By Eli Toast           

Eli Toast stares into the sun so you don’t have to

Aries: March 21-April 21

Dear Aries, If all you do is hang out with thugs and gang-bangers then you can be certain that at some point a carnival will come to town, but it’ll be a magic carnival that sells golden fruit, and when it does, you’ll be with your gangster buddies sniffing glue and staring back into time, way back, to right before the Big Bang when the cosmos was little more than a rustic molecule farm. Then who’ll be laughing? Not you. Because all the children who ate the carnival’s golden fruit will be playing tennis on a beach while you’re getting drunk and growling at other pink-faced weirdos in a condemned smelting factory.

Taurus: April 21-May 21

Taurus, life should be more than a collection of episodes perpetrated in the wet darkness of mean blackouts; all dankly sorrowful and cluttered with memories as doughy and blue as corpses breaking the surface of the blear: doll-eyed and bruised, bloated and gassy. At it’s best, life should be an equitable split between beach bikini bonfire parties and horrendously uplifting rom-coms. Know the difference, because knowing is half the battle.

Gemini: May 22-June 21

Hey Gemini, when was the last time you were seized by a gelid frisson of animal panic? How many times have you destabilized your guts by hopping on your trillion-dollar snowmobile after eating too many breakfast steaks? The squeal of you innards can literally be the shibboleth that grants you passage into the industrial cloud factory, but only if the amplifier is plugged in and turned up enough to make your teeth explode.

Cancer: June 22-July 23

One of the saddest things you can ever see is a small parking lot on the edge of some blighted urban sprawl being reclaimed by nature, Cancer. Watching the botanical versions of white-trash (like Perennial Broadleaf and Sculpin Dickweed) muscle through the asphalt to create a dismal topography of lame crests and valleys littered with frayed bone-white cigarette filters whose exotic beige wrappers have long since disintegrated. Random variegated squares of acid-rain sodden paper lying flat as vomit, advertising annihilation into the inky void. Keep that in mind as your bones slowly turn to powder and your life ineluctably progresses towards compost.

Leo: July 23-August 22

The next time you are sitting alone winnowing sorghum, imagine the vectoring screech of the falcon bruising the hot-blooded sky and the tangy loveless sun sitting there stupidly like a scoop of orange sherbet melting on the hot baby-blue vinyl of an abandoned dune buggy’s roll bar, or, the swamp belching large organic puffs of brackish mist into a bruised sky, or, the rotten jungle just sitting there black as pubic hair composting right in front of your face. You Leo, are the vectoring screech, the tangy wad of justice, the succulent flatus. Your heart is a butcher’s knife on fire, chop like a barbarian on cocaine.

Virgo: August 23-Sept 23

Once there was a dude who recited an endless litany of bromides. Among them was the famously rinky-dink: “everything happens for a reason.” He didn’t say these things because he believed them, but more to fulfill a vague sense of obligation to what he perceived as his personality. This guy was straight home cooking and everyone knew it. So Virgo, you’d be wise to be a bit more mindful with your hokum.

Libra: September 24-October 23

It’s pointless, Libra, to sit around and  pretend that everything you say is an un-meditated nugget of nonchalance. Don’t make the same mistake thousands others have made by getting caught up in a heartless roller coaster scam. It will seem like things won’t explode, it will seem as though time spent behind your calculator will be pregnant with gentleness and warmth,  but someday you’ll get gruesomely tangled in a mess of barbed wire and because of this you’ll never get to visit that famous volcano your old man was always going on about.

Scorpio: October 24-November 22

Dear Scorpio, legit heart-worms smell like Minestrone and soy sauce. Back in the olden days heart-worms were referred to as “the condition that smells of soup” or in Latin: “Ad quartum decimum dicendum quod elit.” This is a massive oversimplification of medicine and yet another example of how corporate overlord pig-dogs try to break the backs of their subjects. Smash the system–try to shoot down the next helicopter you see.

Sagittarius: November 23-December 21

Look Sagittarius, I’m sorry for parking my Chariot of Guts too close to your Marshmallow Zone, but it’s not like I went all ape-shit and looted your electronics store at the Slauson Swap Meet. Can someone say move-on.org?

 Capricorn: December 20-January 20

Life is an unnaturally glistening, endlessly rotating hot dog sandwich. So, Capricorn, next time you’re mad-doggin in the kitchen throw some fresh garlic in your cucumber salad and make that bad-boy really pop! and If you believe in your heart and always follow your dreams while being true to yourself and fighting for what you know is right and staying strong no matter what life throws at you, God will make you an extra special ice-cream sandwich.

Aquarius: January 21-February 19

Before you retire for the evening, Aquarius,  you might want to pray to whomever it is you pray to that ants and cattle don’t team up and decide to take over all the farms in the world, because if that happens you can pretty much kiss everything you hold dear goodbye.

Pisces: February 20-March 20

Up on Barbecue Mountain you can look halfway around the word and watch as a dollop of molten acrylic from a burning national flag drops into the  eyeball of a bonafide lunatic. He’s at the effigy burning party that you didn’t get invited to (hence you being alone atop Barbecue Mountain, Pisces). And look there, at the pie cooling on the window ledge of a pastel farmhouse being stolen by a hungry convict who has managed to lose his shackles. (He’ll dunk his entire goddamn fist right into the middle of that sucker, hopefully in the munificent shade of a non-judgemental Oak tree). What to make all of these wonderful narratives unfolding from your lookout on Barbecue Mountain? That’s up to you, but you should probably refinance your mortgage, that is if you have one, if you don’t, then you have nothing to worry about.