to love the phone psychics especially, who address Mrs Average Housewife as a dear old friend, so that now she feels justified about spending $50 on that newly-acquired Brazilian power crystal she stares into to "improve reception" while the psychic at the other end of the line does a line of coke off a hooker's ass with the millions he's raked in from morons like her. And of course, every prediction contains lots of words like "could be", "might", "possibly" and "good chance", which covers the Hotline's butt in the unlikely event that everything they tell you turns out to be horseshit and has nothing to do with anyone or anything in the universe. That would constitute fraud, so thankfully we have the Doctrine of Uncertainty to protect psychics everywhere from malpractice lawsuits. Otherwise an entire industry of aging hippies, middle-class 16 year old girls and bored housewives, trudging aimlessly from one rebellious new-age religion to the next, would have to find a new hobby - and who knows, maybe grow a brain.