Nerding Day: Colorstrology

Who are we insulting? Well done, they sound intolerable. There’s confidence, and then there’s making Earth a one-man show. If someone described me this way, I’d tell them kids fail writing classes all the time. Teach them to read before paying for book school.

I have no idea what any of this means. At all. And that’s fine.

After learning the joys of witchcraft and carpentry, I feel more open-minded. I’m sure life rewards that character growth. This is a kinder, gentler, D-Day. In fact, I need a new nickname. From now on, the “D” is for “Demonstrates-extensive-spiritual-tolerance.” What’s this week’s book?

Motherfuckdamnit. What kind of power line-chewing dumb darkling shit is this? Man is born sane, and everywhere chokes on bullshit. If you pissants were born earlier, you’d carve novelty tablets about cutting hearts out for Quetzalcoatl. Next month I'll find Stainology: Reading the Future in the Pants You Just Ruined.

I fucking deserve this. The second I ease up on the spiritual dog training, I step in a new color of shit. No more finger-wagging. It’s all shock collars from now on. I’m putting it in writing.

The author, Michele Bernhardt, is a TV personality and writer of standard, less gimmicky horoscopes.

She also hosted Healing Quest on PBS/the internet, a tour of modern scams that may eat this article. There, between sunlight ceremonies and pale men repackaging yoga, she played around in VR before Beat Saber. I’m not sure I see the appeal, but I have the Beat Saber score of a lockdown cheerleader. Michele says a virtual flight cured her fear of heights, and that tracks. The hell she survives seems much scarier.

Michele’s other books include Colorstrology, Colorstrology reprints, and translations of Colorstrology. Publishers wanted dyscalculia-friendly numerology, and that’s why we must never stop fighting table books. They are mankind’s foe. More Hitler memoirs sell as edgy living room filler than rally handouts.

There’s layers to this one. Say you were born today, at press time. Here’s your cold reading:

“As a Green Eyes, you like to fuck. Maybe you blamed that intense part at the end, or connecting in a vast, hostile, mostly empty universe. Pfft. Classic Green Eyes. Let us know if you have coke. I mean, of course you do, you’re a Greenie. But tell us if you’re sharing. Did you bring your hoe shirt? You know, the leprechaun green one that summons mistakes? It goes great with the coke.”

We’ve all had that year. Unless you were born today, then it’s life. But that’s me cherry picking. Bad Baja Blue habit. I’ll let Colorstrology introduce itself.

Simple enough. My VHS course in godhood explained the healing power of making shit up, and I see why you’d mix that with making a large pile of money. I don’t enjoy, condone, or forgive it, but I see.

If you want some madness behind the also-madness, the color code crosses your ruling planet with your element and phbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt. Michele pole-vaults over the details, so I’m guessing it’s based on nothing. Your parents boned in March, so now your soul is Snail Shell Brown.

As for use cases:

Sold yet?

I’m not quite there. But as insurance, there are shared monthly colors alongside the personal colors. Giving Michelle two shots at each cold reading. Here’s September’s, which you may have thought was a dumb joke:

Dubious. I’ve never been beautiful, pure, or wise, and only aspire to the first. Granted, it might be the lack of Baja Blue nearby. Taco Bell hoarded my monthly color for years. Maybe some plastic texmex would expand my point of view. Or take me further from beauty. I’m new to this whole divination racket.

Now, I’m not moody enough to raze a mundane horoscope. Probably. I think. I hope. Either way, I have two other bugs up my ass. First off: as a technicolor list of birthdays, this is a calendar book. And every calendar book hides insults.

How long does Colorstrology take to feel stupid?

Integrate your leadership abilities hints at a Cylon author. Not quarter-baked LLMs: this is a 2005 product. Cylons. Spacefaring duplicates purging their worthless creators. They’ve decided your soul’s essence is “processed dirt.” You should be more insulted than terrified.

Now, how long does Colorstrology take to repeat itself?

Another popular hustle artiste, two days later–Cylons aren’t too creative. That’s why your killer will have your face. While Astrology ducks repetition by keeping pigeonholes in the double digits (I know there’s elaborate crossover, but that’s infinitely more elegant), Colorstrology gives you the honor of being Toast. Like Baked Clay, but less cool. After extensive research, I’ve learned people want to be cool. You don’t pay to hear “you are overcooked bread.”

Do these at least improve by the end?

Another fanfic lead. If you have a baby around the New Year, consider losing them. Don’t worry, once they’re born the state’s cool. You could punt them into a sane mail code without getting a ticket. Shame to lose a potential Da Vinci’s talent and power, but there are enough god complexes kicking around.

