STARS

The Australian people are poised to see if those most comfortable with snail mail will give the freaks permission to get into bed with their heterosexual privilege and allow them to start legitimately shopping for blood diamonds at Tiffany’s. When this hate campaign of misinformation and misuse of millions of dollars is over and queers can get married once and for all, you Rainbow Normies better put your voice and heft behind the oncoming offensive to smash monosexual privilege and valorise polyamory as well. No skipping marches and civil disobedience in favour of shopping for a Labrador and painting your picket fence!

Gays should have equal opportunity to hop on board the super-highway to consolidating one’s privilege that is marriage, and to assimilate up the asshole of heteropatriarchy’s monosexual imperative. Then we can move onto more pressing matters, like oh, I don’t know…trans suicide prevention or bisexual mental health. 

At the very least gay marriage is a grand show of middle fingers to those that squeal, “YOU CAN’T HAVE THIS! YOU AREN’T STRAIGHT!” And all the cream-clutch wearing Christians who find the idea of gays receiving expensive flatware at their now legal shindigs will choke on their own doom-froth when the inevitable is granted. Let’s make this happen!

 

CAPRICORN (Dec 22 – Jan 19)
If a wedding-ringed, pseudo intellectual won’t sell you any of his magic mushrooms but will let you have them at his house in hopes of you and your gal pal forming a sticky girl-on-girl pantomime for his delectation, run baby, run. He’s the type to come at you in a mouldy corner of his dank marriage pad with his dick out in hopes of inspiring your sexual gladness. Don’t hang about: flick that left leaner and denounce his plea that you peg him the following Tuesday. Not just because weaklings who sign up for monogamy but expose themselves to unsuspecting pansexuals deserve CBT of the fatal kind, but because you can do so much better.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20 – Feb 18)
You’ve got your pentagram harness and a tin of condoms by your wrought iron bed; you’re ready to find a mate to bring back to your lady-lair for a solid session of erotic obliteration. Don’t shy away from absorbing every fluid they’ve got and hitting them in their bewildered face with a bamboo etiquette stick to berate them into going the distance. Plan your evening of spider greed for the next full moon that falls on a Friday. And like any good Sado Witch, once you’re done you’ll send your erotic friend off into the night because your boudoir is only for sleeping cats, Norwegian stoner doom and the worship of Artemis after 3am.

PISCES (Feb 19 – March 20)
You made the actually brilliant mistake of reading the terrifying, neo-masculinist drivel of Roosh V. But don’t despair, his sexism will rage-inspire you to get your nipples pierced, gain 20 kilos, shave yourself an undercut and braid your dark blue hair into a Viking Mohawk as a fuck you to him and his neurosexist, fatphobic bigotry. You know who you are allied to and who you love: so get out there and keep making your kink-witch feminist zines with those queerdos, glitter femmes, plaid lesbians, decedent rope witches and femme daddies. If you’re still feeling upset that a man like that exists and has a following, you can always send him anonymous death threats to cheer yourself up.

ARIES (March 21 – April 19)
Dear lumberjack, plaid-humanist Lit-bros — if you’re going to insist with dispassionate shrugs that you aren’t a men’s’ rights activist or anything but men are just better at running the world, first try getting your pee entirely into the bowl 90% of the time. And try backing up your assertions with more than just, ‘My penis told me’, which is what your overly confident sham references to ‘studies’ and ‘biology’ amount to.

TAURUS (April 20 – May 20)
Look Lamb, not many can rest in the existential truth that nothing can protect you from the unblinking reality that we can never truly know another person, you are always alone in your shell, and all notions of owning another are futile attempts to control the inevitable, molecular chaos of the universe. But no ‘he’s-mine-see-we-have-matching-bands-of-gold-plating’ ownership ring will ever keep at bay the gnawing ‘knowing’ that anyone can leave you at any time. To run from this is to live in a sterilised state of false tranquillity free from lasting, toothy passion and the delectations of transgression. So ease up on the engagement ring talk, okay?

GEMINI (May 21 – June 20)
You’re against men and scientists who say ladies aren’t fit for all sorts of things like maths, engineering and horse riding, but you wouldn’t go in for sloppy rationalisations and wobbly evolutionary pop science so as to protect your entitlement to eat other species babies now, would you? No! Never! You’re a real emancipated thinker, not one of those centre-left hipsters who are as rebellious as General Pants.

CANCER (June 21 – July 22)
Honey baby, you better get yourself out of that small town you’re hiding in. Not only are you in the artistically brackish boonies, but your only dating options are your ex-boyfriend from sixth grade whose idea of a seduction is a shambling reintroduction consisting of ‘Hey you!’, or to try and seduce the staunchly straight, sprogged up twenty-two year olds that invited you to a book club which will inevitably descend into watching The Bachelor while drinking cheap white wine surrounded by dirty nappies.

