NTKOG #162: The kind of old-school swami lover who relies on a combination of occultism and body language reading to let others determine the path of her future success.
I am: on a psychic binge lately, ever since my buddy High Priestess Doris cured my shrieking nightmares.
I am not: sure even somebody who sifted through the contents of my brain could divine my future, let alone someone who’s just glanced at the label on the jar.
The Scene: The unconvincingly named readmypic.com — a site that cleverly manages to divorce the idea of reading from those nasty connotations of “words” and “knowledge” — where beleaguered mystics can post their glamour shots for perusal by Real! Live! Psychics! who email you back with their predictions for your future.
Full disclosure: I don’t not believe in the possibility that so-called psychics can pick up very subtle vibrations from an open-minded client and use these intuitions to give excellent advice. Though I rarely tell people this, I only made the final decision to move to Boston and break up with The Ex after an extremely teary consultation with a cute old lesbian psychic in Santa Monica. (Yeah, it’s true about us Californians. Scorn us at your will, prim New Englanders.)
Uploaded my favorite recent picture (TKOG wearing a fedora and standing in an old-timey elevator, as is her wont), and asked the standard question: career? love? changing cities?
"Do you foresee me growing a sweet-ass 'stache in future?!"
Bippity, boppity, boo — within three days, two responses. Kittens, LET’S SEE HOW THEY DID!
“the city you live in is dragging you down — it’s obstructing your natural motivation!” – Uh, tell that to the 1000+ pages of prose I’ve written since August.
“you will move soon, to a city that you will call your permanent home” — I hope not, soothseeing lady-dude! The only move on the docket will be to start a MFA Program in Fiction sometime in fall of oh-leven. And spoiler alert? I’m only applying to programs in horrible cities where no one would live on purpose. (Just kidding, Syracuse. Smoochies!)
“as for love, you have some chaos right now” – Well, I guess everything in nature can be said to simultaneously exist and not exist IN A TOTAL VACUUM.
“this summer will be FULL of change” — God I hope this doesn’t mean my favorite diner goes cash-only.
“For some reason, I feel some force calling you to Chicago” — Hey, one out of five ain’t bad.
Hey Rick Bayless! Call me! No, seriously, I could totally write menu descriptions for you.
The Verdict: Though I kept my mind open, I didn’t have high hopes for the veracity of this particular task. Still, highly amusing bit of is-it-Friday-yet? silliness. If you were to submit your pic (or if you have!) what questions would you ask? (Y’alls know I’m going to come up with PSYCHICALLY ACCURATE RESPONSES based on the pic in your Gravatar.)
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
Love Rick Bayless
My question would be, “Will my hair ever come back?”
The answer would inevitably be something along the lines of,
“You will meet someone in the near future…..” -or-
“You will be traveling in the spring and you will …”
Here’s a better question- “When will I lose my virginity?!”
I would love to hear those answers!!!
I’ve studied your question from every angle — taking note of font and punctuation — and can now SOOTHFULLY SAY:
Your hair is currently imprisoned in a dark elf wizard’s magic crystal. It will be regained when you vanquish him with your repressed warrior heart. In the meantime, it makes just about the creepiest paperweight ever.
You will never lose your virginity, but occasionally you will loiter around bowling alley lost and founds, looking regretful, in hopes that someone might assume you have lost it and offer theirs as a replacement.
SO IT IS SPOKEN, SO IT IS DONE.
HA HA never knew what a gravatar was until today so Thanks!
creepy paperweights + offering theirs in exchange both made me suppress an out-loud laugh (since I’m supposed to be working). Nice.
uh… what will the weather be like tomorrow?
How much wood would a wood-chuck… nah, overdone
Will I get blue or purple hair next? (just to keep the comments suitabl hair-themed)
Should I try skydiving or bunjee jumping first?
I dont know, I find the big, cosmic questions are things I’d rather not have answered…
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MARSHMALLOWS.
I don’t know anything about woodchucks, but would Chuck Palahniuk ever be capable of writing a book that didn’t give me vomming nightmares yet be so awesome I feel compelled to read it nonetheless? I submit that he would not.
Blue hair with sparklestrands. Blue looks better when the color fades out — you just end up looking like gentile old bone china.
Skydive. No strings attached. Unlike my advice. For the receipt of which you are now psychically indebted to me for life. (Also, I seem to have switched over from sooth-saying to unsolicited-advice-giving. Because I am my mother’s daughter.)
Drats
and Triple Drats
Will I get to live in the awesome condo I checked out last night?
Will I be done with my current lab project in the next two or three months?
Will my boyfriend actually take the initiative to part out his broken car, or will he bring an engine block to California?
