New! Free Horoscopes with Dr Emma

Hello!

I'm Emma Glynd and I'm excited to tell you I'll be divining your horoscopes here at roomwithaloo.  But first, a little about me! 

When did I first realise I had the gift of extrasensory perception? I didn't! It was my mother, who was amazed when, as a young girl, I felt a strong "knowing" that my cat at the time, Roger, would go missing. 

I have always enjoyed helping people, and so naturally when I became aware of my special abilities I knew I would use them to empower my nurturing instincts. I therefore opened a psychic practice in Brighton called Foresighted. It continues to guide its many clients through life's sometimes choppy waters, removing the clouds that, for many of you, occlude (cover up) the futuretime (time which has not yet come to pass). If you're in the area, do pop in for a detailed personal reading. 

How have I become a respected psychic and a doctor of astrological science? I've had to prove my abilities in a laboratory, and I've also studied the planets' movements and their effects on our spiritselves for many years, in detail. These skills now enable me to share with you your future, identifying opportunities yet to arise and, just as importantly in these difficult times, letting you know about problems which may be waiting around the corner so you can prepare yourself and your loved ones.

Of course it's true that non-personal readings can't be as specific as personal sessions, but nonetheless I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at just how accurate my horoscopes are!

Yours,

Dr Emma

Aquarius  

It is a time of great change, but try not to leave old friends behind as you forge ahead with an exciting opportunity. They are trustworthy and their counsel will be valuable.    

Pisces  

You have poured your heart into organising the office party and it won't go without reward. The music you picked will get everybody bopping! A flood of emails are bound to follow, all attesting that it was the best party they've been to this year. Try to make the most of your good fortune by wearing antiperspirant, because you sweat when you're complimented. 

Aries 

Your arms will be sheared off in a car crash. 

Taurus 

Mars spins backwards tonight, which means you must be thrifty with expenditure on household items, especially toothpaste. Ensure everyone who uses it squeezes out only a pea's worth, so that the paste covers no more than a quarter of the bristles (confiscate any unusually large-headed toothbrushes). Limit the height of the dab of paste to 5mm, taking care that no extra paste has been squished down between the bristles. If it has, take your measurement from the lowest point of the paste. Punish transgressors by washing off the paste into the sink (having inserted the plug), and returning it to the tube. Require the offender to brush their teeth using just the residue of toothpaste (if any) left on the washed bristles. 

Gemini 

It's a good time to redecorate this week, now that your home zone stars are in the ascendancy. 


Cancer

A walk through the park on Sunday will be spoiled by a shooting.  


Leo 

The sun and Mercury sit side by side this week, which means your temperature zone is untrustworthy. Although you already feel warm, you are actually quite cold. Buy at least four thick jumpers and wear them all at the same time from now on. When you begin to feel faint, have a sip of water.

Virgo 

The family dinner will pass without incident until Gran asks why your children have not eaten the rind of their ham, which will cause tension. Your eldest will try to swallow it down, but your youngest will refuse. Your husband will tell off Gran and remark that the children, unlike your own generation, are not war babies. She will fall silent, refuse pudding and insist on driving herself home, but not before remarking that Eve from the bridge club says her son, a colleague of your husband, has been promoted, whereas it appears your husband has not. Your husband will interject that Gran must be careful not to lose control of her car, or pass away in the night.

Libra 

With Venus in retrograde, old flames will be rekindled. Fend off your uncle with whatever you can find. 

Scorpio

The vegetables are out of control and need to be picked. Give them to your loud neighbour as a peace offering. Mention that you can hear him running his bath late at night, every night, and it is preventing you from sleeping. Keep bringing him vegetables every day until he stops running his baths. Make sure you provide a variety, and point out the different types. If he stops answering the door, throw them over the fence, and slip a note in his letterbox explaining that you tried to ring.

Sagittarius  


The shadow of Venus is falling across the third quarter of Saturn this month, so you will develop a permanent limp in both legs within the hour, leading to a highly noticeable degree of side-to-side swinging as you walk. This will result in bruising to the sides of your head whenever you attempt to negotiate narrow alleyways.  Also, children will start calling you The Pendulum.

Capricorn

You've been searching for someone who brings grated cheese on a first date. If you change your route home so you cross the canal bridge, your dream man will be inhaling from a plastic bag in the shadowy gloom below. Bring a Pritt Stick and don't agree that you remind him of Elise.

At last! A cure for the common cold that really works!

A great way to deal with a crisis is to be slightly ill when it happens. Then you couldn't give a damn if you just die. While everyone else gets on their heads and spins round in a panic, you sit, and watch, rheumy-eyed and unimpressed. The screams are muffled. The implications of the broken jar of Ebola and imminent nuclear strike fail to penetrate your cotton-wool brain. "Do I care that I'm bankrupt, my house has burnt down and I've accidentally uploaded footage of myself treating a carpet of hamsters like bubble wrap? Yes, but only because now I don't have a couch and all I want to do is lie down. I've got a completely blocked nose."

