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Asia Buzz: Horoscope Blues
Darling, bring me my medication, please
By ANTHONY SPAETH
September
25, 2000
Web posted at 12:50 p.m. Hong Kong time, 12:50 a.m. EDT
I had a troubling and dispiriting week, which happens every once in a... every once in a... well, let's just say it happens more frequently these days. The children were characteristically disappointing. The old Ball 'n Chain started in on, well, you don't want to hear that one again. And my horoscope last week; that was the killer.
"Journeys may be strenuous," it read.
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The car, of course, had chosen that day to have a brake problem. (I'm sure I can fend off the lawsuit: I know some friendly local thugs and a lawyer.) The chandelier was totally destroyed in the earthquake. Then I read that blasted horoscope.
"...dinner with friends cheers you up."
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On that same evening--actually it was a little after midnight, and no, dinner with the Ball 'n Chain's friends had not cheered me up--I ran out of my medication and Tequila, and the last barrel of beer was left in the freezer, which I'm sure decreases the alcohol content. I had to cover one eye to read the ragged clipping from the newspaper.
"...You will lose patience in the four-month hostage standoff and send in the Philippine military. 'Enough is enough,' you will say."
"This can't be happening to me," I thought. One of the children, I forget his or her name, woke up complaining of symptoms of cerebral malaria, but I couldn't pay attention. The words in front of me were too spine chilling.
"...A bomb will go off at the Stock Exchange, and you will have Suharto's son arrested--but police will release him."
What more, I wondered?
"...meanwhile, in West Timor."
Gads!
"...Your athletes are sent home from Sydney with bad urine samples."
That didn't seem so bad.
"...the Senate accepts China's bid for WTO membership."
Which might increase competition and open markets, I mused. At least in the long run. In the short term, however...
"...Alberto Fujimori will soon be available for private dinner parties."
This was getting better and better.
"...Your bid for Daewoo Motor Co. is accepted."
Whoops!
The next morning--actually it was around 3 p.m.--with pieces of the chandelier all around, one child in worrying medical condition and the other threatening to quit volleyball, I reread the horoscope in all its horror. I had missed the final line the evening, or morning, before. It read:
"...George W. Bush charms Oprah."
"Lamb Chop," I called sweetly. "Could you please phone the pharmacy about my prescription?" (Surely she wouldn't remember what I said about her friends the previous evening.) "Okay," she bellowed from the charnel house we call a kitchen. "But stop calling me Shirley!"
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