Salutations, wretched goatish miseries! Once more the oracle (myself) bids you travel further down the endless road of heartache and sorrow that is your doom. So, I, Asperitus, bid you welcome to this doom! And welcome also to another installment of the seemingly interminable tale of the picture of Dorian Goat. Or was it the mirror of Dorian Goat? I forget. By my little brown bottle! If it’s such a concern to you, kindly look up last month’s forecast and don’t bother the master (myself) with minor matters!
In joyless July, we left you oppressing the workers with a ‘sexual services’ clause as you prepared for the coming Olympics in Athens. However, a magic mirror has entered your life, by another process I cannot now remember. Anyway, suffice it to say that with each nasty act written into the akashic records on your behalf, you remain cherubic and smiling while your mirror reflects the grim ugliness of your miserable disposition and depressing nature.
Enough praise for the moment! Let us proceed with the vile and bitter prognostications for awful August. Mischievous Mercury clashes with idiot Uranus and bitter arguments break out over the issue of your unwelcome sexual attentions to the workers but you end them with a furious display of gesticulation that adds several new chapters to your book on same. Secretaries employed for the purpose record them, encouraged by the lash. But, ghastly events take place in the Heavens, little goatish types! Jolly Jupiter begins to wrestle with underworld Pluto and the sneer on the face in the mirror becomes a living nightmare of disdain. The mirror itself seems to almost lurch into a life of its own. The great Sol Invicti fights with nasty Neptune and your lust for wealth is out of control, with Olympic souvenirs and various works on the art of gesticulation selling like a summer wildfire.
Vamping Venus moves into neurotic Cancer and your solar seventh house and you put your partners on a rotational system so you don’t have to look at any one of them too often, as the whole business is beginning to disgust you. Ghastly planets fart in the cosmic winds. Ghastly workers riot, in-laws complain and threaten legal action as wild animals and police officers prowl the confines of your work place at night, searching for food or evidence of criminal activity (it may not be as easy as you think to tell which one does which). And all the time, little goatish types, you smile in cherubic manner while the face in the mirror becomes a mask of sneering despite. Even wild displays of gesticulation hold no thrill anymore and cannot remove the smile from your face.
Come the New Moon in loathsome Leo, you feel you own everything you touch, yet everything you touch bores and disgusts you. Mischievous Mercury moves back to loathsome Leo and you begin talking to this vile image, this Dorian Goat. You rant and rave, scream and shout, but all to no avail. You remain alarmingly beautiful while the image grows uglier with each vile word you’re driven to use. The great Sol Invicti clashes with idiot Uranus and you flee to the countryside, striding about the ancient ruins and bewailing your fate in the manner of one losing her/his marbles (that’s a classical Greek joke). These developments would be quite alarming to anyone who cared about you. Thus, fortunately, no one in the entire world is in any way concerned.
But great gods alive and dead, what’s this? The Full Moon comes in tear-stained Pisces and you fall to the ground before a stone statue. It looks like a faun with curly hair and a set of those insufferable flutes that have become fashionable through the worst excesses of the modern cinema. Why, little miserable tikes! It’s a statue of the great god Pan! But what’s this? Horror upon horrors! It opens its stony lips and speaks! The statue has come to life and spoken to you, little goatish miseries! What does this mean? Perhaps it wants to purchase a plastic replica of the Olympic village or a Parthenon music box or even your latest dvd on the art of gesticulation.
As I’m feeling ill now, I’ll have to stop writing. Thus you’ll need to click here next month to hear the words of Pan. Ta! Ta!