|
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
 Posted - 11/12/2003 : 13:33:19
|
So, my wife went off to sell our old junk at a flea market this past weekend, and came home with a job. A job reading Tarot cards at parties, something she used to do in college for a laugh.
Even though she knows it's garbage, and even though I told her that if she becomes the next Miss Cleo I'll have to publicly denounce her, I'm sure I'll have to give back my key to the SFN executive washroom soon. 
It's fairly decent money, though. And her brand-new boss told her that if she can learn to make balloon animals, she'd get really steady work at kids' parties, so maybe she'll get out of the Tarot business quickly.
Sigh. What's a good skeptic to do?
|
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 11/12/2003 : 13:41:07 [Permalink]
|
Damn Dave! Don't knock it. As said, a good, imaginitive tarot fraud can make even more scratch than dealing three-card monte.
The pidgeons are there in droves. Somebody's gonna pluck 'em. Might as well bring the money home, rather than let some flim-flammer spend it all foolishly. 
 |
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
|
 |
|
|
Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2003 : 17:03:39 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by filthy
The pidgeons are there in droves. Somebody's gonna pluck 'em. Might as well bring the money home, rather than let some flim-flammer spend it all foolishly.
Ah gee! Why do you all, present company....You Filthy, excepted, of course so serious about that.
Tell me you throw away the fortune cookie at the end of your meal at a Chinese resturant? Don't you read it just to see what it says?
Can't a person just do something for fun, once in a while?
Parties? Balloon animals? Perhaps it's the way one reads into a message but doesn't that tell you something?
It's JUST for FUN! That's what I get from it.
Lighten up.
(at Disneyland there's a mechanical lady in a glass 'cage', you put in five cents, she moves her hands over some cards and piece of paper with 'your' fortune comes out the slot. It's fun.)
Ps. Now, if that boss started a chain of psychics and set them up in buildings around the city and advertized that people seeking help could solve all their problems ......that's another story.
But, I don't have much sympathy for anyone who spends their money and belives that will change their life |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2003 : 18:01:07 [Permalink]
|
I guess I need to go back and add more smileys to further emphasize the hammy melodrama which drips from my post. I know the difference between entertainment and fraud, and was trying to present my ever-so-slight dilemma in a humorous, over-the-top, "oh, WOE is me" sort of way.
Some people are so serious. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
welshdean
Skeptic Friend
United Kingdom
172 Posts |
Posted - 11/12/2003 : 18:29:56 [Permalink]
|
Snake said:
quote:
(at Disneyland there's a mechanical lady in a glass 'cage', you put in five cents, she moves her hands over some cards and piece of paper with 'your' fortune comes out the slot. It's fun.)
That gives me an idea for a film.... boy goes to funfair, plays "Voltar" the wishing game, boy wishes to be 'big'..... |
"Frazier is so ugly he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wild Life."
"I am America. I am the part you won't recognize, but get used to me. Black, confident, cocky. My name, not yours. My religion, not yours. My goals, my own. Get used to me."
"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."
---- Muhammad Ali
|
|
|
|
Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 11/13/2003 : 02:20:48 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
I guess I need to go back and add more smileys to further emphasize the hammy melodrama which drips from my post. I know the difference between entertainment and fraud, and was trying to present my ever-so-slight dilemma in a humorous, over-the-top, "oh, WOE is me" sort of way.
No need. It was clear the 1st time. |
|
|
|
Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2003 : 09:24:20 [Permalink]
|
Cringe!
Dave-Oh: Bless me, if you will, for I have sinned. I confess that for reasons I can't fathom I once, back in the late '70s, stopped in a nick-nack store and ended up buying a deck of Tarot cards.
After getting home, I read all the directions very carefully, and layed out the cards as prescribed. Weirdly, they began to make sense.
A business associate stopped by with a problem: a large construction project (lots of income) that would require him to stick his neck out a-ways. As a lark, I "ran the cards" for him and his problem. I knew little about the details of the construction-proposal but as I interpreted the cards for him, his face got graver and graver. The cards, weirdly, gave him insight into several potential areas of disaster which he hadn't even thought about. He headed out, asked a few pertinent -- and telling -- questions and dropped the whole proposal -- like a VERY hot potato.
I packed up the Tarot cards and, although I still have them after nearly 25 years, seldom every "ran" them again. (They are now in a chaotic pile and, presumably, utterly unusable. Whew!!) |
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
|
|
Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2003 : 12:38:46 [Permalink]
|
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
Computer Org wrote:quote:
Bless me, if you will, for I have sinned.
Frankly, I'm not sure what your point is.
Jabber.
That part was a joke (--or meant to be, anyway).  Still, the stupid things seemed to work -- over many, many iterations (--I had just "retired" and didn't have anything else to do). Yet they COULDN'T have actually worked! Could they? But they seemed to do.
It was all intellectually traumatic, which is why I quit using them and packed them away. I turned to booze.  And, btw, after enough beer, blissfully forgot all about Tarot Cards and other such nonsense. |
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2003 : 12:56:45 [Permalink]
|
Computer Org wrote:quote:
That part was a joke (--or meant to be, anyway).
I was hoping so, but wasn't at all sure. My turn to be in need of a smiley.
Tarot cards typically "work" by having meanings which are vague enough that the person being "read" can mash them into conformance with his/her own desires and/or situation.
Take, for example, the Three of Pentacles. "Gain in a commercial transaction" could mean damn near anything. If you consider a Hershey bar to be worth far more than the 75 cents you paid for it, then you've gained in a commercial transaction. Much the same with "job opportunity's" [sic].
I was in my late teens when I realized that Tarot cards did not hold the "power" I thought they held. Into the trash they went. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Topic Locked