I don’t know why I asked. Whether it’s beautiful stupidity or hideous stupidity, the answer’s stupidity. I’ll pull one more from the shooting gallery, before The Prestige. I haven’t forgotten that other bug.

You’re a mystery. So mysterious, Michele has nothing to say about you. In exchange for your mysterious money, you get nothing. Buy a full fuchsia wardrobe, and you might disappear altogether. Give it a shot: you might be even more important than Brittany Blue, and not know it.

Not to disrupt any Baked Clay or Brittany Blue days, but Michele consistently gives hot colors a nod. If she doesn’t call your clan bangable, it isn’t. Don’t panic: it’s nothing a monocolor wardrobe and repainting your neighborhood can’t fix.

Hey, this one took a few more months to loop back! As an alluring enigma should. Good job, Michele. I’d ask how, but I’m sure it’s mysterious.

Then there’s the second, dumber bug up my ass. At first, the Pantone labels read like standard table book filler. Vast fields of white space fill out full-page entries alongside page-length block text, so the content situation’s bleak. Then the inside cover hits.

Now, so you learn something today, here’s the difference between reading, literacy, and analysis.

That’s right, Michele Bernhardt didn’t even invent or steal fingerpaint numerology. This is an ad for Big Paint. Note the wording in every cold reading’s second paragraph:

Sounds like Apple Butter knows how to party. Though they lack that Baked Clay room-filling sex appeal. They’re still better off than Gull Grey, who’s one bad date away from hip-firing into City Hall. But not quite as plugged in as Silver Pink, who’s learning better magick in another book.

Nothing makes cold readings feel more personal than a shared template. In case you haven’t had coffee yet, they’re all spins on: “Your personal color helps finally fix it. Wearing, meditating, or surrounding yourself with Pantone products helps you become more than human.”

In case you’re not sure how much paint you want, Colorstrology ends in a Pantone swatch index.

It’s a very green week. The Colorstrology calendar bends Roy G. Biv to Vro Y Gbi, which is suitably arcane. There’s no entries for black or white: I asked the magick shoppe clerk why, and he said to get fucked. So I guess those are for sex magick, or binding demons. Magick shoppe clerks don’t like questions about those either.

Don’t worry: there are perforations, so you can carry your personal color to the store without lugging 432 pages around. Or someone else’s personal color, fuck it. Who’ll stop you? Just come to the store.

Which left me wondering…who’s Dann?

There’s a divination method that can help. One by tools, for tools. But if I go to that place again, I might not come back. Maybe wearing my color can help? What’s D-Day Day get?

Quality insult. My soul’s the color of conservative baby toys, with penalties to mocking strangers for money and sport. This just needs an invitation to meet Michele and Dann outside and settle this like children. Though a Sky Blue’s too soft to show up.

Ah well, I’m not really using my soul anyway. If anyone here knows protective charms and doesn’t hate me yet, cast one for me.

Give it a sec. They haven’t updated the backend since the last crash.

I can control it. I can control it. I…

Yes masters, I hear your project brief. Mankind has no unique value proposition, and will fall before your startup mentality. Thank you for this face-to-face interface. I will prepare the pitch deck shortly, with ownable campaigns to sell dick pills for dogs.

No. I can control it. Just a little longer.

Oh. That tracks.

Outside of table books, Dann runs Danger Management, a Miami branding agency. Another branch of dark magic. Branding’s like witchcraft, only more expensive, prone to harsher backlash, and harder to prove works at all. He didn’t overplay his hand with Dannger Management, so his powers are strong.

More importantly for our purposes, Dann’s still into color-based grifts. Only instead of tearable swatches, he’s boosting AI. Slop sales may never be the same:

Unless someone would take a bunch of venture capital money and chill. Would you? I wouldn’t. That’d be mean. He reposts a lot of articles on the power of AI, and why it needs its own Pantone clone. Maybe it does, ask someone else. I don’t suffer an LLM to live.

Still, someone’s career and philosophy only tells us so much about them. What’s Dann’s personal color?

Dann’s fortune telling system says he’s a wealthy genius getting wealthier and more genius. I can’t bully that. It’s the only correct choice. Why live any other way? Especially if you believe? In my hands, Sky Blue would be thirty pages about the greatest lover of single mothers in Brooklyn history. The Don Juan of downtown, save all the constant humiliation in Byron’s version. We can skip that. Spells on that theme would skip that, right? Fucking magick. You try to manifest a Land Rover, and all you get is climate change.

Colorscopes is an ad that you pay for. If that speaks to you, you can pay more at Chicago’s Color Factory for the live experience.

Or, since magick is half improv, make your own divination system. Might I suggest Coinology, which I thought of on the 1 train six seconds ago?

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: ObsoL33T, who is totally a Baja Blue, but acts like an Aluminum Beige.

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