LEO (July 23 – Aug 22)
Don’t fret over that man-scum one more minute! It’s not a sign of your self-worth that he only wanted you as a girlfriend shaped trophy. You are worthy of love; he was just after a geeky version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl and you were the right cup size for the job. Those types are only seeking to snare a semi-willing vagina and someone with a high tolerance for puerile babbling about Dragon Ball Z and Fifth Element pop vinyls. His cold heart isn’t worth thinking twice about…unless you’re thinking about psychically burning down his house. That’s worth the mental effort.

VIRGO (Aug 23 – Sept 22)
Military uniforms with a whiff of the Third Reich are one thing baby, but wearing a Swastika on your arm-cuff to a fetish night is another. Even in the spirit of historical re-enactment and kink positivity, that’s a no-no. No amount of ‘I’m into the power exchange of uniforms’ or ‘I’m into Nazi gear but I don’t like hate Jews’ is going to extricate you from the fact that you’re putting a death camp in a cat suit so that your white cock can sploosh the way it wants to.

LIBRA (Sept 23 – Oct 22)
Oh, so you’re a sub, are you? You’ve thoroughly convinced the kink community that you like to take orders with your aggressive begging of any and all Femme Dommes to hurt you in ways that get your taint twitching. You’re clearly a real submissive, raw with the need to concede and then refuse to do anything your Mistress says after ejaculating on her boots. Don’t worry. You’ll get what’s coming to you when Jupiter falls into alignment. Look out for a red-head who’s partial to forcing doughy, demanding white boys to read black, feminist, queer theory as an erotic ritual of servitude and is clad in a DIY shirt that reads ‘Your misogyny will tear us apart’. She’ll give you what you need.

SCORPIO (Oct 23 – Nov 21)
You don’t want this. You don’t want to be an empath, darling. You think you do because it sounds cool and rarefied, but the reality is you feel creeping premonitions, memory ghosts and expired love in the floor boards. And despite what you think, in an altercation with your cheating ambisweet you still can’t win the argument by screaming “I KNOW EVERYTHING! I FELT IT THROUGH THE WALL!”

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 – Dec 21)
All you want for Ostara is Pagan emancipation and a copy of the book Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive. Maybe though, lower your expectations to getting a vegan burrito before heading to a sky-clad Spring ritual that’s kept dower and relatively secret on account of suburbia being entrenched with bourgeois simpletons whose humanism is still thoroughly infected by Christian hysterics. The days of having to hide your cheeky ‘Satanic Feminist’ crop top under a black jumper when passing school ovals are not over. Grab yourself a book on blood magic and a copy of The Misery of Christianity by Joachim Kahl to help get yourself through another year of being scowled at by yummy-mummies in black Jeeps.

By Rachael Nielsen

_____________________________

VALENTINE’S DAY 2017

The world is on the edge of great catastrophe; Trump and Colonial xenophobia have already come after many, and though it is a time to pull closer to love and intersectional solidarity, let’s not overlook the vast importance of celebrating commercial, heteronormative expressions of class-based solvency. For tis the season for female-read* people to be berated into working harder at pretending they aren’t putting effort into their appearance, while simultaneously making sure to cover up their alienation and eye circles so as to secure a man-date for the upcoming day where we observe the holy communion that is chocolate wrappers and the supremacy of the prison that is monogamy. Because showing a hint of your minority stress and human anxiety isn’t cute and fuckable and we all know what a woman’s primary goal in life should be.

CAPRICORN (Dec 22 – Jan 19):
Expect an apology from your ex-lover around Valentine’s Day. But if he’s really sorry, he’ll be stripped bare, covered in shit and on all fours crawling towards you obsequiously with a bunch of black roses in his mouth. Don’t accept anything less.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20 – Feb 18):
You’re high from the elation of developing your pussy eating skills and swearing off cis, straight men forever. Your plaid, masculine, lesbro look has you very much off the MENu, and cackling all the way to the gay bars. Alas, you’re finding you still need some kind of deterrent for those Chucks and Lory’s who nevertheless find you fuckable and are therefore convinced you’re available, no matter how many times you yell over the dank electro, ‘I’m SUPER gay!’ It might be time to try out some kind of badge that says ‘I’m gay, but not the type of “gay” that sucks your cis, het dick. Sorry-not-sorry, Fella’.

PISCES (Feb 19 – March 20):
You and your pals would never do anything to exclude or make First Nations people feel uncomfortable. You said so yourself. You obviously deserve a pumpkin sticker! You did happen to mention that Aboriginal groups need to ‘let go’ of what white people did because your generation didn’t steal their children, take their land, or make them slaves and outcasts. You might not be joining the KKK Becky, but you and your white logic are about two steps away from voting for Pauline Hanson and supporting a wall on the Mexican-American border.

ARIES (March 21 – April 19):
If the polite arts scene makes you want to shave all your hair off and never wear a 50’s dress again, that’s understandable. Shun the crowds of clean girls who communicate all too loudly with their cream ballet flats: ‘I’m totally quirky and offbeat because I have a blunt fringe and wear chunky knit cardigans over my willowy frame. My five year goal is to get married, have 1.5 kids and cash in on my white privilege.’

