Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Honolulu Lite

by Charles Memminger

Monday, January 8, 2001

Radio seer needed
mystic glasses

IT'S really too easy to pick on psychics, which is why I enjoy doing it. A well-known local psychic -- whom I won't embarrass by naming -- set sort of a record on a well-known local radio show recently. She managed to misguess just about everything about people who called in to have their futures told.

One young lady called in and told the psychic she was a college student. The psychic said, "I knew that." When the student then said she was studying law and asked about her future, the psychic boldly predicted that she would become a lawyer and work at a law firm. I'm not kidding.

Trying to knock one out of the park in the late innings, the psychic asked one caller if she was having car problems. No, the woman said. In fact, she was in her car right then and talking on cell phone. The psychic changed the subject quickly, scolding the woman for driving and phoning at the same time.

With time running out, the psychic went for the old alphabet ploy, where you ask the person if she knows anyone with certain letters in their name.

Now, this is standard issue in the psychic's bag of tricks. Almost foolproof. When someone is asked if a member of their family has a, say, "J" or an "D" in their name, the answer is yes most of the time. Unfortunately for our hardluck radio psychic, she whiffed this one, too.

The caller said there was no one in her life with those letters in their name. The psychic then countered, rather petulantly, I thought, "Well, there will be."

EVERYONE has an off day but this was an astounding string of failures for our radio mentalist. She was then asked to make the usual predictions about the new year, which, again, is standard stuff for those who see the future.

Usually psychics see earthquakes, meteors and arrests of various Hollywood celebrities coming in any given new year. Our seer, however, seemed fatigued, unable to cough up any good calamities for the year.

She said she needed to think about it, which is odd, because a psychic who goes on the radio a few days before New Year's should know the question is coming. The best she could do was say that the stock market would continue to be volatile in the coming year, which is like predicting Bill Clinton will have an active sex life.

Real psychics should be able to at least see major changes in the fabric of space and time. How come our window to the future could not tell us that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan would dramatically lower interest rates in just a few days? That's the kind of cosmic info we could all use. One the other hand, I understand that predicting the future is not easy.

I'm a bit of a psychic myself. Here are some of my predictions for the new year:

You will all have car trouble.

The car trouble will cost at least $300, because, well, it always does.

Those of you who are students will graduate and get jobs.

Those of you who are working will hate your jobs and want other jobs.

You will call a radio psychic and ask if you will soon be getting a job you like.

You will be told it's hard to say, but a private reading will reveal all.

You will then be out $400.

Alan Greenspan is going to meet someone with a "J" or "D" in his name.

---

Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.

---

The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite