SM Shrake: No, Facebook, What are YOU doing right now? You always ask me and I never ask you, Facebook! So, what’s up? You give us a status update.
December 2, 2008 at 5:31pm

Before everything goes fully a’Twitter (I never will), I want to immortalize the art of the Facebook status update.

Did you know you can keep going back and back with the “Older Posts” button on Facebook, all the way to the beginning? You can see your whole “wall” history. And maybe that would be a good thing for you to do, to see how boring you’ve been, how ashamed you should be…

The following are REAL-LIFE specimens of unfathomably lame-assed status updates I have seen on my Newsfeed, from people I can’t believe I call my friends. Actually, posting status updates like this gets you defriended quickly by me; this amounts to a collection of Facebook epitaphs for casualties of my defriending storms:

“[ ]… is at work trying to accomplish some tasks.” “[ ]… is getting stuff done.” “[ ]… is starving!” “[ ]… is glad to be done with work for the day.” “[ ]… is ready for the weekend.” “[ ]… is ready for this week to be over!!” “[ ]… is looking forward to Friday.” “[ ]… is getting coffee.” “[ ]… is disappointed.” “[ ]… is hoping that today is better than yesterday.” “[ ]… is thankful.” “[ ]… is predicting a crazy, if not unexpectedly so, week.” “[ ]… is wishing that the weekend wasn’t over!” “[ ]… had a great night last night.” “[ ]… has finished putting away the dishes.”

In response to such megatwaddle, I launched an ongoing anti-boring-status-update campaign through my own status updates:

SM Shrake … It’s raining boring status updates! April 20, 2009 at 1:11pm

… What is this, Night of a Thousand Boring/Cringe-Inducing Status Updates? February 15, 2009 at 1:23am

… is gearing up to talk about the WEEKEND with other weekend fans! Please don’t forget to ask me if I have any big plans. I love talking to you about it. January 9, 2009 at 1:12pm

… is itchin’ for some days-of-the-week talk. Here, I’ll start. Sure don’t seem like a Friday, does it? January 2, 2009 at 10:45am

… Oookaaay, let’s bring the room down a little. Anybody want to talk about how it’s Friday? TGIF! Woohoo! Mondays suck! Fridays RULE! December 19, 2008 at 2:01pm

… has today and Monday off. JEALOUS? Hey, anyone want to chat about the days of the week with me? I’m around. August 1, 2008 at 9:30am

WHY DO WE BROADCAST OUR STATUS TO THE WORLD? What kind of exhibitionistic freaks have we become? I remember on the chronically, bafflingly F.U.B.A.R. flop Friendster they had some kind of status bar, I can’t remember the magical little name for it, though. It seemed dumb then. Twitter seems dumb now. The first time I heard about Twitter, which was around the time in late 2007 that I joined Facebook, I thought “Oh, HELL no.” And I haven’t budged.

What is the difference between stultifying, numbingly banal status updates and ones that are worth reading? Well, if it’s about you or me — about our persons — it should tell something that is not boring, but rather, interesting. It should evince some kind of a reaction in my brain beyond stunned boredom.

SM Shrake… so, the memorial service is over… where are they planning to take Michael Jackson’s remains now? Does anyone know? Are they just going to drive around until they run out of gas, rather than admit there’s no plan? July 7, 2009 at 4:20pm

… COLLEAGUE: Did you get new glasses, Scott? You look different. SM: No, I’m getting really fat, so my glasses just look smaller. But they’re the same ones. May 6, 2009 at 5:53pm

… is nice once he gets to know you. So don’t think of him as “mean” or “scary” — think of him as “pre-nice.” April 10, 2009 at 11:08am

… knows he’s getting old, because he habitually refers to his iPod as a “Walkman” (much as Grandma Shrake used to call the refrigerator an “ice box”). March 13, 2009 at 10:26am

… wants to be on “Intervention.” But no one loves him, so it won’t happen in this lifetime. March 9, 2009 at 9:27pm