TAURUS (April 20 – May 20):
Your uncle’s suggestion that you go on a juice fast and pick up meditation again were meant well, but maybe your ongoing struggle with anxiety and depression, including regular flare ups in suicidal ideation, aren’t a consequence of the acidity levels of your blood. Perhaps it’s rooted in the government driving you to self immolation through the pointless humiliation of work for the dole, the Centrelink benefits that are below the poverty line and the defunding of the arts that can no longer afford to offer you work. Or, maybe it’s the senselessly high housing prices that are getting you down, which means you face sharing a house in your forties, still yelling at teenage turds to clean their cum off the Persian rugs. Yeah, maybe it’s not the acidity levels of your blood.

GEMINI (May 21 – June 20):
Buddy, you’re all about supporting your LGBTQI+ friends, especially supporting your now firmly lesbian ex and her new girlfriend get on your cock. It doesn’t take a mystic to see you’re hungry for the fairytale lesbians who are flattered by your attempts to creep all up inside them. For some incomprehensible reason they’re aggressively offended by your shoddy industrial goth-boy company and friendly desire to initiate them into ginger butt plugs and veined dildos. It shouldn’t take the wisdom of the zodiac to figure out why.

CANCER (June 21 – July 22):
Oh honey, you’re in gross trouble if you’re mocking The Purity Myth and think it’s okay to ignore your friends every time your bf is up from Brisbane. You’ve ditched your older and wiser girlfriends, and though they’re clicking their tongues, you better believe they’re also chilling a pink martini in readiness for the day when you come crawling back after 6 years of gaslighting, casual sexism, economic abuse, suffocating cohabitation, diet pills and doing all the laundry. They’ll be ready with tissues, a moon cup and the ghastly truth about cis, white, straight men that you didn’t want to hear about the first time round. You won’t be making fun of Everyday Sexism then, darling.

LEO (July 23 – Aug 22):
You’re a young libertine who denounces property ownership and the fascist obsession with mowing the lawn. Marvellous! What’s that though? You’re not interested in reading female writers, not even Virginia Woolf, and it’s clear from your swagger and black, tight jeans that you strive to emulate the general distaste expressed towards women by Byron and Henry Miller. What a terrific rebel you are! No man ever has shaken off his class oppression but remained committed to misogyny and the maintenance of his power through female subjugation. You’re a fucking gem!

VIRGO (Aug 23 – Sept 22):
While you’re playing devil’s advocate and ‘fair mindedly’ having a chuckle about admiring Trump’s ability to at least create press for himself, all those who aren’t middle class, straight, white, cis men, are wondering whether they’ll have their few tenuous rights whipped away from them within the year. Whether they’ll have to use a coat hanger to give their rights tangibility, be kicked out of the country, or how they’ll survive the gunshots and daily threats from victoriously enraged, Neo Nazi beefcakes who yell, ‘We won! American belongs to men! Go back to Africa!’ But please, don’t think twice about your balanced and scaled, whitewashed polemic – of course Trump voters aren’t bigoted, they just didn’t trust a woman or a Jew to run their country.

LIBRA (Sept 23 – Oct 22):
Honey, no one is being fooled by you super weak, super ‘progressive’ I’m an equalist talk. It’s common knowledge that it’s a made-up term only used by white people drinking white wine, in loudly slurred tones in super mod kitchens. Nice try, but you’re becoming increasingly recognised as a cafe crusader and a heteronormativity apologist. But with the full moon in Leo coming up you better watch out for a brutally malignant awakening that’s going to have you returning to yoga classes as well as realising your male friends are the kinds of blokes who get called ‘nice guys’ but regularly sexually harass women.

SCORPIO (Oct 23 – Nov 21):
Conceivably, you’re not so much attracted to bratty Subs because they’re your preferred ‘submissive’, but because you need a 19 yr old wearing clip-in cat ears to shape the play date, you loafing grog-Dom. You’ve got all the sexual creativity of a white boy who’s grown up over-consuming one entitled man/two faux lesbians porn. Having no desire to learn the subtle art of domination while wanting to get sucked off on command isn’t a ‘kink’. That’s called being a sexually selfish simian and thinking you’re an uber Dom because you put on a body harness and have a scrotum.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 – Dec 21):
The world is in vaster turmoil than usual. The result of which you hope will be a leftist backlash of seventies, cyber punk proportions. But remember, you can take a break from advocacy and activism so as to look after yourself. You aren’t one of those all too common femme-phobic fucks; the plodding, previous decade feminists who see frills, bows and ‘girly’ things as demeaning or for the intellectually frail. So get stuck into some self care and get cosy in the restorative world of cat cafes, Japanese selfie filters and Shoujo manga. Just because you shop for Gothic Lolita bonnets online doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy Yaoi with an emphasis on tender emotions and anal torture. Nor does any of this preclude you from dismantling Trumpland and breaking the hands of those that try and re-enact his pussy grabbing fanaticism. You can get back to being a loud and proud Nasty Woman tomorrow.

