Capricorny

I would be astonished to learn that astrology pre-dates the fermentation process or the discovery of certain chemicals in plants. It is simply not possible that a non-altered mental state looked up at the heavens and came up with these shapes, let alone the stories that accompany them. The Big Dipper, sure. Orion? yeah...kind of. Most of the others? Not even if I squint and spin in a circle.

I mean, look at Capricorn. The horned goat. No, seriously, look at it. It's right there with my title. Do you see a horned goat? Do you see any goat? Do you see anything that resembles a living creature? If you do, please pass the bottle. And yeah, I get it. No TV. No radio. No Tik-Tok. They didn't even have pencils to keep score playing Pictionary. So of course they smoked some weird looking flowers, looked up at the night sky, and said, "hey dude, do you see a goat?"

"You mean that horned goat next to those scales and that virgin?"

"Coooool, I thought it was just me."

As for me, I just see dots of light. The thing is, they did not just see these weird shapes. They made up stories about them. They assigned months of the year to them. If you were born in that month, then surely you must have certain traits. Even giving the broadest, most lenient benefit of doubt, I could maybe go along with Cancer. Your mom was at her zenith, pregnancy wise, in the middle of summer. She probably had some anger issues which could have possibly, maybe, somehow been passed onto the child. So if you are a Cancer and you are moody and vindictive, remember, your mother was an over-inflated beachball at the height of summer heat and humidity.

But what about me? I am a Capricorn. I'm not very bright...as constellations go. My brightest star is called Deneb Algedi and is about 39 light years from your chair. (yes, there will be a quiz). For anyone still reading and trying to learn something, there is a double star in Capricorn and its name is...ready?...Capricorni. Capricorni is an Arabic word which roughly means: lucky stars of the slaughterer. I guess that is a goat reference. Here endeth the technical lesson.

So who is a Capricorn? A person born of the cold. A person born between December 21 and January 19, inclusive. How many of you immediately realized that Jesus was a Capricorn? Although Jesus was likely born in the spring and Christmas was an imposed holiday forced on pagans by the Roman emperor and...I digress. I fall almost in the center of the sign with a birthdate of January 10. Try to remember that for next year.

So what is a Capricorn? The strengths of a Capricorn include intelligence, discipline, hard-work ethic, and internal time keeping. The weaknesses involve stubbornness, being condescending, and snobbery. Fuck...that IS me. In fact, the tone of this little narrative is riddled with the traits of a Capricorn. I don't think I ever really looked into this before. I am highly intelligent. That's a given. I am highly fairly hard-working. I'm sure I will type more than the minimum six-hundred words. You can ask my wife if I am stubborn. A couple of weeks ago I scraped and shoveled our driveway to the point of exhaustion, despite my wife's forecasts of melting temperatures that were on the way because I wanted to get some bourbon that damn day. (To look up at the stars, of course). As for an internal clock, this part is no joke. I never wear a watch. Whenever someone wants to know the time, they ask me and I tell them without checking any time keeping device. I am usually accurate to within about 10 minutes.

The other part of that is that I am always on time. Even when I am late. Allow me to explain. If left to my own devices, I would always arrive on time. To be honest, I would always be about 15 minutes early because I always leave a lot of extra time for traffic or gas stops or washed out bridges or swarms of locusts or....there's a lot that can go wrong when you are on your way to a job interview. My wife, however, god love her, is NEVER on time. She starts getting ready about the time I have finished. This means I get to sit there all dressed up and sweaty with that stupid tie choking me while she is simultaneously applying makeup and talking to her mother on the phone about how she really needs to get moving or we are going to be late....which we will be...but not because of me.

Then there is my bad side. I am always on time, or trying very hard to be on time. Stubborn. I won't ask for directions. Stubborn. I won't take my wife's advice and let her edit my stories. Stubborn. Besides, my typos are my little gifts to you. I am condescending. In fact, if I couldn't use sarcasm, I'd probably be a mute. The list of people who would tell you I am a snob would put me over the word limit. My wife thought I was a snob the night we met. That was a great night, by the way. Another time, another story.

So I am a Capricorn. So are lots of people who were born in the other 11 months. I can be a Pisces. I can be a Leo. I guess what I am saying is that I don't put much stock in these sorts of things. Still, if Capricorn needs a poster boy, I'm their horny goat.