… is going to a puppet show with his ex tonight. Bringing some of my own puppets along so I can maybe get in on the act. February 15, 2009 at 3:54pm

… would be so embarrassed if anyone knew what song he is listening to (Hanson, “Mmm Bop”)… Oops, I guess it’s no longer “a secret no one knows.” January 15, 2009 at 3:48pm

… was thinking the other night: If I’m fat, then fat is hot. December 16, 2008 at 10:59am

… is returning to bed after eating some fried chicken for breakfast. December 12, 2008 at 10:22am

… is torn between two physical therapists, feeling like a fool. Getting manhandled by both of them is breaking all the rules. December 4, 2008 at 11:33am

… is dreading another weekend. November 21, 2008 at 2:15pm

…, when he was under 18, used to like it when he would get cards and letters from his grandparents addressed to “Master SM Shrake”. November 13, 2008 at 12:09pm

… is going to be at Halo later if you want to come try and assassinate him. May 16, 2008 at 5:07pm

… would never defriend the hand that feeds him. April 9, 2008 at 10:01am

… wonders if anyone else, as he does, wonders if others can hear the lame light-rock music you’re listening to on your iPod. January 11, 2008 at 11:42am

WHAT ARE THE NECESSARY AIMS OF A GOOD TOPICAL STATUS UPDATE? It should entertain, delight, challenge, blow a mind or two. This is all about realizing and fully accepting that Facebook is a stage, and we’re all players.

POLITICS

SM Shrake…
… thinks it would have been funny if President Obama had given the interview to Al-Arabiya in FLUENT ARABIC. January 27, 2009 at 10:20am

… is amused that it’s Obama’s first day on the job and the first day I was blocked by his motorcade! I just put on some Mary J. Blige and chilled while we waited. January 21, 2009 at 10:12am

… is going to ask Diego, the Barber to the Chief Justices, to give me a “John Roberts.” Cuz I wanna look like Justice John Roberts. Or should I get a “Rehnquist”? January 8, 2009 at 3:44pm

… “split his ticket” on Tuesday: He circled Barack Obama and crossed out Joe Biden, and crossed out John McCain and circled Sarah Palin. You can do that, right? November 6, 2008 at 10:35am

… is feeling weightless, in silent awe that this 8-year-long nightmare will soon be over. It’s deeply personal, jiggling every molecule in my body. November 4, 2008 at 4:21pm

… thought he had heard Sarah Palin say she and John McCain both believe “you can’t blink.” But last night at the debate, he showed he can blink like a champ. October 16, 2008 at 12:23pm

… is waiting for Hillary to walk him down the aisle and give him away to Barack. June 4, 2008 at 1:52pm

… doesn’t think the media is making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear with Obama… just a silk purse out of some above-average polyester. February 22, 2008 at 10:43am

… Even if Hillary found a cure for AIDS tomorrow, the headline from our super-fair media would be: “Clinton Pathetically Tries to Upstage Obama by Curing Disease That Was Started by Her Husband Anyway”. February 14, 2008 at 3:00pm

MISCELLANY

… Attention, people: Just because it’s warm doesn’t mean you have to immediately put on your scummy flip-flops and make everyone look at your feet. Grow up. March 7, 2009 at 5:55pm

… wonders if it’s okay, in lieu of “the Talk,” to just buy someone a copy of the book “He’s Just Not That into You” and say, “Here, read this.” March 3, 2009 at 8:58pm

… RE: Valentine’s Day: Do leather daddies give those LEATHER ROSES they sell at the gas station to their partners? If not, who buys them? February 14, 2009 at 9:57am

… is offended that Béyoncé was allowed to sing the song “At Last” for the Obamas’ first inaugurational dance. She would be great at a children’s talent show, but she is not up to this task. January 20, 2009 at 8:42pm