* ‘female-read’ is the act of the ‘female’ gender being attributed to individuals who may or may not identity as women. A cisgender woman, non-binary individual, a-gender person, or trans man etc may be read and assumed to be female by others based on appearances. In this context, ‘read’ is used as a verb.

Gender attribution, whereby an observer decides which gender they believe another person to be, is linked to the default assumption that everyone ascribes to a binary gender identity which is tangible to anyone who observes another’s physicality, mannerisms and way of dress. This is furthermore linked to the monolithic idea that biology, certain genitals, body types, behaviour, interests and hair styles, for example, are inherent indicators of gender – as if the shape and texture of someone’s meat prison can and should lead to a static, causal assumption about that person.

By Rachael Nielsen

_____________________________

ELECTION DAY 2016

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The cold is upon us and so is the election. If you’re not out badgering everyone you know as well as the odd stranger to vote Greens you will be branded a Fascist by history forever. The Stars don’t decide such things, that’s karma and the reality of voting for the Australian Christian Lobby. If you’re not concerned about arts funding and the capitalist agenda speeding up the death of the earth you’re probably so close to the grave that the repercussions of voting Liberal won’t affect you. You’re old-fashioned in a way which is very much akin to those conservative, closet racists who mass voted in the plebiscite for England to leave the EU. But the jokes on you — there will be no peaceful rest in the grave. Your hungry grandchildren, starved of a viable future and stable housing will no doubt get serious about the occult and do queer sex magic on your grave so as to rough you up in the next realm and pay homage to your monumental backwardness. So warm yourself on the burning embers of our impending doom and get ready to enjoy snarkiness directed at everything the bourgeois hold ‘sacred’.

CAPRICORN (Dec 22 – Jan 19): While you’re getting on with your life and mulling over buying the shade of nail polish norms go for when they are trying to be ‘dark’ (but would better suit Barbie than Dracula) your queer pals are wondering if they’ll ever not feel under attack, with a Plebiscite looming that will judge if their human rights are ‘okay’ by the majority of the heterosexual population. Or if they’ll ever stop looking over their shoulder now that 50 people are dead in Orlando. But keep up those honest signs of solidarity by offering them prayers to the same god used to keep them down. It’s not like they’re terrified and need real words of comfort or anything. What they need to overhear is you debating whether the shooting was actually ‘about gays’ or your limp assertions of ‘You are safe. That guy was just mentally unstable’. Don’t worry, they won’t question how much of an ally you really are as long as you keep shaking your head over how awful the world has gotten while drinking a latte in the kind of cafe that rips the heart out of Indie culture so as to use its pretty skin to appeal to cashed up public servants.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20 – Feb 18): You’re not really offended you weren’t invited to your friend’s baby shower — you don’t like those events anyway; they make you surly and inclined to swear. Besides, it’s a big hint that your long term gal pal has sailed off into a beige fantasy realm that doesn’t welcome non-whites, uncomfortable truths or pagans dressed in black hemp that are inclined to pronounce over the baby, ‘Your parents have given you the gift of seeing with your own eyes the coming doom of humanity and the total destruction of the earth and its resources brought on by the same fascist climate change deniers they worship’.

PISCES (Feb 19 – March 20): At last the season is yours! The frosts are coming and you’ve already been able to get back into your velvets and not sweat while drinking tea. It’s time for lace gloves, heavy satin, corsets, capes, faux fur stoles, black stockings and witchy boots clicking on pavements soaked in wet, orange leaves. The depthless mundanes will complain of the ‘cold’ as if it’s the only word for intense variations of light, for the subtle taste of smoke in the air and crisp winds. But pay little attention to such extroverted ignorance; they’re the vapid types who seek blasting sunshine, find rain ‘miserable’ and think ugh boots and fleecy jumpers from Katmandu are acceptable clothing to wear to a CBD cafe.

ARIES (March 21 – April 19): Don’t listen to the spineless critics — the blood pentagram you splashed on your boyfriend’s door was not too much. You had every right to tell him and his rancid friends who said that ‘slutty girls are asking to get preyed upon’ that Artemis would turn him into a deer and have her hounds tear him into pieces. Throwing your full menstrual cup on his bedroom door when he said you were ‘over-reacting’ was a nice touch. Keep it up honey! Because there’s no way you’re going to get to forty and think ‘I was too harsh on sexists when I was twenty eight’.

TAURUS (April 20 – May 20): So your girlfriend didn’t seem wildly pleased that you decided to get married to your boyfriend of a year and a half whose misogynistic red flags can be seen from outer space. Sticking by your ‘marriage is romantic’ by-line probably wasn’t going to win her over seeing as you’ve both read books titled Wife Work and The End of Marriage, which you conveniently forgot all about once it was time to embrace the dream of a big white dress and all the vast social privileges that come with saying you’ll love a macho man forever. Here’s a tip — she might forgive you if you admit you’re a sell out who’s been seduced by crypto-fascist, heteronormative propaganda and stop saying ‘I am progressive! I support gay marriage. I signed that Facebook petition didn’t I?’

