Capricorn: you probably won’t die today. If you do, can I have your pickle?
Aquarius: you should brush your teeth more.
Pisces: lol sardines
Aries: you might slip and fall today. or….
Taurus: so you know that crack in the pavement with the weed growing out of it, where you got gum on your shoe that one time? Someone just dropped a Kleenex there.
Whatever’s after Taurus, I forget: I wasn’t going to say anything, but olive’s not your colour.
Cancer: Capricorn’s better.
Leo: you will walk into a room and be like wtf, why did I come in here?
Virgo: no, you’re not paranoid. Yes, that guy was staring. And you know what? You know what? Becky is a bitch.
Libra: no. Just no.
Scorpio: look up. See that bird? Yeah, I knew that was there.
Sagittarius: you used to be cooler.
Ophiuchus: wtf no you are not a real sign. You do not get a horoscope.
RG Double Ghost 
“lol sardines” could totally be a brand:imgur.com/a/0kl6X3C
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Oops:imgur.com/a/Jni7Mrs
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Well, wouldn’t you feel better about eating them if they came in a smiling can, with a big “lol sardines” on it?
I was recalling my days of writing horoscopes for a psychic TV/media company. I used to WISH I could make them read like these.
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Sardines always disappoint me, because they look like something that should be tasty and I buy them once upon a blue moon, only to rediscover that they taste mostly of oil and what you would imagine soggy cigarette butts would taste like if they were edible. So “lolSardines” are really more like “TrollSardines”.
Not sure if would feel better about eating them either way though, just like the image. Japan seems to be big on portraying happy animals on packages of their own meat, and it always leaves confused. Kind of like the idea that the pig would want to be killed and eaten (although, in Judaism the whole “kosher” thing has a specific “holiness” dimension, eating “non-kosher” food supposedly accretes a blackened sphere around your soul that isolates you from god (that isn’t written in the Bible, that’s a later explanation… The Bible is not big on explanations, much like bad parents who are afraid to lose authority by providing reasons)).
You probably could genuinely sell horoscopes like these, by the way. Divination, after all, is all about seeing signs and omens in anything, just as long as you designate it as prophetic… The swirling of ants around that cookie you forgot on the countertop because you’re a slob, the surly expressions of the bus driver on the commute to work every morning (if the corner of his mouth twitches more than usual expect rain, if he wears shades you would be blindsided…).
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Trivial horoscopes, yes, you can sell. In fact, including a couple of personal-sounding (but actually very generic) details increases perceived accuracy. But sarcastic-sounding horoscopes, no. There’s no market for those. People who are willing to pay for their daily horoscope take these things very, VERY seriously. It’s a shame, really. You’d think something as silly as a horoscope would invite humour, and go well with it, but the opposite turns out to be true.
I feel about smoked oysters the way you do about sardines. I buy them every couple of years, and I put them on toast points, but they never taste as good as I remember them tasting, and I end up only eating a couple. Oil and soggy cigarette butts, yes. That’s about right. But, really, how good can canned seafood be?
You know, I went out with this guy a few times, years and years ago, back in Texas. I remember he was hugely opposed to the eating of pork. We were dining out one night, and the guy at the next table ordered a pulled pork sandwich. This prompted my date to launch into a long spiel on how pigs are filthy animals, and their meat is full of worms. Later, he tried to interest me in the Nation of Islam. Even after I stopped dating him, he seemed very interested in my immortal soul, and he God-bothered me till I moved away. Pork and religion, they don’t seem to mix. I’m not even a great fan of pork, but it hardly seems grubbier than any other meat, at least when properly prepared. I suppose that’s the crux of it, though: ancient people wouldn’t have had the means to cook pork to a sufficient temperature, and might indeed have caught parasites. It makes sense to assign a religious stigma to something unsanitary, if that’ll prevent people from doing it.
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I’ve read that oysters taste mostly like seawater, which doesn’t sound like the greatest thing to smoke to begin with… There’s one instance of tasty canned seafood, and that’s herring in mustard sauce. Although, the main reason to eat it IS the mustard sauce, which is amazing. The herring is just an excuse (unfortunately it’s also the more expensive cans and they’re fairly small, otherwise your choice here is limited between impossibly oily sprats, and boiled tuna in oil or saltwater… Sometimes squid, which doesn’t taste of anything but is VERY chewy (the only good squid I ever had was fried in garlic butter, to extend on the theme of seafood-as-excuse-for-egregious-spiciness… Although, the raw cuttlefish at that one sushi place were ok, odd tasting, but ok)).
I doubt ancient people had any particular trouble with cooking pork over, say, beef or chicken… A large bonfire sounds sufficient enough to kill even the hardiest parasite. My personal gruesome pet theory is that the taboo on pork is an echo of a cannibalism taboo, because pork is the most similar thing to human meat (which, in fact, is often euphemised as “long pork” in cannibalistic cultures). That would explain the neurotically emphatic air about the whole thing (there are many non-kosher animals that are much more unsafe to eat than pigs that aren’t singled out in such a symbolic way, for example vultures).
That guy probably just wanted to use religion as an excuse to stay in touch/chance to get back together. Which, while fairly inept and annoying, is at least understandable… Well, more understandable than some sort of proselytising mania, although there are people like that too. Most of my “religious” friends are really more interested in an academic study of things like the Kabbalah, and wouldn’t mind at all whether you eat kosher/observe the Shabbat e.t.c. They’re all from a post Soviet generation that really see religion as an excuse to bring some wonder and mystery into your life (something the Soviet regime wasn’t big on).
Speaking of food, don’t you just hate it when you ate something and have that weird sensation that isn’t quite a stomach ache but threatens to turn into one? It might go away, it might not. Either way, it’s too annoying to fully ignore, but not serious enough to use as an excuse to lie down and slack off.
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