… The song playing in the cab, Nancy claims, was “Secret Agent Man.” But I swear it’s “Secret Asian Man.” Oh, secret Asian man: When will you come out as Asian? December 8, 2008 at 9:58pm

… Bogus business-speak terms of the day: “Pain points” and “sweet spots.” Is it a business or an S&M dungeon? December 5, 2008 at 11:56am

… paraphrases the Stones: You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you can’t get what you need either. October 13, 2008 at 1:46pm

… loves the strangeness of life. Barbra Streisand and I are both HuffPost contributors now. Reunited, and it feels so good! September 20, 2008 at 2:55pm

… likes “Intervention” so much that y’all might need to do an intervention on him to cure him of his “Intervention” addiction. An “Intervention” intervention. June 23, 2008 at 9:18pm

… called Barbra Streisand to wish her a happy birthday, but she was out so I talked to James Brolin for a while and told him he should blog for HuffPost. April 24, 2008 at 3:30pm

… I guess when they tried to make Amy Winehouse go to rehab this time, she said “Yes, yes, yes.” January 24, 2008 at 3:05pm

… is wondering what Evel Knievel’s funeral will involve, stunt-wise. December 10, 2007

I AM A PERFORMER and I only like (to hear things from) other performers. FB is a public forum, and you owe your “reading public” something more than “SM is at work.” Facebook gets it, actually: They have that HIDE feature now, where you can “shut” your most boring friends “up” (“down”?). Praise the Lord for that. One more pointless status update, [ ], and you’re getting hidden with extreme prejudice.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

AND YOU CAN FRIEND HIM ON FACEBOOK!

Look, I want comments. Reader comments are the way to measure my worth as a writer, and, by extension, as a person.

I crave them the way I crave smack. I recently got over 100 comments for the first time, on my last The Huffington Post piece, and I have to say I was… quietly satisfied… about crossing the three-digit comment mark. I had a moment. I celebrated that night with an extra bottle of champagne and a special iced smack drink I make sometimes.

In the spirit of writerly camaraderie, I hope for my writer friends to get lots of comments, but then I’m envious when they do. So I leave anonymous comments about how their articles stink.

I want at least 2,000 comments next time I write something. (Luckily, I think at HuffPost there are exactly as many commenters as there are bloggers: roughly 10,000 of each.) Nothing’s ever enough for me, or anyone.

Numbers matter. After something goes live, we writers check back obsessively to see how many comments we’ve gotten. I notice you guys don’t leave many comments here on UsedWigs. Because you are stingey people. CHANGE THAT.

But the question is: Where do you even begin reading a comments section with thousands of comments in it? And when do you stop? Like so much on the Internet, comments sections can be a tragic time waster.

When I started contributing to Arianna’s site, a blogger friend told me NEVER to respond to commenters. “It’s a power differential,” he said.

Fine, I get it, I’m very available to elitism, but I like comments because… I actually do want to have a dialogue with my readers (all four of you), something that wasn’t possible back when I started writing, for print publication, over a decade ago. A back-and-forth! I was so excited when I got my first “f*ck you” from a commenter on my first HuffPost piece! “F*ck you, Shrake!” Made me smile.

When it comes to comments, websites and bloggers have choices. Do you allow comments at all? Do you as the site owner or blogger respond personally to comments? (Historically, some writers have gotten in trouble for commenting under an alias — at their own sites and others’! — and pumping themselves up, etc.) Do you moderate the comments or let it be a free-for-all? Moderating means deleting people, banning them, etc. Do you want to be that bossy? Unwebocratic?

When I was young, before the Internet was set up, ordinary folks had one option for responding to something they read. They could write a letter to the editor of the newspaper or magazine in which the article appeared. Maybe it would get printed, but the chances were mighty slim.

If you could say something that caught the interest of the editorial powers-that-be, you’d be the star of your block that day. You’d be famous!

But that was it. Then they invented the Internet, and with it soon came a chaotic marketplace of shitty ideas and profanity.

