"In your FACE, space coyote!"

When I started working at the paper, I started reading it. Most days at home I just do the standard browsing, checking out the main stories from each section (except sports) and whatever smaller headlines catch my attention. On occasion, I look at layout and fonts, etc. Mainly I save that level of attention to detail for days when I’m actually sitting in the newspaper building.

The first day I really looked over the newspaper (and the days since), I read everything in it, including my horoscope. The vague pronouncements of what I could expect to encounter that day seemed to fit adequately, as they always do (on account of being so vague). I didn’t test the results at the end of the day to make sure they fit, because I simply didn’t care enough to bother.

(An aside: The woman who predicts your days’ and years’ events has the first name “Holiday.” This seems strange to me for a person meant to feel that each day is different or special and can be specifically forecast on a daily basis—why not “Christmas” or “Halloween” or “Festival of Lights” [“Festi” for short]? Surely the fact that these holidays occur in different signs of the zodiac would make a difference in how she would view herself? As it is, her name—like her occupation—is vague and strange and leaves one wondering what her parents were thinking.)

In fact, I would like to challenge Holiday to a duel of psychic energies. Like my opponent, I can only offer bizarre coincidences to shore up my case; but unlike my opponent’s coincidences, mine are specific and irrefutable.

This week’s newspaper as a whole seems to be geared toward revealing my past life. On Wednesday, the front page featured (in part) an article about a regional food bank’s delivery truck making stops in New Britain; I interned at that food bank, and only that food bank, after graduating from college five years ago, and I rode on that truck. On Tuesday, the front page of the paper showed a photo of a bus crash in Plainville; the crash happened on the corner where my family used to live, and my brother’s girlfriend was on the bus (but she’s fine). These are normal coincidences, I’ll grant you, but here’s the clincher: on Sunday, the paper ran a full-page story about the Beguines in Leuven, Belgium. Their beguinage has been there for hundreds of years and is now a dormitory for religious university students. The narrow cobblestone ways snake through row after row of small-bricked buildings punctuated at the corners by icons and face-worn Virgin Marys, and the doors to the rooms swing wide and are wooden. I know this because I’ve been there, to Leuven, specifically to see the beguinage.

But who’s ever heard of Leuven? Had the article featured Brussels, or Bruges (which has been recently featured in a Colin Farrel movie, as my friend pointed out), that would have been one thing: Brussels has NATO, and Bruges was the Cultural Capital of Europe some six or seven years ago. But Leuven? We had to take a student commuter train to get there, then find the beguinage, then run back just in time to jump on the final train of the night, encountering a man who spoke only Flemish and a woman who pointed us to the train station, on the way. Maybe Leuven is more famous than I thought—but I’m betting, in this case, on my psychic influence over the newspaper, instead.

And it’s not just the newspaper that bends to my psychic will—it’s the NFL as well. Consider this: every year that I have been out of the country, the Patriots (I’m from New England, so technically my home team) have won the Superbowl. Every year I’ve been stateside, they’ve lost. That upset against the Giants this year? My doing. I was home in the US, cleaning my apartment at the time. This happens despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that I don’t really care about football.

I don’t have anything personal against Holiday, and I can understand people’s desire to be told that they’re doing the right thing, or to get advice from someone who won’t nag later if they don’t take it, who will always reassure and never challenge.

But if you’re looking to effect change, it seems you’d better come to me instead.