#255 Life 3-D

Mark my words. I’m more prescient than even I can predict. A long time ago, when scratch lotto tickets first came out, I had this joke in my stand-up act about scratch and sniff lotto tickets. If you won, it smelled like a spring breeze, fresh money, or new cars. If you lost, it smelled like an overripe Sanican. That was 20 years ago. Guess what they now have? Scratch and sniff lotto tickets. Don’t say I didn’t tell you. I also predicted that a Hollywood couple would break up and the stock market would be volatile. And that somebody important would die. So take that Nostradamus.
Famous deaths, they say, come in threes. Recently we lost another character actor trio. Darren McGavin stalked into the night before Christmas story, Dennis Weaver limped off into the Mccloudy sunset, and Don Knotts said three’s company, wished Andy goodbye, and took his adams apple into that great rural farm district on high. Don, Darrin and Dennis, forget about death in threes, how about death THREE--D.... spooky...
Occult things always amaze me. As I’ve said before, I’m a Virgo so I don’t believe in all that horoscope nonsense, but I, like most people, love to go to Chinese restaurants and get my fortune. Kind of the reverse of most things. I mean, if you want a really good cup of coffee, generally it’s not going to be free at the gas station. You pay a little more at Olympia Coffee Roasting company or B& B. So why is it when you go into an Asian restaurant you put so much stock in a random cookie scribbling? Maybe it’s because you are prepped with a placemat that reorients your psychic senses. Gone is the western Arabic horoscope of centaurs and crabs. Exotic signs like Gemini and Aquarius and Capricorn—ah to be a twin or a water boy or a goat—are replaced by weird eastern signs like dragons and tigers and, oh yeah, pigs and rats. I like going to a Chinese place with someone who was born in 1960 or 1972 and having them find out their new sign is the rat. Especially if they’re born in August and have been lording it over everybody with that Leo thing. Worse from a self-esteem point of view is someone who’s born in late December of 1955. Ya got the double goat going there. Capricorn western goat and Chinese eastern goat. Can’t shuck that goat thing for nothing. I pity someone born of December 25th 1955. He’s a double zodiacal goat and he never gets Christmas presents and birthday presents separately. You ought to be allowed to voluntarily change your birth date to, like, June. You can change your name, why not your ability to actually have a birthday party that you don’t share with the individual who transformed western civilization. Merry Christmas Darrin, and oh, happy birthday. Were you the one on Bewitched...
America, ya gotta love it.