There was a time when UsedWigs was young, before it went blog, that we didn’t have comments. If someone had something to say about something I wrote, they sent me an e-mail, and I ignored them. It was the opposite of a free-for-all.

Nowadays literally anybody who can use a computer is able to be the star of their block in their own mind, all day, every day. We now have what I will call the Lumpen-Commentariat: They are the “trolls,” the hopelessly illiterate or drunk or insane underclass that insist on typing their thousands of comments per day, on getting in on the action and making their opinions known… way underneath what I’ll call the Blogeoisie (blog-wah-zee) — the uppity people who own blogs (or, like me, “rent” space at other people’s because they don’t know how to get their own); and the Commentariat — the people who write the blogs.

Case Study: David

One comments section I can never resist reading for an hour at a time is the one situated next to any column by David Broder at the Washington Post. It represents an intense competition among commenters to humiliate and eviscerate this old man who looks like he’s constipated, the reputed “Dean of the Washington Press Corps,” and it is superb insult comedy.

Everyone knows Broder can’t possibly be looking at the comments, because he’s Andy Rooney’s-age-plus, but it’s fun to think of how cranky he must be because he doesn’t get why the readers are allowed to send all these “electric letters” or whatever they are, directly to him in that small type and Who are these people, anyway? He’s an important man laboring pen-in-hand over his steno pad to come up with incomparably obvious columns every few days (such as the recent “I’ve Noticed Hillary and Barack Are Two of the Main People Running for President” by David Broder). So they taunt him, saying how he needs to retire, holding him to account for helping elect Bush 2, and just… I don’t know, running rhetorical circles around him. Many of the comments are such perfect specimens of verbal acidity, it makes me gaga.

That’s what I want. Sock it to me. When you’re ready. I’ll be feverishly refreshing this page, drinking my delicious, special, ice-cold Smack-Aid. Let the dialogue roll.

And when I cyber-die, please put “Leave a Comment” on my e-tombstone.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

In the third act of the classic motion picture drama “Mommie Dearest,” an aging Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) is shown at a meeting with the all-male board of directors of Pepsi-Cola, where her last husband had been president until his recent death. After expressing their condolences, the board tells Crawford she will have to repay the debt her husband incurred borrowing against his salary to rehab their 5th Ave. apartment, and they imply that once that is done, she will no longer be associated with Pepsi. Here is the dialogue* that follows:

CRAWFORD: You think you’re very clever, don’t you, trying to sweep the poor little widow under the carpet? Well, think again. I’m on the board of directors of this lousy company.

MALE BOARD MEMBER: We assumed that you would no longer want to be on the board.

CRAWFORD: Al and I helped build Pepsi to what it is today. I intend to stay with it.

MALE BOARD MEMBER: We appreciate your devotion and contribution, Miss Crawford. But we have retired you from the board of directors.

CRAWFORD: You drove Al to his grave, and now you’re trying to stab me in the back? Forget it! I fought worse monsters than you in Hollywood for years. I can win the hard way!

MALE BOARD MEMBER: (Nervously) We don’t want any hard feelings.

CRAWFORD: You don’t know what hard feelings are until I come out publicly against your product. You’ll see how much you sell.

MALE BOARD MEMBER: It’s hardly necessary to make threats you surely don’t mean.

CRAWFORD: (Ferociously) Don’t f*ck with me, fellas! This ain’t my first time at the rodeo. You forget the press I delivered to Pepsi was my power. I can use it any way I want. It’s a sword, cuts both ways.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXZ4Kd-faoM[/youtube]

MALE BOARD MEMBER: (After a big sigh) The board has failed to realize the extent of your interest in the company. We… misjudged. (With forced smile) We shall be pleased to have you stay on.

CRAWFORD: Thank you, gentlemen. Now, let’s get to work.

*Writing credits (alphabetical): Christina Crawford (book); Robert Getchell, Tracy Hotchner, Frank Perry, Frank Yablans.