Not only will you score the sweet-ass condo, but you will throw a Mexican-themed housewarming party which will feature no fewer than three types of homemade salsa and vegetarian flautas a-plenty. You should probably also invite me. I’ll bring tequila-marinated pineapple to throw on the grill.
The lab project will take four and a half months, BUT! the bastard co-author whose name falls alphabetically before yours will be DE-LAB-COATED (that’s how priests o’ science get defrocked, right?) so you will be heaped with glory and accolades.
Boyfriend will fix up the car, but get distracted on the drive to California and trade it for a broke-down-but-still-gorgeous Karmann Ghia. In desperate need of fixing. Which kind of puts you back at square one but, dude, Karmann Ghia. Friggin’ sick car.
If I invite you to Italy will you bring tequila-marinated pineapple to throw on the grill? Damn.
I WILL INDEED! Heck, if I’m already going to Italy, might as well pull out all of my fruit-related-party-trick stops. I’m totally psychically predicting a hollowed watermelon with a keg tap in it, rigged to dispense delicious sangria.
Italy How sweet! I’m surfing the net at work killing a jar of
Nutella 1/2 teaspoon at a time!
you are SO invited to visit anytime. :D
I don’t believe in pyschics but I have always been sort of fascintated by them. I want to go to one but I’m kind of scared haha. I would probably just want to know about getting rid of this shitty job of mine :)
KATY MARY! I have great news! You say “frig the economy!” and start applying for dream jobs in early June of this year. However, your restless energy causes you to apply for five jobs in a dash, then wait a bit for your next spurt of enthusiasm, before applying for seven more all in an evening. Too keep yourself motivated during the languishing periods, you begin to craft your resume, which, after a few rounds, takes on a life of its own. You spend more and more time pruning your prose and de-vaguifying your powerjab-verb-synergy. The resume is your bonzai tree of American culture, commerce, bloated administrative position glittering with half-truths. After three months, you realize that the resume is a sterling cultural artifact necessary for future generations to uncode our misguided age. You contact a publisher, who tells you that with a few years of hard work, you will have created a publishable masterpiece of the ages.
But right before you sign the contract, you get a call back from your dream job, which offers you a 25% salary over your current position and an extra week of vacation time. So you take that instead which is, honestly, probably the better option.
You’re hilarious.
How soon will I make my first million? And how does it happen?
And what I am I going to do today (my day off after very many no days off)
You will make your first million over the course of the next three point five years. By which I mean your first million cupcakes. At first you are upset with me for using my psychic powers to teach you a lesson about BEING A LITTLE MORE SPECIFIC WHEN YOU ASK QUESTIONS, MISSY, but gradually you see the humor of the thing and give me like 80,000 cupcakes. Booze is also probably thematized.
Today you are going to schedule a domesticated Friday post for tomorrow! Then enjoy the gorgeous weather and spend a few hours learning how to type with your feet.
I, too, am psychic and that seems pretty accurate. Except the typing with the feet part, didn’t see that one coming. Thanks for the heads up.
I’ve got some awesome cupcake ideas that I need to bake asap. Like, really awesome ones. Maybe I can sell the cupcakes, and make my first million DOLLARS that way.
I actually saw a psychic once (my mom’s friend had a “psychic party” (seriously!) and this kind old dude did readings for 10 of us, plus one more for each from a picture we brought). He correctly called the number of boyfriends I had left (and degree of seriousness of each relationship) before hooking up with “the one”; that I’d live far, far from home; and that my soon-to-be roommate, who was then barely a friend of mine, would become my best friend and stay that way no matter where we were in the world. So I’m impressed.
He also said that in my lifetime (like when I have kids) we’d have watch-sized GPS-like devices (this was before we had GPS devices in cars, so it was kind of a new concept) that would tell us where the people we had connected on the other side (you know, like our kids) were, so we’d know if they were really at the mall like they said they were. Still waiting on that one, but he’s got another 5-10 years before I’m even ready to check it out.
Ok, do mine now!
Questions: Is it weird that I only believe in psychics when/if what they say comes true? Will I change my (last) name? Will I ever bother to exercise regularly?
Also, I cannot believe that I missed the xkcd-like awesomeness of mouse-over text on all previous photos! If you notice heavy blog activity from Italy, that’s me creepily going back over old posts to see the photo text. Don’t be alarmed, I’m mostly harmless, I swears.
In regards to your first question: FALSE! In a few years, you will go to a psychic during a tough time and she will reassure you that your troubles are all behind you. Three days later, you’ll pass a kidney stone and, once you’re out of the hospital, march back to the psychic’s stand. When you complain he’d said your trouble are all behind you, he’ll pull a droll face and say, “Well, where did you think your kidneys were” and it won’t even really make sense but jesus guys I’m just predicting the future here, not writing a screenplay.