GEMINI (May 21 – June 20): If you don’t already, I suggest you carry a little hard-backed, cloth-bound volume of poetry, perhaps with gold-edged pages. That way when the inevitable oxen intrudes on your space and demands you pay attention to his feigned interest in your personality you can pull out the volume and say ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, but I’m taken – I’m here with Percy Shelley’. If he persists, thinking it’s a quirky diversion invented to garnish his attention, don’t hesitate to say, in tones of rabid resentment ‘I came to be with my love, not talk to the under-read men of this century!’

CANCER (June 21 – July 22): You’re noticing with a creeping nausea that the ‘clean, gutless, beatnik’ look is even taking over the fashion sense of those working in the arts. It’s going to be harder to get a job in the industry now with your unbrushed black hair, second hand tweed jackets with cat hair on them and artfully ripped stockings. Because heaven forbid you actually look like an artist! Art should be neat, offend no one and preferably be contained to government commissioned sculptures in the CBD that speak to nobody and have nothing to say other than ‘I was commissioned to look good and allude to difficult symbolism that isn’t actually there so that this conservative, backwash of a Capital looks like it cares about the arts while actually cutting all its funding’. Maybe it’s time to check out New Zealand or explore your European heritage in Denmark until a progressive backlash ensures.

LEO (July 23 – Aug 22): With the New Moon approaching, get ready for love to enter your life! You’re going to meet a lot of archetypical ‘troubled intellectuals’ who are looking for a canonical mistress to go along with their bookshelf of canonical misogyny. Look out for men in black leather jackets and maroon skinny jeans, wearing beaded brown necklaces, leather bracelets and Ray-Ban sunglasses worn even when it’s dim. Any guy who looks like the type to read Henry Miller but not be bothered to pick up Anais Nin should be approached and all his white guy polemics and rants on his deep sense of personal rage validated. When he pulls out a copy of the Tropic of Cancer suppress your laughter and try and focus on how dark and real his grievances with ‘females’ are. It’s time to revel in the love that’s coming your way… and then be cheated on by said troubled Peter Pan because he’s decided he’s ‘polysexual’ now, which means he’s a cad hiding behind a label so as to get into every pussy he can with zero thought for anyone’s emotional wellbeing.

VIRGO (Aug 23 – Sept 22): Congratulations, your husband spurted in you and it’s the most original act on the planet! You didn’t orgasm once in the months you were ‘trying’ but I’m sure your man is a real gem and he’ll fulfil his perpetual promise to touch your clit next time. I’m sure you deserve those three hundred likes on Facebook upon the announcement of the due date. But while you’re basking in the summer glow of another indie photoshoot of your pregnancy, if you can manage it, spare a thought for your child-free friends. They won’t get a single celebration of their choice not to have kids, not so much as a card in February saying ‘Congratulations, you didn’t marry a dud so as to fit in with the conservative script and gather up vast amounts of undue social privilege. And well done you, another year not pregnant. I’m delighted you’ve realised that just because you’re living with a jerk that doesn’t mean you have to have his jerk child.’

LIBRA (Sept 23 – Oct 22): Honey, take this advice from the cosmos — you can’t be the Queen of the Queers while pretending to be a virulent strain of monosexual hetero with your burly live-in boyfriend, no matter how much pussy you eat in the closet. You’d have to stop courting the expectations of your well off parents and give up some of that heterosexual privilege you love so much, to even begin to qualify. Sorry baby bat, but it’s not sexual rebellion to swan about in red lingerie breathing about the virtues of an egalitarian triad, all the while dictating the terms of your secret relationships from the throne of your couple’s privilege. You can’t pull off being a polyamorous princess and queen of your own monosexual monarchy.

SCORPIO (Oct 23 – Nov 21): Maybe chill on the bitter epigrams, darling. Your straight housemates want to believe a rewarding, stable, emancipated life with a cisgendered, white man is viable if they can just find the right one at an art opening. They still hope they’ll find a guy who values their narrative as an oppressed minority over his degree in International Relations and his vast knowledge as a straight, able-bodied dude when coming to conclusions about how patriarchy works. Don’t get so steamed when they say things like — ‘I don’t think I really hate anyone enough to send a hate letter’  — retorting — ‘That’s because you haven’t dated that many men!’ They’re younger than you and don’t yet know that the common narrative taken up by female poets about love, breakups and finding another, better lover in the next bar, is only for the young. Soon enough they’ll be crushed by carelessness, feel entirely disposable and be betrayed over and over until they become water logged with bitterness and their future is irrecoverably tinged with mistrust. So let them enjoy their summer loves. God knows they won’t make it through the nuclear winter called ‘reality’.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 – Dec 21): Now that you are twenty five and done with your undergraduate degree, you’ve detected a forceful expectation that it’s no longer ‘cute’ to be scrappy and that your goals should now be getting a high paid, vacuous job in the public service, with a distinctly disparate aim to ‘help the community’. You should be moving into an impossibly pricey ecru apartment with a very straight boyfriend and talk only about your job, nail care and planning overseas holidays. It’s fine to be a cliché art school kid when you’re at arts school, but now that’s over it’s time to embrace the same aims your baby boomer parents did. And make the same mistakes, like voting Liberal, because higher medical bills and rising sea levels won’t eventually claim us all.