Now I know some people don’t like strong women. But I for one was ON JOAN’S SIDE throughout the movie. I remember during the Lewinsky scandal, one of Hillary’s friends was asked on “60 Minutes” what she thought was going on in the White House between Bill and Hillary. After they pestered her enough, she finally said, in exasperation, “What do you want me to say? Is she capable of throwing a lamp? YEAH, she is, okay?” Let’s rewrite this “Mommie Dearest” scene for Hillary:

Monday, March 3, 2008

CLINTON: You think you’re very clever, don’t you, trying to sweep the poor little woman candidate under the carpet? Well, think again. I’m still running for president of this lousy country.

THE MEDIA: We assumed that you would no longer want to run against such a formidable opponent as Senator Obama.

CLINTON: Bill and I helped build the Democratic Party to what it is today. I intend to lead it.

THE MEDIA: We appreciate your devotion and contribution, Mrs. Clinton. But we have decided Mr. Obama is going to be the next president.

CLINTON: You drove Bill to quadruple bypass surgery, and now you’re trying to stab me in the back? Forget it! I fought worse monsters than you in Washington for years. I can win the hard way!

THE MEDIA: (Nervously) We don’t want any hard feelings.

CLINTON: You don’t know what hard feelings are until I come out publicly about the real reason behind your pro-Obama bias. I’ll tell the whole country how you guys in the “left-wing media” are really part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, and that’s why you want Obama as the nominee: so he can lose to the Republicans.

THE MEDIA: It’s hardly necessary to make threats you surely don’t mean.

CLINTON: (Ferociously) Don’t f*ck with me, fellas! This ain’t my first time at the rodeo. You forget that the scandalous stories I gave you all through the ’90s was my power. I can use it any way I want. It’s a sword, cuts both ways. Bill and I don’t have to provide you ANY fodder if I move back into the White House in ’09 despite your efforts. I’ll give you a very boring presidency, and that’s a promise.

THE MEDIA: (After a big sigh) The media have failed to realize the extent of your interest in the presidency. We… misjudged. (With forced smiles) We shall be pleased to have you stay on in the campaign.

CLINTON: Thank you, gentlemen. Now, let’s get to work. I’ll see you in Ohio.

“BITCH” IS THE NEW BLACK! GO, HILLARY! You’re bigger than him, you’re stronger than him, and you “WILL ALWAYS BEAT HIM”!

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

[NOTE: This quessay is cross-posted on HuffingtonPost.com]

*Big ups to Crispin Glover, who really should’ve run for president this year, and who once wrote an “essay” called “What Is It?” composed only of questions, with a subtly discernible anti-Steven Spielberg thrust to it. Subtly discernible, the way the media’s anti-Hillary Clinton bias is subtle. I’m paying homage to Glover’s genre*** and giving it a name**: Quessay (question essay). (Actually, so no one accuses me of stealing anyone else’s words, according to Google as of today ONE OTHER person, someone named Rockin80sChick4ever, has used the term quessay. And I think she meant something else.)

Why have we seen Chelsea Clinton but not Bill in the audience at the recent one-on-one debates, and why don’t Michelle Obama and her daughters ever appear at them?

Isn’t it strangely prophetic that Barack Obama, in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, after admitting his own “unusually — and at times undeservedly — positive press coverage,” (p. 120) cites only these two people as an example of right-wing bias in the media: “A vote or speech by Hillary Clinton that runs against type is immediately labeled calculating; the same move by John McCain burnishes his maverick credentials” (p. 124)?

What would you say if you knew Hillary’s mom’s married name and Barack’s mom’s maiden name both end in “-ham” (Rodham and Dunham respectively)? Are the Rodhams and the Dunhams related? Isn’t Barack Obama distantly related to the current vice president, Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney?

Was Barack Obama’s maternal great-grandfather named Ralph Waldo Emerson Dunham? Did he die on October 4, 1970, the same day Janis Joplin died? Wasn’t Janis Joplin a drug addict?