For its duration, illness makes you aware of your body. You only know you have a throat when every gulp is blocked by a boiling pebble. Eyes. I didn't know I had eyes until they started bulging out of their holes and watering constantly. And drugs are a paltry treatment. Are they really the best we can do? Even our tiny-brained, brow-heavy forebears ate stuff to make themselves feel better. Witch Hazel, that sounds about right. And bear nuts, two an hour, no more than 10 in a 12 hour period.  But we're ages later than them. We're advanced. And we're still just swallowing stuff to make ourselves feel better? Rubbish. I want the young and foolish, now, to offer me their throat and eyes. Their healthy, young throat and eyes. We will simply exchange them until mine are well again. Then we will swap them back. All for a very reasonable fee, enough, say, for them to buy some paracetamol, with a little extra on top for a Hotwheels or a Bratz.

And think of those under-worked, struck-off surgeons, desperate for a little bit of pro rata slicing to keep them in bibs and wetwipes. Well now they have a chance. You simply locate and buzz the nearest donor on your FrankenMine App, go to the Medibooth on the corner and voila, one general anesthetic later you have a brilliant, healthy new hand, leaving a pecuniarily-enhanced needy person with a sprained wrist to work off. It's only for passing illnesses, though, like a common cold. You can't take a child's heart for keeps, just because yours is a pressed leaf in two litres of stiff chip fat. We're not dropping death bombs into the open wounds of the poor here. It's ethical, this, it's not black market.

Of course we'd all end up looking like big Mary Shelley fans, and have to undergo what in reality would be major operations for minor, temporary ailments, but do I care? No. I have a slight cough.

For you!

For me!

For us!

For you.

The House that Ben Built, and the Other Houses he Built, forming a Town, called The Town (a review of The Town)

Ben Affleck

If Oscar Wilde were alive today, he would be very, very old. And if he were young, he'd probably be lassoing twinks with one hand and tweeting delicious bon mots with the other.

But if he wasn't doing that, he might throw together a reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray, called The Moving Pictures of Benjamin Affleck. In it, Benjamin Affleck is an affable, self-deprecating interviewee and a man who generally conducts himself in a thoroughly likeable manner both professionally and personally.

Ben Affleck

But, Oscar would write, he has a terrible secret. For in his movies, the dark parts of Benjamin Affleck's soul are exposed to all those who dare gaze upon them. Despite being a pleasant chap in real life, on film he appears incredibly smug and huge-faced. As time passes, so these distortions grow. Each successive attempt to play a hero is met with more and more audience members screaming in fury at his huge, smug face. It grows larger and smugger with every release. Soon crowds are scrambling to pluck out their own eyes to lob at the screen, right in the chin dimple of his smug, huge face. Until one day the rotten head wobbles away so hugely, so smugly, that cinema-goers poo out their skeletons during the opening scene. In a rage, Benjamin vaults the jellied corpses of his audience and chins his image, ripping through it. The police arrive. For the first time a bearable, modest Benjamin acts away on screen. But on the auditorium floor lies his corpse, sporting a grossly distended head and a smug, huge grin. The cops vom in horror.

Ben Affléck

It was with this expectation that I sat down for The Town. Opening credits. Fade up. Here he is. Oh goodness. So huge-faced, so - but what's this? I waited for the hatred to flood my system but, like meeting my real parents, to my surprise I felt nothing. No desire to break all my bones in under one minute to ease their passage through my rectum. I put down the ball-peen hammer. Yes, the face was still pretty massive and seemed to wobble away just above the audience in some kind of unauthorized 3D and yes, Ben Affleck appeared to throb with the effort of acting humble. But he pulls it off. He has to play the most miserable man in Borwahston to achieve it, but he pulls it off.

I haven't seen Gone Baby Gone, but The Town is better because it has fewer missing kids and more rubber nun masks. The plot? It's one last job complicated by old loyalties and a loose cannon. It's Heat-lite. Where Heat has a narrative that draws you deep into the lives of both the cops and the robbers, this is a breezier, simpler story, and one that whole-heartedly follows the crims.

It's shot and acted solidly and rips along to a satisfying denouement in which (spoiler alert) the gang nick the score to Heat's climactic bank heist. And a bit from another film. Which you'll spot. Unless you don't. In which case, steal and then watch the movies from which the stills of Ben Affleck in this post are pulled. For one of them holds the answer. If you're caught, simply explain that whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. That's what Oscar said and he only got 4 years, for sodomy.

Ben Affleck