By Rachael Nielsen

_____________________________

 VALENTINE’S DAY 2016

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CAPRICORN (Dec 22 – Jan 19): Want to vomit with hate all over the over-priced roses and love heart shaped advertisements that you’re ganged banged by every time you go outside or use the internet? Well then you need to get yourself along to a V-Day One Billion Rising event where you can yell with a crowd of the joyously enraged who want to end violence against women. Then make yourself a grand dinner, romance yourself with some wine and settle in with a revenge film.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20 – Feb 18): Your strong temperament demands a display of anti-establishment condemnation. I suggest going to a nice, beige restaurant with your non-binary friend and loudly discussing the five-way you want to have. Including, of course, the way you anticipate the sharp boned, gothic hippie with the dark red dreadlocks holding stare as she eats you out.

PISCES (Feb 19 – March 20): Let me assure you, just because you’ve grown out your leg and armpit hair, the world isn’t now made up of neo-yuppie males who gaze at you like they do at a lettuce from the cold section at Woolworths. I foresee you realising that you’ve found someone made of the same cynical, bent branch as you are when you simultaneously answer the question ‘how do people keep dating?’ with ‘they don’t.’ Never let go of that realist my darling!

ARIES (March 21 – April 19): Don’t suggest a threesome this Feb 14. You will be marked way down for having no originality in you. You aren’t fully satisfying the one woman you are with, so don’t imagine you can cope with two. Besides, your male ego would smart when your lady and the welcome interloper are inevitably drawn to each other and leave you and your shrivelled horcrux alone.

TAURUS (April 20 – May 20): You just went on a trip to South America as part of a geology expedition paid for by your work. No no, don’t tell your friends about the wonders of Chile; tell them more about your dreamy boyfriend who’s idea of eroticism is a bottle of hand cream.

GEMINI (May 21 – June 20): There’s nothing wrong with retreating further into your fantasy of having an old Victorian house where you live alone except for a patchouli-laden trail of lovers who come and go with the seasons. A place where you tend your pumpkin patch and a selection of stray cats who share you predilection for dark vintage oddities and velvet chaise lounges with lumpy stuffing. Fold yourself into your crisp, New England fantasy; the smug hetero couples and the glorified primacy placed on romantic attachments can’t hurt you there.

CANCER (June 21 – July 22): You know all about the structure of the Australian senate but couldn’t work out why your beloved wasn’t flushed with erotic appreciation over your gift. You deserve her huffy rejection and the night spent with Autostraddle and not you. Here’s a clue; it could have been that her sexual aesthetic leans towards the primal and earthy and you gleefully ordered her to clomp around in impossible shoes with see-through heels and a matching shoddy red latex shift-dress because you have the sexual imagination of a crass, white bread-eating dunce who’s foolishly absorbed every generic, soulless trope of mainstream pornography.

LEO (July 23 – Aug 22): Don’t let some insecure boy-man who only wears grey and is unsettled by your success tell you that you look like you’ve put on everything in your wardrobe. You’re too punk rock for that peasant. He wouldn’t know a free spirit if it sat down and gave him the time of day.

VIRGO (Aug 23 – Sept 22): Though I’m all about empowering emerging writers, try not to make yourself out as a feminist advocate all the while putting in print your inability to handle the words ‘secretions’, ‘vagina’ and ‘period’ when used  in publicly performed poetry. No one wants to know what your ‘hubby’ thought of it either. I suggest your next article explains, in more than 500 words, why some women feel they need to rely on the opinions of mediocre white men to feel confident in their own.

LIBRA (Sept 23 – Oct 22): How about you don’t go on a date with one of those ubiquitous blondes who wear sexually aggressive block-coloured Witchery dresses and flirt with emancipation? Stay home and read V for Vendetta and try to make the connection between liberation from fascism and liberation from a future as the sturdy breadwinner married to a child-wife who expects you to pay for beige heels and glamorous dependancy.

SCORPIO (Oct 23 – Nov 21): Don’t believe those sanitised articles that say that spicing things up with candles and doing the washing up for once is going to get her real wet and grateful. Use that brilliant intellect you like to turkey slap others with and get your weak scrotum into gear thinking up something dazzling for your long suffering partner. There’s nothing that says, ‘I really thought about what would get you hot’ quite like glad-wrapping your bedroom for a night of blood play and sanguinista role play. Go for it babe!

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 – Dec 21): If you aren’t willing to cleave yourself from you recently engaged friend by dislodging your pent-up righteous rage over the disadvantage marriage perpetuates against the LGBTQ community, I have two passive aggressive suggestions for you. One: take a really big gasp when the priest says ‘does anyone have any objections?’ and then look deviously nonchalant. Two: only let rip your diabolical radicalist purge when you get emphatically drunk, marring the ‘special day’ and thus eclipsing with your rhetoric this celebration of heterormativity. Make sure as a parting gift you write your name in the vomit of chips and blood that forced their way out of your mouth while you were in the cubical.