Were rock stars Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison (rumored to have been) killed by the U.S. government?

Do Hillary Clinton, Mamie Eisenhower, Spiro Agnew, Laura Bush, Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, the late Bobby Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Scarlett Johansson, Condoleezza Rice, Billy Graham and Maria Shriver all share a zodiac sign (Scorpio)?

Do Barack Obama, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Rosalynn Carter, Marilyn Quayle, Tipper Gore, Lynne Cheney, Bill Clinton, Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Hill, Fidel Castro, Loni Anderson, Caspar Weinberger, the late Jerry Falwell and Arnold Schwarzenegger all share a zodiac sign (Leo)?

Do scorpions sting themselves to death when cornered by an enemy, rather than be killed? Do lions roar a lot (“variations in intensity and pitch, rather than discrete signals, appear central to communication”****)?

Is it interesting that Barack H. Obama Sr. went to Harvard and earned a doctorate in economics, making Barack H. Obama Jr. a “legacy” student at Harvard? Did both Barack and Michelle Obama receive law degrees from Harvard, and did both Bill and Hillary Clinton receive law degrees from Yale? Who else went to Yale? Did any of Bill or Hillary Clintons’ parents attend Ivy League schools? Am I an Ivy League graduate? Was Bill Clinton the only person in his family of origin to attend college?

Is Barack Obama allowed, constitutionally, to pick Bill Clinton as his running mate?

Did Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s fathers both die relatively young as a result of automobile accidents?

Do William J. Blythe III (Bill Clinton), John S. McCain III and Barack H. Obama II have numbers after their names that, all together, add up to eight (8), which is the same as the total combined number of books the three of them have been the top-billed authors of? Eight?

Does it surprise you that Hillary Clinton’s house in Washington, D.C., is the only one on the block with no house number displayed anywhere?

Where does Barack Obama live when he’s in D.C.? What’s his favorite restaurant? Is it the same restaurant favored by Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney? If not, why not?

In their youths, didn’t Bill Clinton meet John F. Kennedy and Hillary Rodham meet Martin Luther King Jr.?

Will Barack Obama respond to those calling for him to pick Bill Clinton as his running mate?

**When I was in grad school I would make up words all the time, but one of my sour-faced professors (a German) tried to rid me of the habit by writing in the margin: “It’s not necessary to invent a new word for the purposes of a term paper.”

***I’m also paying homage to the lists of intriguingly paranoiac questions that certain commenters from both fringe ends of the political spectrum like to insert into comment sections (again and again). Except my quessay is different because I can spell.

****Schaller, George B. The Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator-Prey Relations. University of Chicago Press, 1972. pp. 103-113. Via Wikipedia.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FvyGydc8no[/youtube]

I’m sure Mr. Shrake will get me the lowdown posthaste.

My astrological sun sign is Scorpio, which starts today. I can already hear some of you groaning, “Oh, no, not the zodiac! Who believes in that hogwash?” Guess what? I don’t have any time for people who are not at least somewhat “available” to the occult. (By the way, the YMCA now offers a Necromancy class on Tuesday evenings; I’m going to sign up, maybe meet some new people.)

Who cares about you “logical” people, anyway? Arrogant! You probably don’t even believe in God.

This post is about superiority and inferiority. If you’re not interested, beat it, I don’t need your bad vibe.

Some people find out I’m into my own sign and immediately ask what I know about their signs. I don’t care about your sign. The only thing I know is a tidbit about each of the two other signs I’m compatible with: Cancerians are loving but emotionally fragile (luckily they have exoskeletons, like Scorpios), and Pisceans are dreamers. That’s all I know. Do your own research.

Others of you will groan just at the word “Scorpio,” for reasons that are well known to anyone but the biggest “I-don’t-know-what-sign-I-am” nincompoop. Guess what? The feeling’s mutual: We’re sick of you stereotyping us as evil, without acknowledging the good parts.

