One day, you wake up late, miss your class, spill coffee all over yourself and get a flat tire. Suffice to say it’s a rough start to the morning. It’s probably because your Himalayan salt lamp needs its positive energy recharged—what a headache that always is.

On your way to work, you swipe through your horoscope app on your phone—while driving, of course—down to your Zodiac sign. Today your horoscope is a vague passage which explains that things aren’t going well, but they’ll soon turn around. What a relief, you think to yourself. It wasn’t your fault you forgot to set an alarm or neglected to keep your car maintained that led to you missing class or the flat tire, it was the stars!

Horoscopes should not be followed as closely as they are. In most cases, the person who is interpreting the alignment of the stars to write a vague, two-hundred-word prediction about one’s life is not an astronomer—or even an astrologist for that matter.

Many who read horoscopes are great people, but you never know if you’ve met the one who mentions their Zodiac sign as a reason for poor behavior. Sure they seem nice, but in a week or two they’ll forget to feed the fish and respond by saying, “I just can’t help it,  I’m a Sagittarius, you know!” No, Karen/Ben/Monica, I don’t know! Feed your fish!

To put myself in the shoes of one of these people, I decided to read my horoscope. I found that my Zodiac sign is Scorpio because my birthday is in early November. (If I were born hours later, I’d have a different sign and therefore my personality and fate would be altered.)  After finding my Zodiac, I navigated to horoscope.com.

According to the site’s vague article, when I am at a four-way intersection, I should be the first to pass through, and I should be bold. What this means, I don’t know. You tell me. Maybe horoscope.com is the reason why there are so many accidents behind Tutwiler. There must be a bunch of Scorpios in that area blowing through stop signs to be the first though the intersection and be “bold.”

All I found is horoscopes, much like nearly anything, should be read with a healthy amount of skepticism or with a good sense of humor—if you decide to read them. They are much more dangerous when they are followed strictly, or when one starts to use Zodiac signs to excuse bad behavior.

Horoscopes offer the opportunity to blame one’s misfortune or actions on the stars or other ethereal energy in the universe. The reality of the matter is the alignment of the stars has about as much to do with one’s destiny as the man or woman who cuts their hair. Probably less, now that I think about it.

So, as a message to those who do not believe in Astrology, kudos. You have separated yourself from the pack as the sane few who realize that Astrology is a pseudoscience that has existed for generations because horoscopes help sell newspapers.

As a final note—to all of the people that were reading this and thought that it made sense I wrote this article because I’m a Scorpio and supposedly opinionated and abrasive—I was actually born in January, which makes me an Aquarius.