By Rachael Nielsen

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DECEMBER 2015

FullSizeRender1If there’s a proper time to celebrate romance it’s in the sultry seasons of spring and summer, when sweat once again lubricates our days and even cicadas are preoccupied with getting it on. In the spirit of fertility I have devastating predictions for you all. No one will be left out (unlike when Valentine’s day rolls around).

CAPRICORN (Dec 22 – Jan 19): You don’t need to consult an eight ball to work out that, yes, all your friends were secretly gagging when you announced that you’re buying a house with your boyfriend of six months. Why, you ask? Because a romanticised idea of the 1940’s that inevitably morphs into frying his eggs every morning and enduring a decade of psychological and economic abuse doesn’t constitute their idea of hedonistic life goals.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20 – Feb 18): Don’t take the advice of that body language book and start bouncing around trying to procure a man’s ‘protective instincts’ in order to get laid. You’ll only ensnare the barely evolved who like to wear snap backs and have little appreciation for the art of cunnalingus. You’re better off on a cruise that’s the spawning place for the zombie apocalypse.

PISCES (Feb 19 – March 20): I know early exposure to porn and Beauty and the Beast would suggest otherwise, but it’s not a romantic gesture that while your guy is cumming in the ass of his soon to be ex he’s trying to stifle calling out your name. Don’t take it as a sign that he wanted you over her: we can both think up a better name for it.

ARIES (March 21 – April 19): Don’t fear being an old cat lady: fear being shacked up in Queanbeyan to a resentfully monogamous partner who continues to text her ex about the dildo she once gave her. Do you still use that violet, soft silicone dildo? I hear you ‘vajazzled’ it with rhinestones and silver saint medallions.

TAURUS (April 20 – May 20): Well done, you lost 20 kg and entered the burlesque scene with the intention of ‘expressing yourself artistically’, i.e. reviving every sexist, objectifying aesthetic of its golden era with the hopes of getting the attention of the hot meninists who hate those ‘fat chicks’ on stage with their satirical dance moves about the bullshit of body hair removal.

GEMINI (May 21 – June 20): There’s no need to feel incomplete because you don’t have a partner. Go on your way and keep that clear quartz in your pocket all the while manifesting your desires to the universe. Besides, you could be on a date night with your sixth boyfriend in a row that likes you to look ‘natural’ — with a waxed labia, plucked eyebrows, dead straight hair and neutral eye shadow because at his core he’s a dull coward with the heart of a bible-belt sexist.

CANCER (June 21 – July 22): Stop praying for a dog. Nobody wants you to get a baby-replacement pedigree with your boyfriend who doesn’t think misogyny exists because he hasn’t experienced it.

LEO (July 23 – Aug 22): It’s about time your housemates knew more about you. I suggest you do come out to them as a Wiccan but don’t tell them about the period blood they ate in those cupcakes you baked. And don’t leave cupcakes on the bench anymore.

VIRGO (Aug 23 – Sept 22): I wouldn’t take it as proof of his bountiful masculinity that he barely moves his slack, open jaw to slur the words ‘I donno’ when you ask him how an outfit looks. Do not date this kind of character: you’ll be single again in no time as these sorts always blow themselves up with all that repressed emotion and flinging of beer bottles onto the road. But do use his early death as a chance to wear your new Gothic Lolita black lace bonnet and gloves. He didn’t love you anyway; those sorts only appreciate dress shirts and beer.

LIBRA (Sept 23 – Oct 22): Though I admire you for standing up to him when he told you to shave your pussy because that’s what he likes on females, a swift Doc Marten to the balls and then the forehead would have been best. Feel free to give him an extra shove because he used the word ‘female’ like they’re all one species adapted for his pleasure.

SCORPIO (Oct 23 – Nov 21): The greatest thing about technology is its ability to connect us with people and then promptly erase them. Take full and extended delight in blocking that emotionally abusive ex. Three months from now you’ll still loudly cackle to yourself at the sheer bliss of that moment.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 – Dec 21): Just because you’re approaching thirty doesn’t mean you have to settle for a man who tries to convince you that his rather modest penis is a seven inch beast; nor do you have to settle for a woman who doesn’t like jazz. Don’t start adding people who refuse to garble more than ‘it feels so good’ when describing sex to your list of possibilities. Remember, the future isn’t grim unless you choose to make it so!

By Rachael Nielsen

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JANUARY 2015

FullSizeRender (10)CAPRICORN (Dec 22 – Jan 19): You’ve turned having a lot of dreams but no outcomes into an art. But of course you’ve made no art. You approach everything like the Lemon Detox. Pick up some acrylic paint, point it at something blank, and stick with the brushing motion. Keep doing it and you might find you become what you said you would be.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20 – Feb 18): This one time I won’t sneer at you reading pop culture romance novels. Your absorption is warranted. With the not impressive tally of two women in the Ministry, regular, nuclear strength distractions are needed.