“Ugh, you’re a Scorpio? My last boy-/girlfriend was one of those. It was awful.”
“How long were you together?”
“Five years.”

Gee, I wonder what kept you around? What ever could it be? You’re OUTTA HERE, and believe me, if a Scorpio says you’re free to go, you’ve gotten off easy.

Now, whoever is left after I’ve gotten rid of the zodiac non-believers, those curious about their own signs, and anti-Scorpios: “Welcome.” This post is a private club for Scorpios and their fans. You are lucky I am telling you this stuff. Because Scorpios, like mafiosi, seldom talk to outsiders about what it’s like being a Scorpio—”this Scorpio thing of ours”/questa cosa dello scorpio di il nostro.

Interesting facts about me, me, me: On my birthday in 1775, the U.S. Navy was formed (Scorpio is a water sign!); in 1904 the NYC subway opened (I’d still rather cab it). I share my birthday, a few days before Devil’s Night, with explorer Captain Cook, composer Nicolo Paganini, President Teddy Roosevelt (one of only five Scorpio presidents: John Adams, James Garfield, Warren G. Harding and James Polk are the others*), manners maven Emily Post, artist Roy Lichtenstein, writer Sylvia Plath, Trump ex-wife Marla Maples and singer Simon Le Bon. Hey, you guys, let’s party!

(*Did you know that current presidential confidantes Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice, as well as current and past presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Joseph Biden, Pat Buchanan, Bob Graham, Tom Harkin, Howard Dean and Ralph Nader, are all Scorpios? Does that scare you just a little? And remember that Election Day always falls right in the middle of Scorpio. Think for a minute about the personalities of the people in bold, and what they have in common…)

My friend Damon did my chart and found out I had an Aquarius rising and moon in Libra, a “double air.” I was horrified to have these two inferior (from a Scorpio perspective) signs so prominent in my chart. I have often remarked that if I were an Aquarian, I’d kill myself. My Mercury, Neptune, Jupiter, and Venus (yes!) are all in Scorpio, though. I do still wish I were a total Scorpio right down the line, so I could really do some damage.

“What kind of damage are you talking about, Scott?” Must not know any Scorpios, eh? Haven’t you ever been the victim of a Scorpioland hit? See, we’re about “death and regeneration.” Preferably your death and our regeneration.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve had to fight against the urge for total annihilation of an enemy. An example of an enemy is someone who drives too slowly in front of me or doesn’t answer one of my e-mails. The slightest provocation can make Scorpios feel murderous (but cold) rage. Murder is illegal in most places, so Scorpios will find a way to kill you that’s stealth and not so literal, but just as devastating and final. One thing we do is fish out your most shameful secrets and store them to use against you later. Much later. We serve our revenge as cold as possible. We also cover our tracks, like mafia hitmen. We do that by lying and getting other Scorpios to back us up.

Many have asked, “Can I convert to Scorpio?” No, you have to be born into it. When I was a kid, I wanted so badly to be in a witches’ coven, but then I read in a book that you have to be invited by someone who’s already a member. I was so hurt and angry at witches, for a while. I’m still that way about invitations.

One of the best things about Scorps is that we look out for other Scorps, and even for non-Scorps if we like them. If you’re in the organization, the FAMILY if you will, you’re set for life. What’s done to a member of my Scorpio tribe is done to me; the punishment for all transgressors is the same.

I like this masterpiece of understatement that I read on one of those zodiac sites: “Scorpios have complex forgiveness issues that people of other signs have trouble understanding.” Again, we’re talking about a secret society, with overtones of organized crime. And just as the young Meadow Soprano didn’t believe in the mafia even though she’s part of that tribe, all Scorpios are bound together, though some are too young to know it yet, and others can’t face up to their dark birthright.

By the way, I don’t read horoscopes. I’m not interested in that level of planetary monitoring, and most of them are just quackery anyway.

I just believe in the Scorpio mafia. Tribes and vibes: It’s all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever needed.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.