By Greg (VOSTROMO)

Ruling planet: Saturn
Symbol: Goat with a Fish tail (or as I like to call it, Who Spiked the Punch?)
Birthstone: Garnet
Element: You know those incredibly annoying unpopped kernels at the bottom of the microwave bag which you can’t see until you’ve stuck them in your mouth and started chewing and you could bust a tooth on them? Those things.

Capricorn. The most confused, ungainly astrological construct… the duck-billed platypus of signs, if you take away the elegance and grace. Cap… ri… corn. Even the name is awkward, like choosing a bottle of wine for the dinner at which you have a nagging feeling you may have misjudged your date’s sex.

And it’s an anagram of “circa porn” (which goes a long way towards explaining the likes of Jim Bakker or J. Edgar Hoover) — not to mention “I crap corn”. Goodness me.

From Wikipedia: “The constellation is located in an area of sky called the Sea or the Water.” M’kay. Be honest: did you know there’s an area of THE SKY called THE SEA? Of course not — you know why? BECAUSE THAT’S NUTS! But this zodiacal inner-ear dysfunction is evident everywhere: consider the symbol, the so-called “Sea Goat”. Goat — plus fish! FishGoat. Ummm… why is this anything other than what happened to Seth Brundle? Isn’t it what George Bush was railing against, and could he maybe have been right one month of the year? The whole point of goats is that they’re UP IN THE MOUNTAINS! Fish are DOWN IN THE OCEAN! Does nobody see this as something that needs quality psychiatric treatment, or some antibiotics? No wonder you have John Delorean (mega-successful businessman now synonymous with failure) and Mel Gibson (once a lethal weapon on screen, now a lethal weapon off).

And — hey — check it out: “It is the second faintest constellation in the zodiac.” Got that — SECOND faintest. You can’t even get that right. No wonder David Bowie keeps changing his appearance — he’s ashamed.

I’ll give you one thing, though: you are some fine-looking freaks: Bradley Cooper. Faye Dunaway. Ava Gardner. Cary Grant. Zooey Deschanel. Bob Denver. Donald Fagen. Jeff Bezos — aargh! — you see what happens when you try to walk a straight line in the crazy Capricorn world? It’s impossible.

Now to be fair, in your defense, you’ve got some brainiacs among you (Tycho Brahe; Louis Braille; Louis Pasteur; Stephen Hawking; Val Kilmer) and one or two people who have truly changed the world (until I can think of somebody you can at least claim George Foreman, who has helped millions manage to let the fat run off in those little channels).

Further, this sign’s bizarre mammalian ichthyosomatism does confer a singular advantage: it offers its sufferers the greatest likelihood that they will see a given topic from a variety of viewpoints — from goaty cliffside lookings-down to fishy peerings up from under the surface. Thus Capricorns often make outstanding writers: Asimov, Eco, Miller, Kipling, Salinger, Poe, and many others all went both ways. Others have commanding speechwriting and public speaking gifts (Martin Luther King, Larry Csonka) and many achieve success in areas requiring clarity of communication — it’s almost always a Capricorn you hear saying “Did you want to supersize that for a dollar more?” and “If your name isn’t on the list, your name isn’t on the list.”

So I guess the point is, Capricorn, like your poster child Muhammad Ali, you float like a… goat… and sting like a… fish… it can’t be done. I’m sorry.

Moving on.

*******

This month’s forecast: “Work It” will be cancelled. You will get something stuck in your teeth on the 21st that may be worth a large sum of money. Avoid giving birth while taking your driver’s test on the 31st.

Goat: A Memoir by Brad Land

Capricorn People by Aaron Fletcher

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

The Persistent Capricorn by Therrie Rosenvald

The Case of the Ill-Gotten Goat by Claudia Bishop

Always on the Run by Larry Csonka & Jim Kiick with Dave Anderson

And for a walk down memory lane……

Tags: Book Suggestions, Members

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2012 at 10:29 am and is filed under Holidays and Special Dates, Musings, VostromoScope. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.