There was only one problem. I didn’t know anything about astrology beyond the fact that I was a Gemini and that it was all B.S. I did know a sure moneymaker when I saw it, though. And I also knew where to find the “senior astrologer” of my former client.
We tracked Brother Bob, as he was called. He protested that he knew nothing about the whereabouts of our client, who apparently had taken the money and skipped town without bothering to send out the horoscopes that people had ordered. He, too, had not been paid. Brother Bob had written a complex computer program that would look at how various forces interacted in order to print out a personalized horoscope for each person. He explained that at the particular time each person is born, each of the various planets could be in any one of the dozen quadrants into which the heavens are divided. The quadrant each planet is in influences the characteristics that fall under the domain of that planet. Venus, for instance, “determines” one’s love life. Mars, one’s material success. The sun sign—what most of us mean when we talk about our astrological sign—determines the general personality. The location of each person’s planet at the time of birth can be looked up in an astrology reference manual known as an ephemeris. All that would be needed to replicate my former client’s product, he assured me, was to pay him $25,000 for six months of programming and to lease another $50,000 or so worth of time on a mainframe computer. I had neither the time nor the money for this nonsense.
I proposed an alternative to Brother Bob. Why not write up twelve one-page blurbs giving some general mumbo-jumbo about what some important planet says about the aspect of a person’s life they influence. We could do this for five different planets. I’d then look up in an ephemeris which of the twelve sheets to pick out for each per-son for each respective planet, mark it on a cover sheet, attach the five relevant pages, and mail it to the consumer. They’d be happy because they got something personalized, letting them know for instance that Venus was in Sagittarius when they were born. They’d also get valuable advice like to never marry a Capricorn unless they really liked him or her, in which case it would be risky but okay. As to how the various planets interacted within their own personality let them figure it out for themselves. Hey, for a buck, what do you want, Brother Bob?
“A buck?” Brother Bob asked. “Our product costs twenty dollars.”
“Well, you had to pay for a computer,” I replied.
I’d call the thing compuscope so people would think it came from a computer, but in reality I’d pay high school kids 3¢ apiece to address the envelopes and look up the sign in the ephemeris. I could pay them 2¢ to pick the right sheets from the racks, then staple, fold, and stuff the envelope and apply the postage. Taking into account 4¢ for printing and envelopes and 8¢ for bulk-rate postage, I could make an 83¢ margin on each dollar horoscope I sold; even more if someone ordered an extra for a current or intended loved one, since the postage would stay the same.
