Aurora Magazine

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Your Horrorscope for 2023

Published in Jan-Feb 2023

Faraz Maqsood Hamidi puts on his seer’s hat to forecast the year ahead.
Photo: OdishaTV
Photo: OdishaTV

1 Dear Aries: Whether the news has reached you or not, you are the single most hated person in the department. Don’t be offended. Because you rarely are. Just bear in mind that your passion (read: aggression), unfailing sense of adventure (read: aggression) and love for advantage (read: aggression), may have inadvertently flipped your popularity chart.

2 Dear Taurus: Please move. Not emotionally, God forbid. Try to physically move a couple of inches away from your comfort zone. It’s really not that bad out there. Your insistence to stay put has pre-ordained you to eternal bovinity (that’s not a word, but do you even care?) Try a change of opinion. Try on a new perspective. Try not to be so stubborn. No? Okay…

3 Dear Gemini: The fact that you were born as a human, instead of a WalkieTalkie™, should give you a reason to pause. But it doesn’t. Because you refuse to stop talking. Let others butt in for a change. Let them insert an “ahhh”, or an “ohhh,” or even a “hmm” to convey some sense of false interest in your trophies. By the way, have you looked up the meaning of Logorrhea, yet?

4 Dear Cancer: What’s the matter, Puss? Is the elevator music too loud? Too many universal vibes around you? Has your client arrived eight seconds too late for his appointment? Don’t get crabby now. Edge sideways, and contain your breathlessness. Come on, don’t turn this into another issue. That’s better. Here’s your milk bottle.

5 Dear Leo: After you’ve thrown caution to the wind, undressed the seasons, made love to the clouds, summited the highest mountains, trekked across the continents, recorded a best-selling album, and, heck, even crapped on the lap of luxury, kindly pass the salt – and the spotlight.

6 Dear Virgo: The Zodiac understands your pain. Nothing is nearly as perfect as you are. Nothing is nearly as practical as you are. Nothing is nearly as well-turned out nor nearly as granularly better than you are. No, nothing, dear Virgo, comes as close to holding the high bar of human calibre in the rich-bitch way that you do.

7 Dear Libra: Your capacity to slut – did I say slut? – strut into other couples’ relationships proves your unequivocal desire for classified romance. And yet, as the Zodiac’s most favoured sign, you never get subpoenaed for the marriages you wreck, the affairs you contract, and the contagion you spread. Luck suits you.

8 Dear Scorpio: Success follows you the way hell follows the devil. In your ruthless ambition to get to the top, you will neither spare nor spur a friend or foe. So once you’re at the top of the ladder, don’t bother to look down – in case you see the rungs of your past splintered from misuse.

9 Dear Sagittarius: You have cosmologically developed from a central region of the Zodiac that is wholly centred on your self-centeredness. Your cold independence, brutal honesty, and general apathy may have made it difficult to pull yourself away from the crestfallen faces of all those that you have abandoned. But, hey, it’s your way or the highway.

10 Dear Capricorn: To be as dull as dishwater is not nearly as bad as you think. You might wish to balance your methodical and dogged pursuit of worldly goods and achievements by not getting so easily disillusioned if success doesn’t come easy. But when it does, the Zodiac knows that you’ll make it look effortless and easy. And dull.

11 Dear Aquarius: At some point tonight, when you hang your narcissism and sink into the depths of your self-entitlement, do consider why watching The Little Mermaid and wanting to swap your world for hers is something that won’t float with most of humanity – and, eventually, down the line, most fish.

12 Dear Pisces: Before you find yourself pulled into somebody else’s drama (again), here’s a reminder that the congenital liar that you’ve befriended (out of the goodness of your heart), who has eaten you out of house and home, and robbed you of your savings (and heirlooms), was last seen breaking into your dreams and scavenging your spiritual life. So, try and book a wake-up call.

Faraz Maqsood Hamidi is CE & CD, The D’Hamidi Partnership