You will finally change your last name as a fifth anniversary gift to your husband. In return, on Arbor Day of the following year, he will insist that all of your daughters carry your last name. A point which will turn out to be moot when, upon turning 18, your daughter rechristens herself TurboR0x0r.
You won’t begin to exercise regularly until you find a fun, non-gym-going activity that you genuinely adore. I foresee plate-spinning. Or maybe you just get really angry in antique shops. THE VISIONS ARE HAZY.
….Rechristens herself…. Brilliant But how did the name come to you?
THROUGH THE MYSTICAL HAZE! Slash when The Ex and I talked about kids, I always named my future son TurboDude, and figured the hypothetical little champ could do waaay worse than a girlfriend who grew up in Italy and has Arbor Day-lovin’ parents. (And obviously bookended names mean you’re guaranteed to fall iiiiin looooove.)
Also, I want to point out that writing the comments for this entry has put me in a mood of such exquisite silliness that I: 1) have been declared officially unbearable by my co-worker; 2) have sent The Ex a barrage of emails featuring, among other delights, pictures of lamb kidneys, a lengthy discourse of “Schrodinger’s PMS,” and a thorough linguistic treatise on why “cock” is the only appropriate word for male genitalia; 3) am completely lost in the grammatical cul-de-sac I’ve created with this sentence.
Wheeeeee!
You and your readers have kept me thouroughly entertained this week
-thanks!
I was trying to come up with an arguement for “dick”
and could only come up with Jeff Spicolli shouting,
“YOU DICK!” to Mr. Hand
Oh, also, loved reading about your experience with the kind old psychic. I’m (obvi) a semi-believer too — at least when you get one who really connects with you, which doesn’t always happen. When I met with Santa Monica psychic, the first thing she said to me was: “You’re a writer and you’re here because someone’s dying.” Uh, nailed it. She then told me I wanted to break up with the love of my life, and subsequently refused to take my money because the love/romance part of my soul was in spiritual traction. Awesome.
So, in high school, I worked in a metaphysical bookstore. I’ve known a lot of psychics, and I can honestly tell you that 50% of them (at least) are total crooks. One woman openly admitted to a few other people that she relied on Star Wars to come up with material to tell people. I think this is TRAGIC considering that the vast majority of people who met with her did so because she was cheaper than a therapist and they had serious issues.
However, I’ve met some other psychics who were incredibly accurate about specific life events that occurred or were about to occur with people they have never met, were compassionate with their clients and did more free work than paid.
My verdict on psychics is about 50/50.
Should I die my hair pink? Will I ever be a puppeteer? Why am I having so many headaches?!
Madam! Both your discussion of psychics and your questions reveal that you have an extremely sensitive soul, and understand much more than you consciously know! This cluster of questions is a PERFECT SYZYGY to solve all your current dilemmas!
You are having so many headaches because the marionette inside your head is distressed at your current hair color! He feels your current gender performance is unbalance and blocking your energy — dyeing your hair pink, on the other hand, would give him more of a chance to assert his masculinity as a dudely dude who can totally pull. off. the. pink.
It’s all very counter-intuitive. But backed up by the unimpregnably scientific fact that 20-something girls look extremely attractive with pink hair. Or a layer of pink underneath a layer of their usual color, so it saucily peeks out sometimes.
Also, “syzygy” is a kick-ass word for annihilating people at hangman. Heads up.
I think you’re correct and I should at least dye a portion of my hair pink. Furthermore, thank you! You have know given me the excellent gift of being able to win at hangman FOREVER. I think I will have to challenge my 12 year old niece to a game this weekend and then relish my victory while she cries in the corner.
Or, something like that. I’m not actually that mean.
All I can say is, as a current Syracusian, I begrudge you not
Did you say “Bibbity, boppity, boo” to quote The Big Bang Theory, or to quote Cinderella? Also, when am I going to cut my hair?
Sheldon quote for the win!
To answer your question: in three days you’re going to listen to so much Postal Service that your hair will turn emo and cut itself. Then you’re going to cut me emotionally by suggesting I stop stealing tired old Hot Topic jokes, but I’ll cut you off by lunging at you with a pair of box openers. Fortunately, you’ll turn your head just in time and your hair will intercept the blades — which shear said locks into a UNIVERSALLY FLATTERING chin-length bob that emphasizes your lovely cheekbones and delicate sinus passages.
I don’t know, guys. It’s late and THE SPIRITS HAVE GROWN ANGRY. And fashion-conscious.
Also, I’d never cut anyone with anything but my scythe-like wit. Let’s be besties again. I can’t handle all this tension.
Your mom taught you visualization techniques for willing parking spots into existence? I am in love with your mom!