PISCES (Feb 19 – March 20): You hard-working fish, quit your posh retail job. You’re buying far too many elegantly tailored black and cream suits, and finding them mildly pleasing. You don’t realise how you’ve betrayed your Byron Bay soul. Before you totally convert and live in Gungahlin, quit and take up animal rescue.

ARIES (March 21 – April 19): Going on Centrelink wouldn’t be a bad idea. If you can get on it you’ll be making all the Lovecraft clay ghouls you can! Before then, I suggest relying on nutritional yeast and your salt lamp to keep you alive for the next six months.

TAURUS (April 20 – May 20): Learn to play the ukulele. It’s a handy skill to pass on to your children so they have something to do just before they suffocate on a barren planet with white males as the ministers for every minority possible.

GEMINI (May 21 – June 20): You’ve become tremendously insightful of late. That would usually be a compliment, but I overheard you saying, ‘People endure their nine-to-five nightmare and then come down to Darling Harbour to distract themselves from the hell in their lives.’ Your friends were right to be shocked. Do try to enjoy yourself as well as have astute observations, darling.

CANCER (June 21 – July 22): If this wasn’t the year you sent your pale, alienated crust of a bourgeois family a bay leaf each and a Wiccan curse for Christmas, then you deserve the horror of de-shelling prawns, you conformist bastard.

LEO (July 23 – Aug 22): If you catch your father going through the recycling and separating out the cans, stay optimistic and assume he’s fossicking for resources for an art project—not that he’s swapping cans for money so he can muster the change for the GP co-payment.

VIRGO (Aug 23 – Sept 22): Feminist vigilantes will surely kill Abbot while he sleeps soon. Come off the ledge and read Ghost World instead, you poor husk.

LIBRA (Sept 23 – Oct 22): I told you not to have New Year’s on a ferry bound for Tasmania. I know the craggy beaches called to you, but not even solar flares could keep back that many crypto-fascist baby boomers bound for their plebeian holiday homes. I tried. I’m sorry.

SCORPIO (Oct 23 – Nov 21): It’s not cute anymore. Well to be precise, you have max two years before your lack of responsibility for your bills is no longer seen as dotty and adorable. Your Dr Martens and bad posture are fine, but your childish money choices are slowly ruining it for the rest of us!

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 – Dec 21): If taking your washing back to Canberra so you can spend your detergent money on Diet Coke means people are prone to saying ‘You dress like you have problems’, then so be it! Fold it into your allure.

Please note: Verity La claims no responsibility for the veracity of these predictions—except perhaps yours, Taurus: clearly that will happen to us all.

By Rachael Nielsen

 

Rachael Nielsen has a Bachelor of Writing from the University of Canberra and has studied literature at Oxford University and the Australian National University. Rachael has interned at the M16 Artspace, the National Library and at the ANU Press. Currently she is one of the Content co-Coordinators at Scissors Paper Pen and Assistant Editor for Grapple Publishing, as well as penning nasty little predictions for Verity La as part of her work writing The Stars. When she isn’t pouring her latent bile into The Stars she is writing about feminist issues and is fixated on short stories. Her work has been published by CurioWoroniLip, Vegan ACT, the ACT Writers Centre, the ANU Women’s Department and Feminartsy. You can follow her ramblings about being an emerging writer and editor on Twitter @rachaelandjane.

 

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STARS 2014

Abbott getting a handTAURUS (April 20 – May 20): Being a young artist you’ve been royally fucked by this government. We wish we could say this in a nicer way.
GEMINI (May 21 – June 20): You’re young and beautiful and until now you’ve had a wonderful arts career. Which the Australian Government couldn’t give a shit about.
CANCER (June 21 – July 22): Tony Abbott hates you.
LEO (July 23 – Aug 22): All you want to do is sing. So Joe Hockey has you in his sights. Run!
VIRGO (Aug 23 – Sept 22): Christopher Pyne dreams bad thoughts about you. He’s such a cunt.
LIBRA (Sept 23 – Oct 22): You’ve got the best idea for your next project. All you need is some financial support from the Australian Government. Looks like that ain’t gonna happen. Fuckers.
SCORPIO (Oct 23 – Nov 21): Best spend the next month making a Joe Hockey pinata. Maybe make a Christopher Pyne one – you’d need less material.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 – Dec 21): Don’t give up.
CAPRICORN (Dec 22 – Jan 19): You’re worth more than every member of the Australian Government.
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 – Feb 18): Be better than them. Because you are.
PISCES (Feb 19 – March 20): Don’t worry – they’ll be gone before you know it. Then our lives will return and we will do the most beautiful things.
ARIES (March 21 – April 19): How good are we! We are the best! We are the champions!
Please note: these predictions are only current for the period 13 May 2014 until Australia can rediscover its soul.  We claim no responsibility for what might happen outside this period.  Quite honestly, we claim no responsibility at all.  For anything.
By Nigel Featherstone